History Of The Freemasons

[ARSENAL6]

Absolutely!! I am glad to hear that. For we call the Blue Lodge ( Master Mason) you simply have to believe in God. I wish I could meet him some day. Is he in Pakistan or the US?

10 years ago, I visited a Lodge In Bombay, India. While we in the US have a Bible, in India they had holy books from several religions. The quaran was one of them!

///....///// Hypocracy
Being one and going up against it !
complete stupidity

 

[Desertfalcon]

It's probably been covered already, but I wanted to give what I know. I am a member of the Knights of Columbus and we are "real" Knights, recognized by the Church, although we are not a military order. We are primarily a charitable and fraternal order. We have a military structure and rank. We are bound, as all Catholic Knights, to the defense of the faith and our Holy Church. The Church does still have military orders however and it also "knights" people directly. I don't know of any actual "Templar" orders that are recognized by Rome, but the other ancient orders such as the Knights of Malta, still exist and are influential. The Masons, although they may use such designations as "Templars", have no real connection with them and are not a religious body, as John from Texas has explained. As a Catholic, I am forbidden from joining the Masons. I had no idea that there were Muslims who were also Masons. Interesting.

 

[wtf]

wtf- If you don't mind, regardless of what you think, I think we will continue to call ourselves Knights. If you do mind, we will continue to do so anyway..

Discussion concluded?

Absolutely. You have a right to call yourselves whatever you want as long as it is not trademarked. Actually, you'd still have a right to call yourself that even if it was trademarked, but just not in commercial speech or in misleading terms.

The only problem is that so does every other group of people who also think being a Knight is cool. So you end up having atheist knights, Muslim Knights and Jewish Knights.

Endless confusion since the original Knights were an anti-Muslim order, anti-Semitic (mainly because they wanted Jerusalem, not alleging a personal hatred) , Catholic order.

Messing with dictionary is what you are doing, in my opinion. But there isn't much more to talk about.

 

[DarkStar]

Absolutely!! I am glad to hear that. For we call the Blue Lodge ( Master Mason) you simply have to believe in God. I wish I could meet him some day. Is he in Pakistan or the US?

10 years ago, I visited a Lodge In Bombay, India. While we in the US have a Bible, in India they had holy books from several religions. The quaran was one of them!

He's in the uk, actually. Although I must admit, I do not know much about the masons apart from the usual scare stories that are circulated. According to him, the organisation is fairly benign.

 

[Desertfalcon]

I agree with your take on it wtf, but I would say "love-hate" when it comes to Muslims. Through the long battles between Christendom and Islam, we in the West "borrowed" everything we could from the Islamic world. From mathematics and medicine to coffee and chess. No Knight fought for long in Muslim lands who did not gain a healthy respect for his adversary and his culture.

 

[wtf]

I agree with your take on it wtf, but I would say "love-hate" when it comes to Muslims. Through the long battles between Christendom and Islam, we in the West "borrowed" everything we could from the Islamic world. From mathematics and medicine to coffee and chess. No Knight fought for long in Muslim lands who did not gain a healthy respect for his adversary and his culture.

What's amazing is the exact same ideas spreading and developing from Islam into the Knights who were fighting them .

The holy books of Islam had banned interest payments, but they had pretty amazing "project finance". They had Wadiah (deposits), Sukuks (bonds now, but almost like Project based funding). Even more interesting is the Hawala system that was prevalent even in the early Moslem period.

You'll later see the exact same ideas in the way the Knights Templar operated. The church had banned interest payments (usury) but the Templars nicely worked around it. The thing that made them powerful, the ability to transfer money from place to place was the exact Moslem idea of Hawala but transferred from market place into fortified camps.

Oddly enough by the time Europe had learned all this stuff, the original Muslim creativity was all but destroyed. They had their dark ages just when Europe came out of its dark ages.And as history shows, Europe really ran with it,putting the ideas into universal frameworks and building strong but mutable legal codes.

BTW, Even more interestingly, you'll see very similar ideas in really old Chinese finance. They seemed to have invented almost everything before the rest of the world did, but they lost interest in those ideas very fast too. (by around the time of Christ, they had abandoned their original paper money).
Or maybe the Silk route had something to do with the ideas spreading and the ideas never died.

 

[TexasJohn]

It's probably been covered already, but I wanted to give what I know. I am a member of the Knights of Columbus and we are "real" Knights, recognized by the Church, although we are not a military order. We are primarily a charitable and fraternal order. We have a military structure and rank. We are bound, as all Catholic Knights, to the defense of the faith and our Holy Church. The Church does still have military orders however and it also "knights" people directly. I don't know of any actual "Templar" orders that are recognized by Rome, but the other ancient orders such as the Knights of Malta, still exist and are influential. The Masons, although they may use such designations as "Templars", have no real connection with them and are not a religious body, as John from Texas has explained. As a Catholic, I am forbidden from joining the Masons. I had no idea that there were Muslims who were also Masons. Interesting.

