Questions about masons? Is it evil? 1st hand account only please?

Question

I am a Mason i know it is not evil in any way. But people keep spreading rumors. I am looking for email address of person with 1st hand account no rumors but 1st hand account of anything evil or shady involving Masons. I have asked this question before and have never found anyone with a 1st hand account

Marvin thanks for imput i have noticed you giving very informative answers on Masonry but as you dont allow emails i have never been able to thank you.
I was hoping one of these conspricy people would put me in touch with one of these 33rd degree that are now talking. As my belief that these people are lying I dont expect to hear from them.

Answer 1

Brother I am in a very strong lodge with a past Grand Master and two other 33rds and I've talked to them and consider two good friends. They have all told me it will not change your life! I think you need to remember any crackpot can right anything on here and people fear what they dont understand.

Answer 2

In any kind of "secret" organization there will always be a little bit of mystery surrounding it, and therefore people think if something is being hidden, it must be evil.

I am a mason (for about a year) and haven't seen anything evil or sinister yet! Let's hope that doesn't change. Basically it is kind of like a good ol' boys club, like a hunting club or a social club.

I compare it to a company where you have executives who have information about the company (financials, debts, direction, clients) etc, and everyone else is just kind of aware of it, but they don't know the details. Same thing here. And yes there are companies out there hiding financial data (look at Enron, WorldComm, etc).

Answer 3

Well Brother you then know what the Masonic Fraternity is all about. I have been visiting various web sites to see what the Anti-Masonic hub bub is all about. From what I have read they have taken our Ritual and others parts of our work either out of context or they have based false accusations on half - truths. My dad was a Mason, My mother was a 50 year Eastern Star member. If you have seen any of my responses I quote Coil's Encyclopedia of Masonry. Personally, I am a Life Member of over 25 years and a 4 times Past Master of 2 different Masonic Lodges and have enjoyed the fellowship in Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth. Lodges where ever I have traveled. There has never been anyone who has given me proof of any Satanic connections as you know for there is none.you have taken the same basic oath I have and I am telling you on the Plum Square and Level what I believe in Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth.

Answer 4

Most masons are not evil, my father is one. The invisible masons however are, the ones who tell you what your symbols stand for etc. . This is not a first hand account I am sorry check this out www.cuttingedge.org, look at all thelinks there are alot.

Answer 5

Check out this site for masonic secrets...
http://members.tripod.com/misticmason/id17.htm

Answer 6

My dad is a Shriner.
He's Protestant. I am now Catholic.
We try to discuss why Freemasons are unacceptable for Catholics.
I don't know if he is doubting his involvement or just questions on why Catholics are not Freemasons.

I really don't know what is involved from the 33rd degree and above.

Below is the Catholic view....but I don't think I could bring up all this with my dad just out of respect.

The Popes have condemned Freemasonry, because it is a religion of naturalism which ignores Jesus Christ, and has identified itself, especially in Latin countries, with deism and atheism; because its oaths are immoral in principle; because it has from the outset been the Catholic Church's most determined enemy.

Freemasonry was first condemned by Pope Clement XII in 1738, even though many prominent Catholics of the time belonged to the lodges, such as the Duke of Wharton, the Duke of Norfolk, the Chevalier Ramsay and others. To assert that Masonry goes back to King Hiram of Tyre, to King Solomon of Jerusalem, or to the Egyptian Pharaohs is legend, not history. It was originally a Jacobite political society which repudiated the Pretender, and founded the first Grand Lodge in London, 1717, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales. Its constitution and ritual were written by the Prince's Huguenot chaplain, aided by a Scotch Presbyterian minister. Its aim was mutual assistance, and the worship of "The Great Architect of the Universe," in which Jews, Christians and Mohammedans could equally participate. Begotten, as many believe (Findel, Lange) of English deism, it was taken up by French rationalists in 1721, who proceeded to organize its membership on a purely naturalistic basis. The Scottish Rite added thirty to the original three degrees; they were introduced in England by Preston in 1772, and in America by Webb in 1773.

The condemnation by Pope Clement XII was confirmed by Popes Benedict XIV (1751), Pius VII (1821), Leo XII (1836), Pius IX (1869) and Leo XIII (1884). All agreed that Masonry was a society that undermined the Catholic faith, fostered religious indifferentism and even advocated atheism, while fostering a universal contempt for all ecclesiastical authority. As Leo XIII said in his Encyclical Humanum Genus: "Its aim is the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from pure naturalism" (Encyclical Letters} 89).

The "Old Charges" first printed in 1723 and revised in 1738, declare that Masons are "obliged to that religion to which all men agree, leaving their particular opinions to themselves"; and they contrast "this most ancient Catholic religion" with the one Christianity, the Church Catholic. No Catholic could subscribe to such views, and once they were fully grasped by reason of the Pope's ban, they at once repudiated Masonry (v. g., O'Connell in Ireland). Pope Clement knew the facts, for an English-speaking lodge had been established in Rome as early as 1735, and Pritchard, in his Masonry Detected, had published their secrets to the world in 1730.

