Scottish Rite Freemasonary
Secret Societies
Scottish Rite Freemasonry - part 2 of 2
A Political Force
Revolution and Controversy
(1) The Ideal Political Structure
"...By the third decade of the eighteenth century, English
Freemasonry, under the auspices of Grand Lodge, had become a bastion of the
social and cultural establishment, including, among its more illustrious
brethren, Desaguliers, Pope, Swift, Hogarth and Boswell, as well as Charles de
Lorraine, future husband of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa."
"In England, the Grand Lodge became progressively more divorced
from both religion and politics. It fostered a spirit of moderation, tolerance
and flexibility, and often worked hand in hand with the Anglican Church, many of
whose clergy were themselves Freemasons and found no conflict of allegiance. In
Catholic Europe, on the other hand, Freemasonry became a repository for
militantly anti-clerical, anti-establishment, eventually revolutionary
sentiments and activity....In France, for example, prominent Freemasons such as
the Marquis de Lafayette, Philippe Egalite, Danton and Sieyes, acting in
accordance with Freemasonic ideals, were prime movers in the events of 1789 and
everything that followed. In Bavaria, in Spain, in Austria, Freemasonry was to
provide a focus of resistance to authoritarian regimes, and it functioned
prominently in the movements, culminating with the revolutions of 1848. The
whole of the campaign leading to the unification of Italy - from the
revolutionaries of the late eighteenth century, through Mazzini, to Garibaldi -
could be described as essentially Freemasonic." "...The United States was not created as a republic of the kind
implied by that word today. Most of the men responsible for creating it were
staunch Freemasons, and the new nation was originally conceived as the ideal
hieratic political structure postulated by certain rites of Freemasonry. The
state as a whole was seen as an extension, and a macrocosm, of the
Lodge." "...St. Andrew's Lodge of Boston, which had perpetrated the Boston
Tea party in 1773 conferred a Templar degree already on August 29, 1769 after
applying for the warrant in 1762 from the Scottish Grand Lodge in Edinburgh.
That application was made almost a decade before the American Revolution began.
Some Templars were not only anti-Hanoverian, they sought the abolition of all
monarchy." "At the beginning of 1776, the more moderate Freemasonic-oriented
factions in the Continental Congress still prevailed. Their position had been
enunciated once again the previous December, when congress again defied
Parliament but continued to affirm allegiance to the crown. Now, however, the
mood began to change and more radical elements began to gain the ascendancy.
Thomas Paine's pamphlet, 'Common Sense', did much to polarize attitudes and
convert many hitherto loyal colonists to the principle of independence from the
mother country." "On 11 June 1776, the Continental Congress "appointed a
committee to draft a declaration of independence. Of the five men on this
committee, two - Franklin and...Robert Livingston - were Freemasons...The other
two - Thomas Jefferson and John Adams - were not, despite subsequent claims to
the contrary....The nine signatories who can now be established as proven
Freemasons, and the ten who were possibly so, included such influential figures
as Washington, Franklin and, of course, the president of the Congress, John
Hancock. The army, moreover, remained almost entirely in Freemasonic
hands." Mayer Anschel "Rothschild made a fortune from various activities
while serving under William IX. The French Revolution and the wars it triggered
created many shortages throughout the Hesse. Rothschild capitalized in this
situation by sharply raising the prices of the cloth he was importing from
England. Rothschild also struck a deal with another of William IX's chief
financial agents, Carl Buderus. The deal enabled Rothschild to share in the
profits from the leasing of Hessian mercenaries to England."
"According to Jacob Katz, writing in his book, Jews and Freemasons
in Europe, 1723-1939, the Rothschilds were one of the rich and powerful
Frankfurt families appearing on a Masonic membership list in 1811." "Special
Jewish lodges were created, such as the 'Melchizedek' lodges named in honor of
the Old Testament priest-king...Those who belonged to the Melchizedek lodges
were said to be members of the 'Order of Melchizedek'." (2) Anti-Masonic Movements
"In 1738 Pope Clement XII issued a Papal Bull condemning and
excommunicating all Freemasons, whom he pronounced 'enemies of the Roman
Church'....In its text the pope declares that Masonic thought rests on a
heresy...- the denial of Jesus's divinity. And he further asserts that the
guiding spirits, the 'masterminds', behind Freemasonry are the same as those who
provoked the Lutheran Reformation." "In 1740, the Grand Master of the Order of Malta caused the Bull
of Pope Clement XII. to be published in that island, and forbade the meetings of
the Freemasons. On this occasion several Knights and many citizens left the
island; and in 1741, the Inquisition persecuted the Freemasons at Malta. The
Grand Master proscribed their assemblies under severe penalties, and six Knights
were banished from the island in perpetuity for having assisted at a
meeting." "Citizens of Northwestern New York acted swiftly in 1826 when they
heard the news that William Morgan had disappeared. Morgan, described by an
historian of politics as "a somewhat down at heel citizen of Batavia," was a
disgruntled Mason who had written a book alleged to be an expose' of Masonic
secrets. Rumors contended that the Masons had murdered Morgan. The Order, for
its part, maintained a stolid and uncooperative silence, and so local political
organizations campaigned to keep support from office- seeking Masons. One new
organization, the Anti-Masonry Party, attracted those in the populace who
distrusted the Masons and other secret societies. It grew almost overnight, and
the party's power base soon stretched from western New York to Pennsylvania,
Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont.
