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Address of R.W.Bro. Jeffrey L. Froud CHARITY We cannot underestimate the challenge facing Masonry in the present day. The changing face of the world brings at least one of our Grand Principles into question. I mean charity. Our Grand Master has written an excellent, brief and comprehensive article on Masonic Charity which is on the Grand Lodge web site. It summarizes the historical context of this foundation stone of Masonry, Lodge, District and Grand Lodge benevolence, The Masonic Foundation and more. The modern welfare state raises many issues for private charity. Chapter 16 of Beyond the Pillars, entitled "The Challenge" contains a thoughtful and inspiring discussion of this predicament. We are told that the Grand Principles of Masonry are Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth; that the Distinguishing Characteristics of a Mason are Virtue, Honour and Mercy; and that the Three Principal Virtues of a Mason are Faith, Hope and Charity. Masonic philanthropy has two faces: Benevolence and Charity. Benevolence is the largesse which we bestow on our Brethren and their families, while Charity is directed to the larger community. In this sense, I would suggest that Benevolence is more an aspect of Brotherly Love than of Relief. Charity falls more under the rubric of Charity, although our Brotherly Love is by no means restricted to our Brethren in the Craft. I would premise that our motivation for benevolent giving is our love for the beneficiary of our bounty or for our noble Craft overall. Our motivation for Charitable donations may be more mundane: partly loyalty to the principles of Freemasonry, to be sure, but also and more profoundly, the desire to make a difference, to have an impact on the world. Virtuous this may be but perhaps more self-indulgent than the selfless generosity of benevolence. Nevertheless, in the age of the Welfare State, the relevance of both types of relief is challenged by government sponsored social services. Funding, administration and entitlement are a few of the areas in which this contest is carried out. Organizations devoted to private benevolence constantly face the need to finance their activities. Whether they meet their budget through individual donations or public fundraising, very few of these organizations are sufficiently endowed to be able to make a long term commitment to a fixed program of philanthropy. The state, on the other hand, merely makes an allocation from its tax revenues sufficient to sustain its policy. There is a significant cost to administering social assistance programs, whether publicly or privately managed or funded. It is a frequent source of public concern, verging on a scandal, when the proportion of funds raised by private charities which goes to administrative costs is revealed. In publicly administered programs, these costs tend to disappear in the general government expenditures. Entitlement is perhaps the key area of conflict between public and private social welfare. Under a private program, the rules are set by the donor group and such controls as there may be are mandated by the values of the supporters. In a publicly funded scheme, they must treat all applicants equally, and the legal system will come to the aid of anyone treated unfairly according to the rules of the program. Those who meet the criteria have a right to receive the benefits offered. The beneficiary community, as a rule, strongly supports government programs over private ones. They like the relative certainty of funding, the political accountability of the administration and the intangible benefit of receiving "assistance" as a right, as opposed to "charity." On the other hand, free market capitalists and other types of economic conservatives oppose government intrusion into the field for a variety of reasons. There has been something of a sea-change in the current approach to the administration of social relief over the past ten years. Just as Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and our Mulroney government adopted "Reaganomics," so also "downloading" of social welfare programs to the private sector has occurred across North America. In the United States, the "Contract with America" policy espoused by the Republican Party is making an impact while, in Canada, the Voluntary Sector Initiative seeks a similar alliance of public and private social organizations. The "Contract with America" has received a great deal of publicity in the media, while the VSI appears to have been virtually ignored. I had not even heard of it until last Saturday! This change is a product of conservative economic thought, which maintains that it is not the job of government to redistribute wealth among the citizenry. According to an article on free-market.net, it holds that, "Charity is a virtuous act of conscience whereby an individual voluntarily gives of himself in the belief that he is helping his fellow men . . . an act of charity is a willful deed of an individual prodded only by his concern for others." "It is in this light that the Welfare State appears most obscene, for it replaces charity with the confiscation and redistribution of wealth. . . . The voluntary bestowers of charity are replaced with involuntary payers of taxes . . . The beneficiaries, no longer having any individuals to thank for their gains, come to view them no longer as gifts, but as "rights." Thus does the Welfare State replace the noble acts of individuals gratuitously aiding one another with a demoralizing confiscation of private property and an immoral, ever-swelling crush at the trough." This illustrates the conflict I mentioned earlier, between the donors’ desire for control and the beneficiary’s quest for independence. Must relief be "earned" before there is a right to receive it? That is contrary to the stand taken by fraternal benevolent associations which flourished before the advent of the welfare state. They were adamant that the benefits they offered were an entitlement of their members and not charity at all! We are not just dealing with the "work-fare" philosophy with which we are familiar here in Ontario. There is also the issue of a moral qualification imposed by some donors. The free-market.net author continues, "Aside from this corrupting influence of the Welfare State, there is the more pragmatic matter of selecting the beneficiaries. A charitable person will usually