Philalethes Society Self Destructing

Philalethes SocietyMasonic Leaks reports a major battle with possible purges within The Philalethes Society.  It appears that The Philalethes Society is self destructing in a rush to put itself in allegiance with only the Conference of Grand Masters chartering a similar course as The Masonic Society.  This leaves only Phoenixmasonry as a major contender in the big three as a truly independent Masonic voice.

On Monday January 31st at 1:00pm, only ten days before Bro. Jack Buta was expected to be elected the Society’s President (he was the only person on the ballot and the organization allows for no floor nominations), the President, Terry L. Tilton, issued the following letter as a referendum to remove Bro. Buta from office.

To: The voting members of the Executive Board

In the past day, our First Vice-president Jack Buta has aired private correspondence between Board members without permission, called for a division of the Society based up untrue or unfactual statements, and openly challendge the intergrity of the your President and our Soceity officers. Under any circumstances this constitutes insubordination and derilection of duty.

Ed Halpaus has moved to ask for the immediate resignation of Jack Buta as First Vice-president and I have seconded this motion.  I am asking all Board voting members to respond with a “yes” or “no” vote to this motion.  If and when we have three votes in the affirmative I will correspond with you privately to determine our next action.

I am deeply saddened and chagrined to have to accept this motion two weeks prior to the Annual Meeting.  It was my most fervent hope to have an orderly and peaceful transition.  Jack has obviously chosen to not allow that to happen.

Fraternally yours,

Terry L. Tilton, FPS, President 2009-2011
The Philalethes Society”

He was removed from office by a 3 to 2 vote of the Executive Board of the Philalethes Society. Those voting for Dismissal were Terry Tilton, Ed Halpaus, and John Cooper III. Certainly if the charges alleged by Tilton were factual then the motion had merit, but were they?

See Masonic Leaks for the rest of a rather long story with many attachments.

The Beehive has received a tip from an anonymous source in the know that the Conference of Grand Masters through unknown financial sources is privately picking up the Philalethes’ Society financial shortfall and this is the reason for all the ballyhoo about keeping the books secret.

The conference of Grand Masters has become increasing alarmed of Masonic Leaks and the up and coming Foundation Of Universal Freemasonry.  Derek Gordon ( Masonic Wiki [now archived]) and Stephen Quest have become thorns in the side of Mainstream Masonry and are being taken seriously enough for their organizations to be mentioned in COGM’s annual report. Perhaps Mainstream Masonry feels a bit stronger now that it most likely has finished what the 2007 Philalethes coup failed to accomplish thanks to Nelson King.

Does Mainstream Freemasonry have a psychological problem? Has it grown like the Catholic Church to be too big, too unwieldy, too bureaucratic and top heavy with hierarchy? Is there an explanation for the continuous jockeying for power and never ending horror stories emanating from the Craft?  Perhaps we should put Mainstream Freemasonry on the couch for a moment.

If we take a look at what is of paramount importance to those active in the Craft will we come away with a disappointing conclusion? It seems to this author that what is foremost in the mind of the average Freemason today is title and rank and advancing into the hierarchy into a position of power and therefore prominence. Should not the emphasis be on instruction, learning and then living Freemasonry?  In a previous article the Beehive laid out a formula of what Freemasons should be in pursuit of.  It looks like this:

Education>>>Knowledge>>>Wisdom>>>Soul Enrichment

But in order to achieve the benefits of Freemasonry that we know is a way of life and a society that can further our personal development, we need to place our time and effort into learning and studying the Craft and then applying it into our daily lives. If this, then, is the highest calling of Freemasonry what in the world are we doing with a bloated bureaucracy that is more concerned with money and power? Have we grown so large that our leaders are only proficient in administration, not in teaching and disseminating the philosophy of Freemasonry?

In essence what we are asking here is what is more important, the philosophy or the structure? Once again we are right back to the example of the Catholic Church and how it dealt with the pedophile priest problem. In the beginning the Church covered up and hushed up the problem.  It said that the problem was to be kept in house. And it further iterated that no matter what the Church had done, no matter what evil was within its ranks, that the first and foremost duty was to protect the Institution to ensure it lived another day.  Protecting the institution meant keeping the civil authorities out of church business, telling the abused to just shut up, grin and bear it and to keep the mess out of the media, to avoid all publicity so that the general public would not realize what was going on. That might have worked had the Church actually policed itself and solved the problem itself.  Instead it just transferred the abusers from one post to another, attempted to rehabilitate rather than punish and remove the offenders and in many cases just turned a blind eye to the whole situation.

But like a pressure cooker where the heat is never reduced, sooner or later the lid blows off and then it becomes a nationwide scandal. In the end that hurt the Church the most as the full blown scandal cost the Church the respect of the public never mind millions of dollars. Church property had to be sold to pay for huge court verdicts. All because the Church put the institution ahead of human beings.

And in the end the Church had to change its ways. It realized that it must cooperate with civil authorities, that it must institute programs within the Church to screen for abusers, that generally it must seriously alter its approach to the problem.

The Beehive has received much criticism from past stories exposing the wrong doings of Mainstream Freemasonry. Why do you keep writing about Freemasonry’s problems, exposing its faults? Are you trying to destroy Freemasonry, they wail? Masonic problems should be kept in house and dealt with internally. Letting the public know our shortcomings is traitorous.

