The Degree Rituals The Supreme Council, 33 ... - Scottish Rite, NMJ

18 The Degree Rituals
to the Scottish Rite. However, despite numerous attempts during the succeeding
years, the Committee on Rituals was unable to produce a meaningful improvement
on what was generally considered to be an unsatisfactory ritual.
For three successive years, commencing in 1987, the committee reported
a continuing study to improve the viability of the 4° ritual. Then, during 1991-
94, the committee reported the review of no fewer than six proposed revisions
of the ritual, all of which were attempts to introduce a dramatic scene to portray
the Masonic lesson of duty. None of the six was found to be suitable.
Then, an unprecedented call was extended to Scottish Rite Masons throughout
the jurisdiction to contribute to the effort. Apparently, no acceptable responses
were received. In 2002 the committee considered three separate
proposals for a new, dramatic 4° ritual, all of which were based on Old Testament
themes — David and Goliath, Moses and the Burning Bush, and Abraham
and his sons — the first of which reached the point of a trial
exemplification. None of them, however, was considered to be acceptable.
The most the committee could accomplish was to amend the ceremonial section
to expand references to the Solomonic era to accommodate the four degree
rituals transferred to the Lodge of Perfection from the Consistory.
The apparently insoluble problem of the 4° had been around for a considerable
time and had baffled generations of ritualists long before the turn of the
21st century. Even Albert Pike, that most prolific of Scottish Rite ritualists,
confessed his frustration in an allocution delivered in his 70th year that the
Lodge of Perfection rituals were not all they should or could be, but that “We
cannot do all things.”
Then, in 2004, circumstances took a sudden, unexpected and dramatic
turn. Recent developments in membership were having a radical impact on
the presentation of degree rituals. Grand Lodges had begun to authorize “oneday
classes,” in which it was possible for candidates not only to receive all
three symbolic lodge degrees, but also to become Scottish Rite Masons on
the same day. To accomplish this, the time available for Scottish Rite ritual
work, of necessity, allowed exemplification of only one degree, either the
14° or the 32°. Whatever the results in expanding membership, the situation
was most unsatisfactory insofar as exposing candidates to the degree rituals
and communicating to them the moral philosophy of the Scottish Rite. Nevertheless,
the “one-day class” appeared to be a feature of the Masonic landscape
for the foreseeable future.