Grand Priory of America (CBCS) Tries To Halt Texas Educational Lecture

by Christopher Hodapp

UPDATED - Wednesday, November 29, 3:55PM: An earlier version of this post wrongly identified Bryan Leroy Hill as the current Great Prior of the Grand Priory of America. He was succeeded in office by Allan Surratt. I've also made corrections to Roberto Sanchez' Masonic record. Both errors were mine alone, and I apologize for any confusion they may have caused.

MW Roberto Sanchez is an extremely energetic and dedicated Texas Freemason, and has been for more than two decades. If you regularly attend Masonic Week outside of Washington DC, you might very well have met him. In addition to his Texas membership, he's also a Past Grand Master and the sitting Grand Chancellor of the Gran Logia del Estado de Mexico (Grand Lodge of the State of Mexico). He served as Master of Gray Lodge 329 in Houston back in 2011, and was part of a group determined to provide a high-quality lodge experience to their members. Since then, he’s gained an international reputation as a popular speaker, and served as an officer in several appendant organizations. 

Back in 2006 WB Sanchez, along with Gray Lodge's Past Masters Lex Leckie and Greg Weisinger created what they hoped would become an American equivalent of the English Prestonian Lecture. It was named after the lodge's charter Master, Alfred Stephens Richardson. Roberto was an early speaker, and it continues through today. Gray Lodge's A.S. Richardson Lecture is usually held at a hotel or restaurant, and some of the top Masonic authors and historians have been invited to speak there over the years. (2011 must have been a lean year, as they invited me.)

This year will be the 15th annual A.S. Richardson Lecture, and the speaker will be Alun Thomas-Evans, a fascinating U.K. Mason who is well-versed in the history, development and philosophy of countless esoteric organizations, some related to Masonry, and some not. He will be speaking about the Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte (in English, the Knights Beneficent of the Holy City, or CBCS, using its French initials), the Rectified Scottish Rite, and a closely related body known as the Waite Order (named after Arthur Edward Waite, who is a topic all by himself). The event is to take place on December 1st at the Embassy Suites in the Energy Corridor in Houston ($80 apiece, in case you’re interested deadline for tickets is Thursday, November 30th). CLICK HERE to register through Facebook. Act fast. 

Now, longtime readers here may or may not remember over a dozen years ago when a dispute over this obscure, invitational, Masonic-related side organization most commonly referred to as the CBCS blew up into a national and international Masonic food fight. It was a mess. A BIG mess. This was truly Masonic minutiae of the most arcane kind, and to fully understand what was going on at the time took lots of explanation (here are some old links in case you really want to wade into this morass, or see the cheat sheet below). 

• Grand Priory of the Scottish Reformed & Rectified Rite of the United States of America
• It Goes On: Knights Templar GM Johnson Issues Decisions Against Great Priory CBCS 
• Rectified Rite Issue Clarified by the Grand Encampment of the United States
• As the Sword Turns: Called Conclave Removes Templar Grand Master Michael B. Johnson

Well, just in case you thought the whole ugly, stinky mess finally died out, it’s back again.

Now it seems that Allan Surratt, the current Great Prior of the Grand Priory of America (the U.S. wing of the CBCS) has sent a letter to the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Texas demanding that the A.S. Richardson Lecture be blocked because of its subject matter. It seems that the GPA doesn’t want anyone to even speak about their organization and its various related topics, and they are demanding that the Grand Master shut it down.

Only a tiny problem with making such a demand: the Grand Lodge of Texas has a swollen rule book that’s the size of the last Dallas phone book: it’s more than 500 pages long, which may be a sad record for US grand lodges. Texas Masons over the years have inserted reams of new and ever more tediously minute regulations into their Masonic code, and a big section of it deals with appendant and other Masonically-related organizations operating within their jurisdiction: the Grand Lodge must approve every single group that requires their participants to first be a Freemason. Every such group must petition the Grand Lodge of Texas for recognition, and must be approved by a vote of Grand Lodge. If it ain’t listed in their Code by name, it ain’t recognized in Texas. And it doesn’t matter how many Past Grands, 33rds, Sovereign-Thises-and-Thats, or Big Name Celebrity Masons happen to belong to it. It’s just like getting backstage at the Taylor Swift concert. You gotta be on the list, or the exit door is that way. And the Grand Priory of America (CBCS) isn’t on the list. It seems its storied and privileged officers and members never bothered to ask over almost 100 years. Whoops.

