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I'm a Freemason. I haven't been to a lodge meeting in quite awhile, but there are a few observations I think worth making: * "Secret societies" have an air of

I'm a Freemason. I haven't been to a lodge meeting in quite awhile, but there are a few observations I think worth making: * "Secret societies" have an air of mystique about them, and that played no small part in my joining. The theatricality of some rituals gives a sense of gravitas to the group that is often lacking in everyday life. * Freemasonry at least does a lot of quiet charity. There is a not-insignificant amount of money they give to help people out, and they do very little publicity of this. In fact... I'd wager you haven't heard of Freemasons doing anything at all in a long time, if ever. * The perceived exclusivity of membership in a society like this is often portrayed as conducive to arrogance in its members in popular media, but every single Mason I've ever met is extraordinarily humble. * It's an unfortunate reality that most societies like this are gender-specific. * Freemasonry is theistic, rather than explicitly Christian. Interestingly, the Catholic church _hates_ Freemasonry, for some reason.

jrm4 4y ago
Last point, I believe that's why the "Knights of Columbus" exist?
leashless 4y ago
In France, where their attitude to adultery is rather relaxed, Freemasonry is often a coed activity. Hiding affairs under a seal of masonic secrecy would be dangerous business in America.
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YeBanKo 4y ago
What do you get from it? (Not in a materialistic sense)
- bovermyer 4y ago
  Back when I was still active, it was a sense of belonging more profound than simple friendship or kinship. Moving away made that feeling diminish over time. I miss that. I think I need to get in touch with the local lodge and reconnect.
motohagiography 4y ago
Dude, ping me with your lodge number and I will definitely visit if I'm in your city. Part of what attracted me to Freemasonry was the quality of their enemies, as whatever those accusers had a problem with, I was pretty sure I wanted to be on the other team. The other thing was finding the pigpen cipher doing security work. It's so not-secret I don't mind being relatively open about it, as you know that every other guy you meet in it had to be vetted as not a total danger to himself and others. The other part that interested me was a (perhaps apocryphal) story about how lodges in the UK were instrumental as neutral territory between religious partisans during the Troubles, and other stories about the idea of a persistent commitment to meeting on the level with men as peers that transcends the official politics of the day. To me, this is a crucial part of the fabric of civil society, just as much as the Chatham House rule is. We need this ability to have honest discussions as individuals now more than ever. There's a rule you don't use the privacy of lodge to discuss politics or religion, but outside, guys who would be on the opposite sides of a civil war right now sit and listen to each other over pints, test ideas, and really listen on the basis that dozens of other guys say this guy is ok, so even if I don't agree with him, there's something valuable about his experience. The continuity of basic fraternity among men as an essential principle of civic life is what religions and politics fundamentally lack. I think the high bar is the theism, as that's probably the only irreconcilable difference in beliefs, as the logic of ideas from the axioms of theism vs. atheism are just alien to one another. Men being able to meet and relate as equals outside their public lives requires a level of trust that only comes with the mutual guarantees of privacy. It sounds meta, but really, imagine just having a lot of friends you trusted and who would give you the benefit of the doubt, but had enough distance like co-workers where you weren't very judgmental of each other. The secrecy aspect is really about setting a personal boundary, where the few secrets themselves are yours to keep, and this ability to have something that is yours, whereby there is a you independent of your other relationships, and