Any Opus Dei members here?
Anyone claiming to be Opus Dei, is certainly not
This is dumb, anyone can join Opus Dei it's not all that secretive. Plenty of members of Opus Dei are open about it, the founder is a popular saint.
Freemasons, illuminati and other secret societies of the enlightenment as the other user said were just that, secret philosophical societies. Their philosophies were considered degenerate and corruptive for society then, but now it's the norm so there's no need for hiding anymore. Today they're LARPing clubs for rich oldfarts. Others evolved into revolutionary, military sects, like the Carbonari, that had nothing to do with freemasonry anymore. Those secret societies were coming from a huge spectrum but people sometimes dumping them all together and that's wrong. Sometimes Freemasons trying to push this narrative themselves to take credit and present themselves as the super secret society that's pulling the strings from behind the scenes sinces the ancient times. They also love to claim that they are connected with groups that had nothing to do with them, like the Templars, or claiming that well known, influencial figures were freemasons, after their deaths.
I've heard of this "Masonic Templar" connection. Could you expound on it, user?
Da Vinci Code is fiction user.
Within the rites of free masonry they claim to be the inheritors of the Templars hidden knowledge. There is little to no evidence for this claim.
Masons like to claim connection to everything, from the Templars to the Druids. The Templars had been accused for heresy in the past and condemned by the inquisition, a bunch of fake allegation were made that they've became muslims, jews, magicians etc. The Templars were burned alive and the stigma remained. Some centuries later Freemasons tried to connect their groups with others from the past that were in one way or another persecuted by the Church, be them Cathars, Bogomils, Templars, as a way to create the myth that they're an ancient group of illuminated people, fighting forever against the "darkness". Thus the Templar-Mason narrative was created.
It was for