Thank you, this discussion has gone on way longer than it needed to. I didn't say anything because I thought this would be resolved in a matter of minutes.
Pope Leo XIII against freemasonry
Adam Parker
Ryder Smith
It was resolved by the first reply.
Josiah Hughes
It was effectively resolved in the OP. OP wasn't a question, it was a statement… so why has this been going on for so long?
Kevin Gonzalez
I think OP just wanted to do a "look what I learned, guys!" thing. I don't know why the discussion continued. It's something every Catholic schoolboy knows.
Matthew Bailey
The idea that freemasonry is anything other than a distributed, large, and aging men's fraternity is laughable. Further, implying that freemasonry is in any sense united, a single body, and not a collection of thousands of different lodges, grand lodges, grand orients, appendant bodies (such as the southern jurisdiction of scottish rite that the Alber Pike guy mentioned so often was a part of in the 1800s) is pretty lousy research. The pope has had and continues to have better avenues of research than whoever he tasked this stuff to.
A good example of this is the grand orient of France. They started allowing atheists in, because they had links to rosicrucians and other unsavory anti-religious types. They were promptly unrecognized by all other masonic bodies (a pretty hard thing to accomplish, as not all masonic bodies are even in contact with each other) and members of that body are now regarded as "clandestine" masons. This means that even discussing masonry with a member of that group entails immediate and permanent expulsion from every masonic body you are a part of, down to your local lodge.
Ayden Reyes
You have to swear an oath every time you testify in court, lawyers swear an oath to be seated on the bar, doctors swear the hippocratic oath. Guys who join college greek letter fraternities swear oaths. The contents of the oaths, even the masonic ones, are available online. There literally are no secrets in freemasonry anymore. Its all online. Google duncan's monitor and ritual. Its pretty thorough. Read as much as you want between the lines of that, but by and large its just larpy guys glorifying stonemasonry and geometry. You swear to keep things secret because they used to be persecuted by the catholics and church of england and didn't want to get thrown in prison for being part of a non-church club. Also, discussing religion (or the lack thereof) is the fastest way to get your ass thrown out of a lodge.
Most modern masons that have even read any of Pike's work think he's a strange dude who went out and pulled a lot of allegorical woowoo stuff from egyptian mythology and greek and whatnot, he's regarded as an important guy in the southern jurisdiction of USA but really just because of the time and effort he put into it.
Camden Parker
Bro, all that egyptian and occult shit is in the Masonic Bible.
Ian Nelson
You can literally buy one on the internet and learn that its not. The masonic bible in almost all the continental united states is the 1611 authorized KJV, with an added concordance in the back with textual references to the scriptures and historical stuff used in the ritual. This is all context for the building of the temple solomon allegory that is used in the blue lodge, or vanilla freemasonry.
That being said, I'm sure you will find some spoopy mystery allegory in plenty of masonic publications, especially if you are rooting around in the southern jurisdiction, which was Albert Pike's stomping ground back in the day.
Washington's quote in your post is also correct. While the overwhelming majority of US Masons are Christian, I'm sure you will find some who are not. It is explicitly a non-religious organization, and as I've iterated before, discussion of religion inside the lodge gets you expelled. The only requirement everywhere except France is that you have to profess a belief in a deity of your choice, otherwise you are a flake and your word doesn't mean anything.
This is different in the York rite. The last 4 degrees of it (out of 10 I think, in contrast to the Scottish rite which has 33) require you to profess a belief in the God of the old testament and in his son Jesus Christ as the redeemer of mankind. This is made most evident in the ritual of the Masonic Knights Templar and the Red Cross of Constantine, which are the last degrees of the York Rite appendant body. Before the conspiracy nuts go wild, no, the Masonic Knights Templar has nothing to do with the crusader order disbanded and persecuted in 1307. This degree began in the early 1900s among York rite masons in the northeastern US.
Further evidence of the York rite being an explicitly Christian subset of speculative masonry is also present in the funeral service of the Masonic Knights Templar. The full text of this service is also available online.
Some excellent books on masonry that aren't tainted by conspiracy nuts and other habitual exaggerators include "Pilgrim's Path" by John J Robinson and "Born in Blood" by the same. He's a historian, a non-mason, and a non-catholic, and I feel he gave it all a pretty fair shake.
There's a lot to unpack on the subject, especially for people who don't really bother to learn about it outside of that book Pat Robertson put out back in the 80s or 90s. A lot of modern anti-mason stuff comes directly from that dude.