Sound familiar? It is the same approach that the Catholic Church took initially with its pedophile problem. Bury it, hush it up, keep it in house and let Freemasonry solve its own problems without involving the courts and civil authorities. And once again it might work if Freemasonry was really serious about policing itself and getting rid of those who are ruining the good name of the Craft.  But alas, like the church, it refuses to act.  We cannot even criticize other jurisdictions never mind mess in their affairs to correct their wrong doings. You see the rules count more than people.  And the institution of Freemasonry must, above all mans, be protected.  The abused Masons? You see they need to just grin and bear it for the good of the Craft.

I have a good Canadian friend very active in the Craft. He has risen to eminence in Blue Lodge, York Rite and elsewhere.  I run a lot of thoughts and concerns by him for his view. It is helpful to solicit the opinion of one who is on the outside looking in.  Early on he seemed to be on the side of Grand Lodges and handling problems internally.  But upon further investigation and the proliferation of one horror story after another he changed his view. It seems as if Freemasonry in the States is becoming dysfunctional, he says. Maybe the answer is to do away with the Grand Lodge system altogether, he advises. And that is a very radical solution coming from a very Conservative Mason. But when you think about it, where are most of the horror stories coming from – individual Craft Lodges or Grand Lodges? And couldn’t a Masonic Lodge function very well without being a member of a Grand Lodge? Perhaps, then, we could return the emphasis on the practice of Freemasonry to its philosophy not its politics.

And as to the question of whether publicly exposing Freemasonry’s faults will lead to the decline of Freemasonry, the answer is quite evident. If Freemasonry will solve its own problems internally there is no need for an expose. But since it refuses to do so then the scenario will follow the path of the Catholic Church. The failure to police itself will lead to problems becoming worse and worse and more frequent. One day the lid will blow off and the civil courts will mandate reforms Freemasonry will not do on its own. And then the person to blame is not he who speaks the truth but he who covers it up and turns a blind eye.  Freemasonry has only itself to blame for the mess it is in.

Posted in The Bee Hive and tagged , , , .

Fred is a Past Master of Plymouth Lodge, Plymouth Massachusetts, and Past Master of Paul Revere Lodge, Brockton, Massachusetts. Presently, he is a member of Pride of Mt. Pisgah No. 135, Prince Hall Texas, where is he is also a Prince Hall Knight Templar . Fred is a Fellow of the Phylaxis Society and Executive Director of the Phoenix Masonry website and museum.

10 Comments

  1. Thanks Fred. I’m glad to be involved with any Masonic organization that is worthy of assistance or able to better educate all of us. The MasonicWiki project has been a slow, but worthwhile, adventure. I don’t know if it was discussed at the Grand Masters’ Annual Conference, but would be humbled if it truly was.

  2. Another great article, Brother Fred! There are many who labor to advance our beloved Fraternity at all levels, within and without “organizations”. A paradigm shift is taking place and we are but a small part of it.

  3. Fred, more transparency is always better, at least to those interested to see and shape change. Whose to say what the full and complete reason is for this transformation, really, in the end.

  4. All this is old news. Buta and the Board had disagreements, the Board asked that he relinquish control of the Philalethes Yahoo Group, he refused, he resigned from the Society, a new Yahoo Groups page was started. End of story.

    Reagrding the COGM paying PSOC bills, LOL! I second Chris’s comment.

  5. You compare freemasons political problems to the Catholic pedophile problem, that paints masonry in a really poor light. You really should revise your text, to a casual/distracted reader they could associate the craft with pedophilia or worse yet, trying to put down the Catholic church – and may already feel masonry and Catholicism are at odds, when it’s really a one-sided fight.

    You also have a typo where you refer to your god Canadian friend… obviously you meant “good”.

  6. Whose putting down the church? Facts are facts. The church had a pedophile priest problem. Freemasonry has a problem with policing itself. The comparision is the lengths these Institutions go to cover up wrongs and refusing to make things right for fear of tainting the Institution. This is not about a battle between Freemasonry and Catholicism. It is about the methods used in cover ups. The government has even been involved in such tactics. Ever hear of Watergate? How did Vince Foster die and what for? Come on guy, we are talking about METHODS not a battle between insititutions

  7. Unfortunately this very opinionated and wholly unfactual article remains up because its author and those on this website choose not to check the facts about the truth. It would be nice to see true Masonic Light given iinstead of rumor, innuendo and falsehoods which masquerade as the Truth and besmear my character and that of the oldest independent international masonic research society in North America . Did anyone bother to ask me or the Philalethes Society? No, that would have been too easy!!

  8. My goodness, this was six years ago. the letter was a quote. The source of the conclusions was WikiLeaks which you say nothing about.I was reporting what WikiLeaks said. It was a researched piece and at the same time an opinion piece. Therre is no personal attack on you, Bro. Tilton. In fact the only mention of you was in the Letter you wrote which was a direct quote. The conclusions reached were about the Conference of Grand Masters and Freemasonry in general. But to repeat a concern – The Scottish Rite Research Society has no problem admitting anyone as members. Limiting membership to those who have amity with just the Conference of Grand Masters leaves out a lot of legitimate Freemasons.

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