The Papal excommunication deprives the Catholic who joins the Masons of the Sacraments, of all share in the Church's public prayers, and finally of Christian burial. A good Catholic recognizes the Church's divine right to command under penalty of sin, because he believes that she is the divine teacher of Christ's revelation, and the divine guardian of morals. A private soldier obeys his superior officer, even if he does not perceive the reason or the wisdom of the orders given. It is certainly unreasonable to suppose that the Catholic Church, the great advocate of charity down the centuries, and the great defender of the natural right of association, would condemn any society on account of its benevolence or good-fellowship. Pope Clement XII also condemned the Masonic oath. The reasons are thus given by Father Thurston (Freemasonry, 11): "It is imposed by an authority which has no adequate sanction, different in that respect from the oath exacted, for example, by a magistrate, a judge, or an ecclesiastical superior, who are in their varying degrees the representatives of the commonwealth or of God. Again, the scope of the oath regards either secrets that are nowadays no secrets at all, or else secrets which are criminal and contrary to public polity. Thirdly, the manner of the oath-taking is irreverent, and in the extravagance of the penalties invoked borders on the blasphemous. Fourthly, by the form used the Mason may be said to pledge himself blindly to anything and everything, he knows not rightly what."

The avowed aim of continental Latin Masonry—the same holds good of Mexico, South and Central America and the Philippines—is to combat clericalism, i. e., Catholicism, in every possible way. I have talked to Masons in France, Italy and Mexico, and they made no secret of their bitter hatred of the Catholic Church. Although they number but one-sixth of the total of 4,000,000 Masons, their militant character makes up for their numerical inferiority. No one will deny that the anti-religious legislation which has disgraced France the past fifty years, bringing about the closing of Catholic schools, the con;fis--ation of Church property, and the exile of thousands of priests and nuns was due to the Masons, who controlled both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Of late (1929) they have been fighting the Church laws of Briand and Poincare, who, for the political prestige of France, abroad, are trying to mete out scant justice to some of France's missionary religious orders. They are also doing their utmost to control the League of Nations, insolently asserting that the Church "fears it as a rival to her own teaching of reestablishing all things in Christ" (Semaine de Defense Laique, December, 1923).

It is indeed true that many American Masons are utterly ignorant of the philosophy and religion of Masonry—a fact admitted by many of their leaders, such as Mackey, Pike, Oliver and others, as well as by Pope Leo XIII. The vast majority in this country join the Masons merely for business or social reasons, and rarely go beyond the first three degrees. They are often members and even ministers of the Christian churches, and reject with scorn the atheism of their Latin fellow craftsmen.

In 1878 the Grand Orient of France was repudiated by English and American Masons, because it erased from its ritual the section proclaiming the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and omitted all mention of "the Grand Architect of the Universe." But the theism maintained by the protesting lodges is so vague and symbolical, that every kind of atheism can still be covered by it. A prominent leader of American Masonry, Pike, writes: "A man who has a higher conception of God than those about him, and who denies that their conception is God, is very likely to be called an atheist by men who are really far less believers in God than he" (Morals and Dogma of the Scottish Rite, 643). Another American Mason writes: "Individual members may believe in many gods, if their conscience and judgment so dictate" (Zabriskie in Freemasons' Chronicle, i., 243). In a word a Mason may believe what he pleases, for to him dogma is of no importance whatsoever.

The breach between English-speaking Masons and their atheistic French brethren is more apparent than real. For although in 1909 eight German Grand Lodges reestablished official friendly relations with the Grand Orient of France, there was no formal break between them and their English brethren. Or when after the World War, the Grand Lodges of Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas and Georgia, and the District of Columbia, recognized again the Grand Orient of France, they still remained united with their English brethren.

In fact Masonic authorities agree unanimously that Masonry throughout the world is in reality but one lodge, and that consequently every Mason in good standing is entitled^ to be received everywhere as a brother, and to be helped if in distress. Father Woodman, the well-known Paulist, told me that when he visited France in the eighties as an Episcopalian Mason, he found no difficulty whatever in being admitted to an atheistic French lodge. American Masons are members of an international society, which in Latin countries identifies itself with anti-Catholicism. How then can they reasonably object to the Church's ban?

But even in the United States Masonry has voiced its antagonism to the Catholic Church, both in its official organs such as the New Age and The Amrricar Freemason, and in the writings of some of its prominent leaders.

The American Freemason says: "This magazine has never swerved from the position that between the Masonic fraternity and the Catholic Church there is an antagonism inherent in the nature of the organizations; the one seeking broadest liberty of thought, and the other striving to stifle all revolt against the self-constituted authority, that would hold mind and soul in thraldom. We have declared that there can be no true peace nor even truce between Freemasonry and the official Roman Church. They are opposing poles of thought; on the one side an authority that demands submission of will and conscience to a priestly caste, on the other an institution that insists upon individual freedom of thought, with no intermediary between God and man" (Quoted by Kenny, American Masonry and Catholic Education).

Pike, the American Pope of Masonry, in a letter to the Italian Grand Commander, Riboli, December 29, 1886, calls "the Papacy the torturer and curse of humanity for over a thousand years; the most shameful imposture in its pretence to spiritual power."