Judge David B. Sentelle, 33°

The answers to our great questions are found in the greatest Light,
the Volume of the Sacred Law.... If we who have that Light remember
these things, then not only can we proudly answer that we would
join the Lodge again, but we can lead others toward that Light.

In the fall of 1987, after the United States Senate finally confirmed my nomination for my present judgeship, a friend of mine asked me, “Would you do it again?” My friend’s question was rooted in the reason why my confirmation had been held up some months before. Certain Senators had questioned my fitness to occupy the judicial position because of my membership in Masonic Bodies, including the Scottish Rite, Valley of Charlotte, North Carolina. When one Senator had proposed that I might resign the Lodge, I had declined to do so. My friend wondered if I would do it again knowing that my confirmation would be held up for months. The answer to that question is an easy “yes.”

In the first place, I know what the Lodge meant to my father, his brothers, both my grandfathers, my brother, and a host of other men whom I admire and respect. Specifically also, if I had resigned the Lodge to obtain a higher judgeship, I would have been reflecting not only on my own character for having been a Mason in two prior judgeships, but on all the hundreds of other men and Masons who have served as judges while remaining loyal Masons, judges whom I admire and respect.

But the question goes much deeper than that.

The question can legitimately be asked, “Not just would you have retained Masonic membership, but would you join the Lodge again today if you had to do it over?” Again for me the answer is an easy and strong “yes.”

For me personally, the Lodge is a way of keeping in touch with my roots. It lets me know who I am by remembering from whom I came. Unfortunately, I never sat in the Lodge with my father. He died a year and a half before I was made a Mason. I never sat in the Lodge with most of my uncles, although I had the great pleasure of sitting in the Scottish Rite and watching my Illustrious Uncle Jack Sentelle, 33°, work in the Maundy Thursday Ritual. But I have sat in the Lodge with a picture of my uncle, Worshipful Harry Sentelle. And I have in a greater and more spiritual sense sat in the Lodge with all those blood kin and ancestors because I walked where they had walked, spoke the words they had spoken, and placed my trust with theirs.

Every time I have done those things we do in the Lodge, I know that I am doing what they did before in expressing the faith they lived by. It tells me that my forebears have done something worth doing again. They had a faith worth living for and a creed worth dying for.

Therefore, in a very real sense my own life is more worthwhile because I recognize the worthiness of my people and the things for which they stood. As we learn from the Scottish Rite, “it is the dead who govern.” We are what we are because our parents, our grandparents, and all the people who came before us have been what they have been.

But that then still leads to another question. “Yes, Brother Sentelle, you’d do it again, but should someone else do it today? Should a good man not blessed with a Masonic father, grandfather, uncles, and brothers join friends and strangers and find them to be his Brothers?” The answer again is “yes.”

Even for these men, one reason is the value of a connection with their past. The great philosopher George Santayana told us that a man who does not learn the lessons of history is condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past. The moral and ethical teachings of Masonry are drawn from the experience of generations. We cannot learn in one generation the values that humankind has learned in its whole history. Therefore, we should take instruction from those of the prior generation who left us rules, guides, and landmarks. It can help any man to find his way when he lights his path by the great Lights of Freemasonry.

But is this a convincing case for the stranger not already among our Brothers? I fear that it may not be. Look around you at your next communication. Whatever your age, how many men in your Scottish Rite Bodies or even Blue Lodges are younger than you? All too often I am disappointed to find that my answer to that question is “not very many.”

If our present members are growing older and not enough young men are taking their place, then the mortality tables are against the probabilities of carrying the lessons of Freemasonry into generations not yet born. Our great Brother Roscoe Pound told us that Freemasonry has much more to offer our century than our century has to offer Freemasonry. That does us no good unless we share the lessons of brotherhood with the men of our century and the men who can carry our Fraternity into the next. While we have stood by the tradition that we ask no man to become a Mason, we must still recognize an obligation to give others a reason to ask us.

How can we do that? I suggest we can first make ourselves known to be Masons and make our good works known beyond the walls of the Lodge. I do not mean that we should boast. I do suggest, however, that we must identify Masonic charitable acts as such. I further suggest that those of us who, like myself, engage in public speaking and writing to non-Masonic groups should find occasion to tell professional associations, youth groups, and Sunday School classes something of what this society dedicated to friendship, morality, and brotherly love has meant to us. I suggest for example that when you are commended for some good act of your own, you might say that as a Mason and a God-fearing man, you had no other choice than to do the thing for which you are commended.

I suggest further that the younger men of the twenty-first century may not yet recognize the lessons of the past which we can teach them, and we must therefore show that our lessons are relevant to the present and the future. We know that the lessons of the past are so relevant. But our knowledge is no good if it dies with us.

We, therefore, must make ourselves known as a relevant body of men in the twenty-first century. When we hear the profane take the name of the Lord in vain, we should not blush to ask the speaker not to profane the name of the Lord in the presence of a Mason and a God-fearing man. We should not hesitate to announce our dedication to the Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of God. We should remember that all mankind has a claim to our kind offices. We should recognize that the Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of God extends to all men and so should the Masonic Fraternity.

In the end, the answers to our great questions are, as always, found in the greatest Light, the Volume of the Sacred Law. “He hath shown thee, o man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Micah 6:8. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your works and glorify your Father which is in Heaven.” Matthew 5:16. If we who have that Light remember these things, then not only can we proudly answer that we would do it again but we also can lead others toward that Light.

The above article was originally published in The New Age Magazine, November 1989.

David B. Sentelle is a member of Excelsior Lodge #261, the Scottish Rite Bodies, and Oasis Shrine Temple of Charlotte, N.C., as well as a Life Member of Cherrydale Lodge #42, Arlington, Va. He is a Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and Presiding Judge of the Special Division for Independent Counsel. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School, a former Federal Prosecutor and Federal District Judge, as well as a winner of the Joseph Montfort Medal from the Grand Lodge of North Carolina for Outstanding Service to Freemasonry. Contact: United States Court of Appeals, Rm. 5818, 333 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20001-2802