that is a foundation for breaking co-dependency habits and other boyhood things a lot of guys never manage to grow past. It's a very mixed bag, but you see where you are, and where other guys are at different stages of their lives and circumstances. It does seem unlikely in hindsight that a committed Catholic partisan would defy the papal bull, risking excommunication, and accept initiation into masonry, but the principles of masonry, encoded in allegories and a kind of memory palace (the method of loci) of symbols gives you a set of reference ideals you can measure your own character by and develop personally against them. Lumping masonry in with secret socieities and cults is pretty dumb. When I hear conspiracy theories about masons, I always ask, "cui bono?" Who benefits from discouraging good men looking for moral and ethical lessons from finding each other and recognizing each other as equals? When you look at historical movements against fraternal organizations, it's worth asking, who fears good men? Anyway, looking back, all it has cost me is the ability to give short answers.
jansan 4y ago
I once made friends with an old former freemason. He was one of the kindest guys I ever met and claimed to once have been a rather high rank (he told me his rank, but I forgot). He quit when he realized that freemasonry does not live up to their ideals anymore. According to him, freemasons keep the same religious animosities among each other that we have in public society and freemasonry is used by many (most?) freemasons mainly as a networking vehicle. Also, my grand uncle was a freemason, but he was rather arrogant and did not care much about the rest of the family, so I never learned anything about freemasonry from him. Those are the only touch points that I had with freemasonry.
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Bayart 4y ago
> Interestingly, the Catholic church _hates_ Freemasonry, for some reason. Freemasonry (and secret societies of the same style) was very active in the Age of Revolution and participated in the uprooting of the Church's power base. As an active Catholic, Freemasons have always been seen with extreme suspicion, if not outright fantasies. But you could say the same of the way Catholics are perceived in some places, in particular among Anglo-Protestants and Socialists.
- abrenuntio 4y ago
  I would say that the reasons run deeper than a power play. Freemasonry demands active participation in a religious liturgy in which Christ is implicitly excluded. When the Church warns against such worship and the basic attitudes (beliefs) it inevitably expresses, it is not expressing hatred but charity: concern for souls and loyalty to the mission it received from Christ in Mt 28:19-20. My guess is that you will find the same instincts in e.g. Eastern Orthodox churches.
  - Bayart 4y ago
    I agree with you. I wanted to include in my post that it had likely to do with Freemasons having ritual without much in the way of doctrine, but I didn't want to appear inflammatory.
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  - bovermyer 4y ago
    That's an interesting way of putting it, and not inaccurate, either. When I think about it... Freemasonry has a very different religious focus than most Abrahamic religions, despite its origins in the same. Yeshua ben Yosef is basically ignored in favor of other historical, and explicitly allegorical, figures.
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cafard 4y ago
It was my impression that the Catholic ban on Freemasonry was lifted some time ago. It also seems to have been codified in the 19th Century, later than I'd have guessed, and at least in some areas depended (like the earlier shutdown of the Jesuits) on the local sovereign putting it into effect. I believe that the Scottish Rite Temple at Columbia Road and 16th St. NW in Washington, DC, funds a children's health center around the corner for it.
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- abrenuntio 4y ago
  It seems faithful cannot receive Communion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_ban_of_Freemasonry#Continued_ban_after_the_declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_ban_of_Freemasonry#Conti...

