[sphinx]

I don’t doubt you. And I’m pretty sure my friends who are Masons aren’t involved in Luciferian rituals either. My point was simply that the traditional Catholic prohibition — followed by some protestant groups as well — was rooted in a generic prohibition against membership in secret societies in which members take vows of secrecy before being initiated into hidden mysteries. That runs all the way back to the fight over gnosticism in the early church. The church proclaims its doctrine publicly, to the initiated and uninitiated alike. The rule is generic. The Masons are simply the most prominent modern group affected. If the church bent on a blanket application of the principle, the church would have to pick and choose among all secret societies, saying which are acceptable and which are not. And the church couldn’t do that unless the church leaders were themselves privy to all the secrets and rituals, in which case they would no longer be secret. There’s no way to square that circle. Even if one agrees that the Masons are unobjectionable in practice, the principle of secrecy remains an issue for a church committed to public creeds publicly defended.

[bdfromlv]

The fraternity is discerning in its membership, having to do with character and acceptability to the group. Unlike a church the only belief required is of a supreme being, all members vote on the individual as presented, each member uses his knowledge and values to decide, each member has a white ball or a black ball to place in the vote box if no black balls are presented the person is accepted as a member, hence the origin of the negative term “blackballed”, the vote is not questioned or debated. No politics or religion are discussed or debated in lodge.