I've been going to some of their open meetings lately and enjoyed them, but what I've found of masonry I've liked so far. It isn't some big secret it is more like an institution that helps builds connections amongst people.
A word with no end is a deed with no boundaries. What a thing isn't means as much it its identity as the things is definitely is.
Certain type of people join it to make connections and get ahead in the life. This has lead to corruption when there was members in the business elite, politics, judges and the police who never acknowledged that they were members of the same club and had a rule of testifying against other freemasons.
https://theconversation.com/the-freemasons-no-longer-have-si...
The relationship between police officers and Freemasons became a major issue in the 1960s, largely as a result of investigative journalism by the The Times and The Sunday Times. Revelations were made about corruption in the Metropolitan Police’s CID unit and surrounding the activities of the Obscene Publications Squad. Senior officers were receiving illegal payments on a regular basis in return for allowing London sex shops to trade unrestricted.
The fact that London detectives shared membership of the same Freemason lodges as active high-profile London criminals became public knowledge. Senior officers were seen spending time with convicted London criminals in Mediterranean holiday villas.
Ultimately, this led to major reforms of the Metropolitan Police. Criminal investigations resulted in custodial sentences for a number of senior CID officers and voluntary retirements for many more.
More recently:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/31/freemasons-b...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/25/decorated-underc...
If you go to Preble Hall[1] you can see John Paul Jones' Masonic artifacts. Woop-de-doo.
Clearly, the idea of a secret handshake club has been a burr under the saddle of many. And that there was racism afoot is seen by the Prince Hall lodges of the blacks. Yes. But time has shifted society away from exclusive clubs, and the Masons amount to a drinking society anymore.
>Remember that Masons solemnly pledge to keep the ritual secret. An "exposé" is the product of someone who has broken a promise to his friends and neighbors and to God. Can you really trust that such a person is telling you the truth?
By this reasoning you should never trust whistleblowers.
> Morals and Dogma was first of all written for those who have received the degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the form developed and edited by Albert Pike (the "Pike recension"). For someone to attempt to interpret the contents without the knowledge of the degrees is like trying to understand a book on quantum physics without having mastered the basics of dynamics and statics.
The reasons Freemasons might want to dissemble around Pike are obvious, given that he is both still given prominent billing in their Washington DC temple and was one of the highest ranking early members of the Ku Klux Klan.
There is no contemporary evidence that Pike was a member of the KKK, only one person making that claim 20 years after he was dead.
If you think this is far-fetched, you should keep in mind that one of the greatest political scandals in Italy involved a deranged masonic lodge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due
lol, so what they're saying is the world isn't run by Masons - but it should be!