jrm4 4y ago

Last point, I believe that's why the "Knights of Columbus" exist?

leashless 4y ago

In France, where their attitude to adultery is rather relaxed, Freemasonry is often a coed activity. Hiding affairs under a seal of masonic secrecy would be dangerous business in America.

deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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YeBanKo 4y ago

What do you get from it? (Not in a materialistic sense)

bovermyer 4y ago
Back when I was still active, it was a sense of belonging more profound than simple friendship or kinship. Moving away made that feeling diminish over time. I miss that. I think I need to get in touch with the local lodge and reconnect.

motohagiography 4y ago

Dude, ping me with your lodge number and I will definitely visit if I'm in your city. Part of what attracted me to Freemasonry was the quality of their enemies, as whatever those accusers had a problem with, I was pretty sure I wanted to be on the other team. The other thing was finding the pigpen cipher doing security work. It's so not-secret I don't mind being relatively open about it, as you know that every other guy you meet in it had to be vetted as not a total danger to himself and others. The other part that interested me was a (perhaps apocryphal) story about how lodges in the UK were instrumental as neutral territory between religious partisans during the Troubles, and other stories about the idea of a persistent commitment to meeting on the level with men as peers that transcends the official politics of the day. To me, this is a crucial part of the fabric of civil society, just as much as the Chatham House rule is. We need this ability to have honest discussions as individuals now more than ever. There's a rule you don't use the privacy of lodge to discuss politics or religion, but outside, guys who would be on the opposite sides of a civil war right now sit and listen to each other over pints, test ideas, and really listen on the basis that dozens of other guys say this guy is ok, so even if I don't agree with him, there's something valuable about his experience. The continuity of basic fraternity among men as an essential principle of civic life is what religions and politics fundamentally lack. I think the high bar is the theism, as that's probably the only irreconcilable difference in beliefs, as the logic of ideas from the axioms of theism vs. atheism are just alien to one another. Men being able to meet and relate as equals outside their public lives requires a level of trust that only comes with the mutual guarantees of privacy. It sounds meta, but really, imagine just having a lot of friends you trusted and who would give you the benefit of the doubt, but had enough distance like co-workers where you weren't very judgmental of each other. The secrecy aspect is really about setting a personal boundary, where the few secrets themselves are yours to keep, and this ability to have something that is yours, whereby there is a you independent of your other relationships, and that is a foundation for breaking co-dependency habits and other boyhood things a lot of guys never manage to grow past. It's a very mixed bag, but you see where you are, and where other guys are at different stages of their lives and circumstances. It does seem unlikely in hindsight that a committed Catholic partisan would defy the papal bull, risking excommunication, and accept initiation into masonry, but the principles of masonry, encoded in allegories and a kind of memory palace (the method of loci) of symbols gives you a set of reference ideals you can measure your own character by and develop personally against them. Lumping masonry in with secret socieities and cults is pretty dumb. When I hear conspiracy theories about masons, I always ask, "cui bono?" Who benefits from discouraging good men looking for moral and ethical lessons from finding each other and recognizing each other as equals? When you look at historical movements against fraternal organizations, it's worth asking, who fears good men? Anyway, looking back, all it has cost me is the ability to give short answers.

jansan 4y ago

I once made friends with an old former freemason. He was one of the kindest guys I ever met and claimed to once have been a rather high rank (he told me his rank, but I forgot). He quit when he realized that freemasonry does not live up to their ideals anymore. According to him, freemasons keep the same religious animosities among each other that we have in public society and freemasonry is used by many (most?) freemasons mainly as a networking vehicle. Also, my grand uncle was a freemason, but he was rather arrogant and did not care much about the rest of the family, so I never learned anything about freemasonry from him. Those are the only touch points that I had with freemasonry.

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Bayart 4y ago

> Interestingly, the Catholic church _hates_ Freemasonry, for some reason. Freemasonry (and secret societies of the same style) was very active in the Age of Revolution and participated in the uprooting of the Church's power base. As an active Catholic, Freemasons have always been seen with extreme suspicion, if not outright fantasies. But you could say the same of the way Catholics are perceived in some places, in particular among Anglo-Protestants and Socialists.

abrenuntio 4y ago
I would say that the reasons run deeper than a power play. Freemasonry demands active participation in a religious liturgy in which Christ is implicitly excluded. When the Church warns against such worship and the basic attitudes (beliefs) it inevitably expresses, it is not expressing hatred but charity: concern for souls and loyalty to the mission it received from Christ in Mt 28:19-20. My guess is that you will find the same instincts in e.g. Eastern Orthodox churches.
- Bayart 4y ago
  I agree with you. I wanted to include in my post that it had likely to do with Freemasons having ritual without much in the way of doctrine, but I didn't want to appear inflammatory.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- bovermyer 4y ago
  That's an interesting way of putting it, and not inaccurate, either. When I think about it... Freemasonry has a very different religious focus than most Abrahamic religions, despite its origins in the same. Yeshua ben Yosef is basically ignored in favor of other historical, and explicitly allegorical, figures.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

cafard 4y ago

It was my impression that the Catholic ban on Freemasonry was lifted some time ago. It also seems to have been codified in the 19th Century, later than I'd have guessed, and at least in some areas depended (like the earlier shutdown of the Jesuits) on the local sovereign putting it into effect. I believe that the Scottish Rite Temple at Columbia Road and 16th St. NW in Washington, DC, funds a children's health center around the corner for it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
abrenuntio 4y ago
It seems faithful cannot receive Communion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_ban_of_Freemasonry#Continued_ban_after_the_declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_ban_of_Freemasonry#Conti...