SuttaCentral
Any organization that attracts people who are wealthy or powerful is bound to have some corrupt members. That doesn’t constitute a majority of Freemasons.
Wealthy and powerful people just happen to find social clubs like the Masons convenient for networking. It isn’t the founding goal or intent of Freemasonry itself, which is to “make good men better.”
I am sure there are lot of corrupt Eagles and Lions club members in high places too.
I’d have to echo Kensho’s sentiment that you can’t label an organization as corrupt based on a few cases. The Buddhist sangha is corrupt in many places; many scientists are corrupt (especially in the pharamaceutical industry or any sub-discipline that deals with massive amounts of money). Conspiracies exist. That’s just the way of the world, people in power tend to favor their own interests and small groups network and conspire to serve their interests over the greater good.
Sometimes, however, conspiracy and secrecy can be used for good. Freemasonic lodges were places of conspiracy during the Age of Enlightenment. They were safe places to discuss revolutionary political/idealogical issues that couldn’t be discussed in public. Alchemists in medieval Europe were conducting investigations into nature, in private and with their work “encrypted”, that made way for many advances up to modern science (the work of Paracelsus for example). The Bavarian Illumaniti (the actual historical short-lived fraternal secret society, not the meme) had as it’s goals opposition to supersitition and the abuses of state power, freedom of information, and empowerment of women (surprisingly nearly the mirror opposite of the illumanti meme of the cultural imagination). The events of the Arab Spring were conspired and co-ordinated (with help in part from Anonymous).
With all that being said, there is a particular case of conspiracy and corruption in Freemasonry that is quite blatant and just an interesting bit of history. Liberia is a unique country in Africa, being founded neither as a native state nor as a remnant of European colonialism. It was instead founded by free blacks from America as part of the “Back to Africa” movement. What they did there was basically recreate the conditions of the antebellum South but with themselves at the top of the hierarchy as plantation owners, etc. They founded the Masonic Order of Liberia, consisting almost entirely of these new Americo-Liberians in political positions, and wielded power over the native population. Just goes to show corruption doesn’t have a color, creed, or political party - it just has an all too human face.
I think this is the reason why, to this day, the Catholic Church condemns Freemasonry and excommunicates Catholics who become Masons. Freemasonry, by advocating for democracy and the separation of church and state, undermined the Catholic Church’s political power.
Yea, they were persecuted by the National Socialists too.