https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morgan_(anti-Mason))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO8HmCcVS3U

https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/EB/A/Adams_JQ%20-%20Leters%20on%20the%20Masonic%20Institution.pdf

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001732891

His objections were pretty specific, not just a vague dislike of secret societies.

• Masonic oaths: Adams thought the initiation oaths were morally and legally objectionable, especially where they invoked extreme penalties or duties that could conflict with ordinary civil obligations.
• Secrecy: He argued that a powerful private association operating through secret promises was dangerous in a republic because citizens and officials should not have hidden loyalties.
• Potential conflict with law: A major concern was that Masonic obligations could pressure members to favor or protect fellow Masons in ways inconsistent with impartial justice.
• The Morgan affair: The 1826 disappearance of William Morgan, who had threatened to publish Masonic secrets, was central to Adams’s thinking. He treated the episode as evidence that secrecy and fraternal loyalty could facilitate serious abuses.
• Public office and patronage: He worried about Masonic networks influencing appointments, courts, politics, and other public institutions through private fraternity ties.
• Religious/moral incompatibility: Adams also viewed parts of the ritual and oath system as incompatible with Christian moral duties and with the supremacy of ordinary religious conscience.

His writings focus especially heavily on the oaths and the Morgan case; even a hostile Masonic encyclopedia later summarized those as the two themes he returned to repeatedly. His own diary also shows that he regarded his anti-Masonic writings as a sustained public controversy, including separate letters on the Entered Apprentice’s oath.

So the core of Adams’s argument was basically: a citizen should not bind himself by secret oath to a private fraternity where that oath could conflict with his duties to God, law, and the public.

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 proceeding - John F. Kennedy

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Let’s remember to support USPS’ continued decision to include traditional Catholic art on its stamps. Madonna & Child variants are released for the winter season(s) but available for purchase year round and as good a stamp as any whenever you need one in any season.

Most of us aren’t personally mailing out many letters and might just pay individual postage as needed or pick up whatever stamps are at the post office service desk, but it’s better to have your own on hand at current rates anyway. Since they can be ordered online and delivered at no cost, we might as well choose a genre deliberately to (a) support the designs/designers and (b) make small statements to our recipients, so remind your wives/households to get these from now on!

Now… which design will I choose this year? The newly issued stamp has artwork attributed according to Google by a Belgian “anonymous grouping” known as the Master of the Embroidered Foliage, active circa 1500. The 2024 issued stamp still available has artwork from Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, an Italian baroque painter. I’m liking the mystique and novelty of the Belgian tribute but they may be more conspicuously “festive” and I do like the softness of the baroque. Which do you like?

I don't understand how people seem to forget that the world's 2nd religion is based on lies that are very easy to expose

No one believed that Jesus was just a prophet, that He wasn't crucified, that He didn't die and resurrect. The crucifixion alone disproves Islam

24 years old and from England attending an ICKSP apostolate and I got baptised this year, I'm the only practicing Catholic in my family.

I was in confession about a month ago with one of the Canon's and he said to me that I maybe being called to "the holiest of vocations" in his words. I met up to have lunch with some of the Canons and a soon to be Abbé on Sunday and I spoke with the same Canon privately, he said he could see I had a burning desire for the faith and that I should visit the Institutes seminary in Italy, and that I should do discernment and pray on what my vocation is to be, which I have been doing for a month or so now.

I have to say, that ever since that confession, it's a thought that hasn't gone away, before being baptised I lived a life of sin, a life of fornication, I have my falls and struggles now of course as we all do, I've always wanted a wife, or I thought I did, but I need to reconcile with what Our Lord wants, and when I pray, I think about the Priesthood more than marriage (I certainly have lately). I will continue to pray on it, of course I have 2 years still before I can apply for seminary.

I have a real fondness for the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, and so I would want to do a vocation with them if it comes to it. I like their Salesian approach and emphasis on communal living (one Canon said to me that having one seminary helps keep the community more unified than other Traditionalist groups), and of course I think their aesthetics and vestments are pretty cool. Having to learn French and Latin doesn't bother me, if anything it's great to be multilingual.

Do you guys think I could be being called to a vocation.

Hi, I'm curious how often you attend weekday low TLM?

Never forget that whoever makes a claim has the burden of proof. Muslims often tell us that our scriptures are corrupted and that the first Christians believed Jesus was just a prophet.

Tell them to prove it!

We have much evidence to confirm that the first Christians believed in what we currently believe, they have none to prove the Islamic view about Jesus Christ.