I just had the most interesting conversation with a good friend of mine here at work who happens to be a Knights Colombus. The Knights Templar also have a degree for Knights of Malta. Now here is the amazing thing. The 2 degrees are IDENTICAL! we traded some thoughts of the final ceremony ( Templar in my case). The similarites ( we could only go so far) of the ceremony, swords, etc. including the toast are real close.

Turns out when Henry VIII was kicked out of the Catholic Church he took upon himself the tile of " defender and propagator of the faith". Both the KT and the KC take an oath to defend "Christianity over any other religion". Greg, my friend thinks it's quite possible that the Knights of Columbus being a younger outfit drew heavily from the KT.

Our roots / paths may have diverged as part of the Catholic vs Protestant thing.

I have a real interesting email Greg sent me I can send you if you PM me your email address.

As a Mason you can be of any religion, however once you join the York Rite you HAVE to be a Christian.

Oddly enough, I am forbidden to join the Knights of Colombus....

 

[MastanKhan]

Hi,

If I remember correctly---we had freemason lodges in pakistan till the 70's. There were pakistani freemasons---till Mr Bhutto ( daddy Bhutto ) came into power---he banned the freemasons from pakistan---what for---a personal grudge or something.

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

Well, my uncle who is a staunch muslim, is also a free mason. Although I personally found it weird that he joined, I was surprised that as a muslim he actually could.

I think people from all religions can become a freemason . You just have to believe in the Ultimate Architect of the Universe(God)

 

[TexasJohn]

I think people from all religions can become a freemason . You just have to believe in the Ultimate Architect of the Universe(God)

Absolutely correct!!

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

It's probably been covered already, but I wanted to give what I know. I am a member of the Knights of Columbus and we are "real" Knights, recognized by the Church, although we are not a military order. We are primarily a charitable and fraternal order. We have a military structure and rank. We are bound, as all Catholic Knights, to the defense of the faith and our Holy Church. The Church does still have military orders however and it also "knights" people directly. I don't know of any actual "Templar" orders that are recognized by Rome, but the other ancient orders such as the Knights of Malta, still exist and are influential. The Masons, although they may use such designations as "Templars", have no real connection with them and are not a religious body, as John from Texas has explained. As a Catholic, I am forbidden from joining the Masons. I had no idea that there were Muslims who were also Masons. Interesting.

Ya Muslims are in freemasonary . Alot of people living in Saudia Arabia are freemasons .
But i have to agree with texas john . Apart from these scary stories i never heared that freemasons are working for the Charity. I just always heared about the negative aspect of the org. Can you tell the internal functioning and rankings of the Freemasons, i mean to which God they actually reffer to and whos the boss.

 

[Desertfalcon]

I just had the most interesting conversation with a good friend of mine here at work who happens to be a Knights Colombus. The Knights Templar also have a degree for Knights of Malta. Now here is the amazing thing. The 2 degrees are IDENTICAL! we traded some thoughts of the final ceremony ( Templar in my case). The similarites ( we could only go so far) of the ceremony, swords, etc. including the toast are real close.

Turns out when Henry VIII was kicked out of the Catholic Church he took upon himself the tile of " defender and propagator of the faith". Both the KT and the KC take an oath to defend "Christianity over any other religion". Greg, my friend thinks it's quite possible that the Knights of Columbus being a younger outfit drew heavily from the KT.

Our roots / paths may have diverged as part of the Catholic vs Protestant thing.

I have a real interesting email Greg sent me I can send you if you PM me your email address.

As a Mason you can be of any religion, however once you join the York Rite you HAVE to be a Christian.

Oddly enough, I am forbidden to join the Knights of Colombus....

Well, yes, you cannot be a faithful Catholic and be a Mason, LoL. Our problem is not with the Masons per say, but with the Reformation/Enlightenment ideas they historically promoted. For us, it's all been down hill since the Reformation..LoL. You are correct though that the KoC did borrow from the Masons. Fr. McGivney, a priest from Rhode Island, started the order in an effort to combat the bigotry against Catholic immigrants at that time in America, (AD 1882). It has become the largest order of Catholic Knights in the world, although it's members are mostly from the Americas and the Philippines. I would be surprised that there is a "Templar" order within the Knights of Malta, as they have always been two separate and rival orders. The KoM are actually called the Knights of St. John Hospitallers, and they are a big deal. former Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. Casey and Gen. Alexander Haig were members for example. I will PM you my e-mail if you will send me that info. It sounds interesting.

 

[Desertfalcon]

Ya Muslims are in freemasonary . Alot of people living in Saudia Arabia are freemasons .
But i have to agree with texas john . Apart from these scary stories i never heared that freemasons are working for the Charity. I just always heared about the negative aspect of the org. Can you tell the internal functioning and rankings of the Freemasons, i mean to which God they actually reffer to and whos the boss.

That is a good question Nitro. I think John will have to answer. As for us Catholic Knights, our Lord and Master is the same as yours I suspect. Allah, Most Compassionate, the Beneficent, the Gracious. May His name be praised!

 

[MastanKhan]

Hi,

So---the imprint on the shroud---is that of Jacque de Molay.

 

[TexasJohn]

Hi,

So---the imprint on the shroud---is that of Jacque de Molay.

Unless you can back up that claim, I'm afraid I'd have to chuckle!!