"In the rush of growth of the anti-Masonic movement, the
initiating impetus for it was submerged, and neither the fate of Morgan nor the
culpability of the Masonic Order was ascertained. Instead, the new and liberal
Anti-Masonry Party became the voice of the poorer citizen against the well-to-do
(and most Masons were regarded as rich), the spokesman for the orthodox against
Unitarianism and other liberal sects, a supporter of temperance and anti-slavery
activities, and a cheerleader for some features of Jacksonian Democracy against
the autocratic Federalists. It opposed not only secret societies and
government-in-secret, but also imprisonment for debt and drafts for state
militia service. "But as the party gathered strength it also began to move from
the 'left' to the 'right', supporting tariffs on imported goods to prevent the
collapse of local industries, better canals for more efficient transport, and
banks free from regulatory taxes. As such, it was vainly used by politicians for
their own ends, chiefly anti-Jacksonian: Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward
tried unsuccessfully through the Anti-Masonry Party to overthrow Martin van
Buren's Albany Regency (informal group of Democratic leaders in New York), and
politician Thad Stevens in Pennsylvania tried to use it to increase his power.
Soon the new party was voting with the National Republican Party against the
Jacksonians; by 1834 it had moved entirely to the 'right', for it helped found
the reactionary Whig Party, which absorbed the Anti-Masonry Party in
1836." "By the 1880s eight Popes had already condemned Freemasonry when
Freemasons urged that these condemnations had been based on erroneous
information and were excessively severe. This led Pope Leo XIII to issue his
famous encyclical Humanum Genus in 1884. Leo XIII classed Freemasonry as a
grouping of secret societies in the 'kingdom of Satan' and, like the Greek
Orthodox Church half a century later, stated that it wished 'to bring back after
eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans.'" "There was nothing nefarious or subversive on the pope's part, Leo
XIII was a troubled man. He felt deeply the great losses in church power,
privilege, and wealth brought on by the democratic revolutions and developed
such profound mistrust that he kept all of the gold of the Vatican in a box
under his own bed. He truly believed democracy was evil, part of the 'kingdom of
Satan', and that the Catholic church had a right and duty to oversee every
secular government." "The principles of social science follow. Here naturalists teach
that men have all the same rights, and are perfectly equal in condition; that
every man is naturally independent; that no one has a right to command other;
that it is tyranny to keep men subject to any other authority than that which
emanates from themselves." VATICAN CITY (1985) "The Vatican, clarifying its position on
membership in Masonic lodges, said yesterday that Catholics who join such
organizations commit 'grave sin'. The new reminder, in the Vatican newspaper
L'Osservatore Romano, appeared to be aimed mainly at Catholics in the United
States, where some have interpreted recent church statements as relaxing the
247-year-old ban on Masonic membership imposed by Pope Clement XII. A new code
of Canon Law outlined on Nov. 25, 1983, omitted membership in the Masons in the
list of offenses that incur automatic excommunication." (3) P2 Lodge and the Vatican Banking Scandal
"...The Agency, through some of its priest 'assets' in the
Vatican, had placed six bugging devices in the Secretariat of State, the Vatican
Bank and the Apostolic Palace, where the Pope actually lived and worked. The
devices were sufficiently powerful to enable conversations to be overheard
within rooms with walls thick enough to withstand artillery-fire. Working from
'safe houses' in high-rise buildings overlooking the Leonine walls of the tiny
city-state, CIA operatives had recorded often highly confidential discussions
about papal plans.
"The Agency's surveillance had increased since 5 July 1979, when
Walesa [future president of Poland] telephoned the Pope asking whether John Paul
would approve of the name 'Solidarity' being used for the fledgling union.
Walesa had explained that he had selected the word from the pontiff's
encyclical, 'Redemptor Homis' - a treatise devoted to the redemption and the
dignity of the human race. At its core had been an appeal for 'acting together'.
The significance of Walesa's request was not lost on the pontiff - or on the
'Department D's electronic eavesdroppers." The Italian Masonic Lodge P2 "provided a means of furnishing
anti-Communist institutions in Europe and Latin-America with both Vatican and
CIA funds. Calvi [who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in
1982] also claimed that he personally had arranged the transfer of $20,000,000
of Vatican money to Solidarity in Poland, although the overall total sent to
Solidarity is believed to have exceeded $100,000,000. Prior to his indictment
for murder [of an Italian investigator], Michele Sindona was not only P2's
financier, but the Vatican's investment counselor as well, helping the church to
sell its Italian assets and re-invest in the United States. His services for the
CIA included passing funds to 'friends' in Yugoslavia, as well as to the Greek
colonels prior to their seizure of power in 1967. He also channeled millions of
dollars into the funds of the Christian Democrats in Italy."
