The Masons who ran the ceremony you attended are as related to the ones who committed the history you relate as, well, I am to my ancestors of 300 years ago.
Which is to say, barely.
Come ON. It's a bunch of balding middle-aged men in costumes speaking lines. It smacks far more of a theatrical society than a global anti-religious conspiracy.
Perhaps in the Blue Lodge setting, but that ain't the tip of the iceberg.
Also, there is huge difference between American Freemasonry and that practiced in Latin countries such as Spain, France, Italy or Latin America. Every violent attack against the Catholic Church in those countries since the 1780s when the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, a Masonic sympathizer began numerous petty persecutions against observant Catholics.
Even if the Masonic organizations themselves have not immediately controlled the anticlerical movements of the past almost 300 years, their ideas have.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite cost my ancestor his head and those of 1,000's of other Catholic Frenchmen and women, whose only crime was their faith.
Perhaps in the Blue Lodge setting, but that ain't the tip of the iceberg.
Also, there is huge difference between American Freemasonry and that practiced in Latin countries such as Spain, France, Italy or Latin America. Every violent attack against the Catholic Church in those countries since the 1780s when the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, a Masonic sympathizer began numerous petty persecutions against observant Catholics.
Even if the Masonic organizations themselves have not immediately controlled the anticlerical movements of the past almost 300 years, their ideas have.
The Masonically influenced cry of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite cost my ancestor his head and those of 1,000's of other Catholic Frenchmen and women, whose only crime was their faith.