The Cornerstone Society held its Northern Conference at Hemsley House, more commonly known as Salford Masonic Hall, and this provided an excellent setting for what proved to be a very thought-provoking day. The whole conference was orchestrated by Julian Rees.
     The opening Address was by Martin Roche, an East Lancashire Freemason who has been doing excellent work with newly raised Freemasons in one of the Manchester districts.
     Unlike some of the Cornerstone presentations, which can be somewhat highbrow, this was a practical no-nonsense assessment of what some expect of newer Brethren when it comes to learning ritual and what many of them find a daunting and lonely task.
     He pointed out that very often we send them away to learn ritual from a small book with small letters on flimsy paper and expect them to come back for a practice three weeks later in the Lodge room, a totally different environment from the one in which they had been learning the words. To make matters worse, we give them a book with all the key words missing!
     He also made the point that many new Freemasons have to learn ritual many years after they last had to work in a learning environment. His answer was that we should ensure that we explained learning techniques to new members, and also take them through the story behind their learning and the role they play in the story. He has found that approach has paid dividends for him.
     From John Acaster we had a well-researched and structured paper on why we should look at and learn from other masonic Orders world-wide, even possibly those that currently do not have recognition from the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE).
     John argued that we must not forget our overall objective is to make the good man even better. We can look at what others are doing, we may not agree with everything they say or do, but it would surely broaden our horizons, particularly when we see how Freemasonry in other countries started and developed under different political environments than ours.
     The Acaster lecture was cleverly interlinked with that of Roger Dachez, President of The Institute Maçonique de France, one of the French Grand Lodges not recognised by the UGLE.
     Roger presented a fascinating paper on how French Freemasonry developed from the early influence of English, Irish and Scots Freemasons who had come to France for a variety of reasons. He talked of Freemasonry and its struggle for existence and recognition before the French Revolution and the change in attitude post- Revolution.
     He explained why, in his view, the French ritual does not make specific reference to the Great Architect and went on to tell us about the relationship between French politicians and Freemasonry.
     The conference was concluded with another Acaster piece, a performance and commentary by four East Lancashire Freemasons on an aspect of 1760 ritual. It included questions and answers between Master and Initiate and concluded with an enactment of some typically bluff Northern ritual from Bury from the 1800s.
     What then surprised us all, including John Acaster, was Roger Dachez informing those present that he had just witnessed something extremely similar to the modern day French ritual. This was a totally spontaneous comment, which really cemented the earlier comment from John Acaster about the values of learning from each other.