community responsibility

When the news confronts us with a teenager critically injured after falling from a moving train, we inevitably ask ourselves difficult questions. How could this happen? Where were the adults? And perhaps the most unsettling question of all: do we, as a society, bear collective responsibility for our young people? These questions touch on something fundamental within Freemasonry — the concept of brotherhood and the moral duty that flows from it. What Do We Really Mean by Brotherhood? Let’s start at the beginning. Brotherhood may sound like an old-fashioned word — perhaps even dusty. But what does it truly mean? In Freemasonry, brotherhood is not an abstract ideal or a pleasant phrase printed on a banner. It is a living practice, a daily exercise in recognizing our interconnectedness. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, himself a Freemason, wrote about the necessity of seeing a brother in every fellow human being — not because we share the same parents, but because we share the same human vulnerability. So when a young man falls from a moving train and is critically injured, it doesn’t only affect his immediate family. It affects all of us — or at least it should. The question Freemasons ask […]