In March 1981, Italian police raided the villa of Licio Gelli, the
ultra-right leader of P2. Although his files had vanished the index was
discovered. Some of the headings included the Opus Dei, "Giulio Andreotti,
currently Italian Foreign Minister and alleged...to be a member of the Prieure
de Sion. And they included the organization known officially as the Sovereign
and Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem - the organization, that is, which
today claims a direct lineal descent from the Knights Templar." "A list of [P2] members drawn up by Gelli contained the names of
nearly a thousand of Italy's most powerful men. One prosecutor's report later
stated: 'Lodge Propaganda Due is a secret sect that has combined business and
politics with the intention of destroying the country's constitutional order.'
"Among the names were three members of the Cabinet (including Justice Minister
Adolfo Sarti; several former Prime Ministers including Giulio Andreotti who had
held office between 1972 and 1973 and again between 1976 and 1979; forty-three
Members of Parliament; fifty-four top Civil Servants; 183 army, navy and air
force officers including thirty generals and eight admirals (among them the
Commander of the Armed Forces, Admiral Giovanni Torrisi); nineteen judges;
lawyers; magistrates; carabiniere; police chiefs; leading bankers; newspaper
proprietors, editors and journalists (including the editor of the country's
leading newspaper Il Corriere Della Sera); fifty-eight university professors;
the leaders of several political parties; and even the directors of the three
main intelligence services. "All these men, according to the files, had sworn
allegiance to Gelli, and held themselves ready to respond to his call. The 953
names were divided into seventeen groupings, or cells, each having its own
leader. P2 was so secret and so expertly run by Gelli that even its own members
did not know who belonged to it. Those who know most were the seventeen cell
leaders and they knew only their own grouping."
"Of the many political groupings in Italy, Gelli's files showed
that only the Communist Party had no links with P2."
"Magistrates sifting the documents from the Villa Wanda [from
whence Gelli had fled] found hundreds of top secret intelligence documents.
Colonel Antonio Viezzer, the former head of the combined intelligence services,
was identified as the prime source of this material and was arrested in Rome for
spying on behalf of a foreign power."
"Fascist, torturer of partisans in the Second World War, friend
and adviser of Peron and coordinator of right-wing corruption in Italy - was an
agent of the KGB." "From the beginning Lodge P2 was a KGB-sponsored program
aimed at destablizing Italy, weakening NATO's southern flank, sweeping the
Communists into power in Italy and sending resultant shock waves throughout the
western world."
"With the failure of the ministers, generals and admirals to
cooperate with investigators, "NATO was forced to support the attitude of the
corrupt Freemasons in Italy's armed forces. Officials in Brussels and Washington
suggested discreetly that it was not the right moment to create a vacuum of
power in the Italian army, navy and secret services." "The P2 was more than a subversive political organization. The
documents collected by the parliamentary commission show it was a kind of
full-service international organization influencing everything from arms sales
to purchases of crude oil." Propaganda Due or P2 was "a lodge originally formed by the Italian
Grand Orient as a lodge of research. In 1975 an Italian fascist named Licio
Gelli was made the Venerable Grand Master of P2, and the following year that
lodge was disavowed and suspended by the Grand Orient of Italy, so whatever it
was, P2 ceased to be an official Masonic organization."
"...Gelli brought in Michele Sindona, the leading financial
advisor to the Vatican. Then, in 1977, Sindona brought in Roberto Calvi, head of
the Banco Ambrosiano in Milan, which was closely associated with the papal bank,
one of its major shareholders....Calvi brought to the table his most valued
contact, the Instituto per lo Opere di Religione, the Institute for Religious
Works (the 'IOR'), a financial institution often erroneously referred to as the
'Vatican bank'. The IOR belongs not to the Vatican city-state, but to the pope
alone."
"...The Banco Ambrosiano helped to set up foreign shell companies,
including ten in Panama, which were controlled by the papal bank. Then the Banco
Ambrosiano loaned these shells up to one and a third billion dollars. The papal
bank also put in funds of its own, but not one in Rome will even hint at the
amount or purpose of these extensive fundings."
When Archbishop Marcinkus, head of the IOR, invoked the Italian
Concordat which guarantees Vatican sovereignty "when he learned he had been
indicted by the Italian government." This decision was backed up by the Italian
Supreme Court. "...The papal bank agreed to pay and paid over to the Banco
Ambrosiano the incredible sum of 244 million dollars, while denying any guilt,
or even any material involvement, in the great fraud. Together with the reputed
loss of 450 million dollars, this means that the affairs between the papal bank
and the Banco Ambrosiano cost the Catholic church almost 700 million dollars,
over ten times the 1987 operating loss that Catholics all over the world were
asked to make up with extra donations..." In late 1983, "the pontiff had recently sent Archbishop Luigi
Poggi to Moscow to begin secret discussions in the Kremlin on the prospect of
coming to a mutually acceptable accommodation over Poland: the pontiff would
control Walesa if the Church was given more freedom."