carefully screen the candidates. After all, it is his own property that he is giving away. Not so the bureaucrats of the Welfare State. They are doling out the confiscated property of others, and are thus not motivated to be so choosy. They act accordingly." As I said, one complaint levelled at private charity is the amount of donated money which goes to administration. However, those who oppose government administered social programs make the same complaint. However, we must bear in mind that sound administration is crucial to a successful poverty relief program. No program, public or private, can maintain credibility unless it can be seen to be policing its campaign to ensure that it is directing its benefits to those genuinely in need. On the other hand, we must beware of a tendency to excessive paternalism. It is a very small step from the adoption of the role of fatherly counsellor of the poor to patriarchal lord of the feudal manor or, indeed, slave-master. One of the justifications for income support for the poor is to foster that equality amount citizens essential to the health of a democratic nation. In other words, poverty is not a crime. Another libertarian author on the Internet writes, ". . . The criticism targeted at the welfare state by small-government advocates is rarely of the Dickensian "let them starve" variety. Instead, critics maintain that government social services provide little in the way of help, and lots in the way of incentives for bad behavior. . . . since 1965 we have spent $5 trillion on the War on Poverty, measured in 1992 constant dollars. Yet the poverty rate is higher today than it was the year the War on Poverty began. . . . one reason the War on Poverty isn't being won is that "most of the money we spend doesn't go to poor people. It goes to nonpoor people who work in the welfare-poverty industry." . . . "welfare contributes to the rise in out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families." . . . it has been "found that differences in state welfare policies, specifically stringency of sanctions and timing of work requirements, were highly successful in explaining rapid rates of caseload decline." "But to many critics, welfare reform adds up to minor redecoration. It leaves bureaucrats with an awesome amount of power and responsibility, and the rest of us with no choice in the matter. The better choice, say many, is letting people help each other (gasp) voluntarily." "When people's personal preferences are allowed to guide their charitable instincts, they can prod social service organizations into abandoning bad policies in favor of approaches that might work." "That private charities can do good should come as no surprise. After all, that's all there was before the welfare state, and poverty didn't seem to balloon then in quite so modern a fashion as it does under the management of well-financed bureaucrats. Well into the twentieth century, fraternal groups provided their members with the full range of what are now considered social services." If private efforts were so successful, why have single moms become political footballs on the legislative gridiron? It is suggested, ". . . private charity must take on a greater role, but one very different from that which the welfare state traditionally has played. There need not be a dollar-for-dollar replacement of existing expenses: Private charity is much more efficient." However, in a paper on the Voluntary Sector Initiative, Carlton University professor Susan Phillips says, "We are moving from a high regard for the principles of social justice to a willingness to tolerate considerable interpersonal inequality and from support for collaboration to protection of self-interest. While many fiscal conservatives may argue that this is unfortunate, but necessary, it surely is not a choice that we want to make with our collective eyes closed. Governments have great expectations for the voluntary sector. It is anticipated that voluntary organizations will enliven a spirit of community, foster a sense of self-sufficiency, provide new avenues for training the unemployed and deliver services in a cheaper, less bureaucratic and more targeted way. Many - but by no means all - of these expectations are justified and are possible to realize. But, not without sense and sensibility. We need the good sense to ensure that our expectations are realistic and that governments are not merely being opportunistic in offloading costs, rather than redefining relationships. Finally, we need . . . to appreciate the . . . capacities [of] the voluntary sector." Whether or not this new approach will enjoy long term success remains to be seen. There are political value judgments involved to be made by each one of you. Certainly, we can have an impact, as evidenced by the success of the Shriners, "With a 1997 income of $1.4 billion, the Shriners Hospitals for Children is the 5th largest nonprofit organization in the U.S. It is outranked only by the National Council of the YMCAs, the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities USA and the American Red Cross. From a single hospital constructed in 1922 in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Shriners Hospitals has evolved into a comprehensive pediatric health-care system. Its 22 hospitals, located in 18 states and in Montreal and Mexico City, spend $1.25 million a day. No other organization or private health-care provider in the U.S. contributes more on a continuing basis to the care of disabled children." It is in this climate that we find ourselves called upon to offer relief to the needy - to be benevolent and charitable. Whether we direct our efforts to alleviating poverty, providing economical health care, offering educational advances or otherwise, we must be prepared to give of ourselves. We cannot depend on either the government or the charitable establishment to fulfill the needs of the disadvantaged. We should also continue to examine government policies in this area so that we can make informed choices when exercising leadership as citizens of this country and members of our Craft. While we strive to better the lot of the unfortunate, let us not be too harsh, for our Lord said, "The poor always you have with you." Thank you, Brethren. Grand Lodge article on Masonic Charity:
http://www.grandlodge.on.ca/masoniccharity.htm R.W.Bro. Jeffrey L. Froud, DDGM |
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