Do You Want To Know A Secret?

“All secret societies, oath bound, political parties are dangerous to any nation.” Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States.

Among secret societies, Skull and Bones of Yale University may be the most notorious. With all its rituals and macabre relics (allegedly the heads of Geronimo, Martin Van Buren and Poncho Villa), there are only 15 inductees per year with a roll call of about 800 living members at any given time.

Many ‘Bonesmen’ have gone on to positions of great power within the United States, especially in politics, including what might be called ‘The Bush Dynasty’.
Prescott Sheldon Bush (Bones Alma Mater 1917) married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, whose son George, Jr. and grandson George III were also Bonesmen (1927 and 1953); James S. Bush (1922), son of Prescott and father of George H.W. Bush and Jonathon J. Bush (1953); and grandson George W. Bush (1968). Take note that John Ellis Bush graduated from the University of Texas at Austin.

There have been many brethren in the hierarchy of the U.S. government. In 1981, Supreme Court Justice Potter (1937) swore in ‘H.W.’ as Vice President, while ‘W.’ appointed no less than ten Bonesmen under his presidency, the most noteworthy being William Donaldson (1953) to the SEC.

John Kerry (1966) faced off with George W. Bush in the 1984 Presidential Election. Questioned by media on the merits of the society, Kerry said, “It’s a secret.” In his autobiography, Bush reiterated, "My senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society, so secret, I can’t say anything more."

Of other secret societies, Freemasons have a more diverse membership in 164 countries, 500 million members worldwide of which approximately 200 million are in the United States.

The Roman Catholic Church has a long history of denouncing Freemasons dating back to 1783 when Pope Clement XII issued the first prohibition of membership in “Francs Massons or by any other name according to the various languages.”

In 1917, Pope Benedict XV declared in the Code of Canon Law that “Those who join a Masonic sect or other societies of the same sort, which plot against the Church or against legitimate civil authority, incur ipso facto an excommunication simply reserved to the Holy See.”

The 1983 Code of the Canon Law declared, “A person who joins an association which plots against the Church is to be punished with a just penalty; one who promotes or takes office in such an association is to be punished with an interdict.”

Although the mention of Freemasons was omitted, the Office of the Sacred Congregation issued the ‘Declaration of Masonic Associations’ which clarified “…the Church’s negative judgment in regard to Masonic association remains unchanged since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership in them remains forbidden. The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion."

The document was signed by Prefect Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the one and same who wrote in a 1986 letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church ‘The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons”, “It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech and action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs.”

Of course, Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XIV, whose handling of sexual abuse cases during the period from 1981 to 2005 when he led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the responsibility for upholding doctrine purity. During this period, sexual abuses were either widely known to have occurred in previous decades or known to have taken place in Germany, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, and Sweden… In other words, it’s a global phenomenon, including incidences in the United States.

In 2008, then-deceased priest Harold White and Leonard Abercrombie cost the Archdiocese of Denver $5.5 million for 18 individual claims for abuses that occurred from 1954-1981.

In 2002, three priests in Boston were sentenced to prison for multiple cases of abuse, including those of John Geoghan who sexually abused over 130 children over a 30-year period in six parishes. This led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law.

Of late, the perversions of Rev. Lawrence Murphy that occurred in Wisconsin have come to light that from 1950 to 1974 he sexually molested perhaps 200 deaf boys as he, too, was shuffled off to various parishes because he was a top fundraiser and too ‘valuable’ to let go.

With the given history of pervasive sexual abuses, the Catholic Church, to me, is the undisputed hierarchy of secret societies. Pope Benedict XIV continues to feign ignorance to the abuses that were rampant during the years he responsible to uphold purity within the Church.

To quote President John F. Kennedy, “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.”