The Great Prior’s other objection is that WB Alun’s lecture will be talking about other versions of the CBCS and its related bodies outside of the US that the GPA isn’t part of.

So. 

The Great Prior of an unrecognized Templar-related organization that’s spent more than a decade and untold thousands of dollars in lawsuits defending their lineage, sovereignty and exclusivity in order to remain a tiny invitational supper club (“because them 33rds let in too much riffraff)” never got around to getting recognition in Texas, which is the home to several of its very own high-profile officers, members and – interestingly enough – attorneys. They include Reese Harrison, Michael Wiggins, and Brian Dodson – all Past Grand Masters of Texas. And the GPA doesn’t want anyone talking to Texas Masons about ANY un-recognized CBCS body, even though they themselves aren’t recognized in Texas, either.

Confused? 

The good news is that, as of Wednesday, November 29th, the Grand Master is apparently siding with the lodge in this little imbroglio, and was unmoved by the GPA's demand. The lecture will go forward.

If you don't know anything about this mess (or tried to put it out of your mind), here’s the cheat sheet on the history of this long tale of woe and misery: 

• Portions of the European CBCS/Rectified Scottish Rite rituals and origins involve the Knights Templar, and have done so since the 1700s; 
• The Grand Encampment of the Knights Templar (GEKT) found the GPA to be infringing on their sovereignty over all US Masonic Templary, in part because their charter clearly states that the CBCS is a Templar organization; 
• The American wing of the CBCS – the Grand Priory of America (GPA), organized in the 1920s - promised by the 1930s not to work their Templar degrees or ever publicly claim they were Templars; 
• The GPA stopped conferring the degrees and became a tiny, invitational, exclusive dinner club for Past Eminent Grand Masters of the KT and celebrity Masons; 
• By 2000, officers of the GPA began representing themselves on foreign visits as a Templar organization, and protested that US Masons were receiving CBCS degrees in England, France, Belgium and elsewhere, violating their “exclusive” status - GPA would not permit CBCS members who joined European Priories to attend their meetings and would not honor their credentials; 
• GEKT declared that the GPA was again illegally violating THEIR sovereignty; 
• The GEKT's GM William H. Koon received a warrant from a French CBCS body to create their own American Grand Priory, and subsequently suspended existing GPA members who refused to drop their “old” GPA membership; 
• Lawsuits more lawsuits and counter-lawsuits flew like bats out of a belfry; 
• GPA leaned heavily on the Conference of Grand Master Masons of North America to withdraw recognition agreements from the GEKT and shut down all US Templar Commanderies; 
• ME Grand Master Dixon of GEKT reluctantly shut down its “new” CBCS Priory; 
• A decade later, GM Nelson of the GEKT acted to remove any holdover language from their regulations, reinstate the suspended GPA members, and finally put this quagmire to rest. (Knightly News from 2021 Grand Encampment Triennial) 
• His immediate successor attempted to reverse that action, incurred the wrath of a weary mass of KT members, and got removed from office in an almost unprecedented action. (As the Sword Turns: Called Conclave Removes Templar Grand Master Michael B. Johnson) 

'Knightfall' Ending on Netflix in August

by Christopher Hodapp

If you were a fan of the 2018-19 A&E TV series Knightfall, or discovered it on Netflix more recently, be aware that the streaming network is dropping the show on August 14th. Netflix's licensing deal was for a limited time, so if you had intended to go binge watching the show, do it now.

The HIGHLY fictionalized series about a group of French Knights Templar in medieval Paris and their clash with King Phillip starred Tom Cullen, Jim Carter and Mark Hamill, and only ran for two seasons. As history goes, it was lousy. But it was decent bit of storytelling about the Templars, who have rarely been portrayed in onscreen dramas.

There's no serious scholarship that supports the theory that Freemasonry descended out of the Knights Templar who fled France just ahead of King Phillip's mass arrests of the Order's leaders in 1307, even though John Robinson's classic work of speculation, Born In Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, has inspired countless men to join the Masons over the last 30+ years. And the modern day Masonic Knights Templar make no claims to have been directly descended from the medieval order of warrior monks. 

Nevertheless, many Masons have long accepted the famous oration of Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay's in which he introduced the notion that Freemasonry was brought to Europe from the Holy Land by the crusading warrior monks of the 12th–14th centuries. Even though he didn't mention the Templar's by name, audiences eventually took him to mean that specific group of crusading warriors, and French-derived "higher orders" (hautes grades) of Masonic degrees soon developed around the Templar story. A chivalric, "knightly" origin of Masonry appealed to the French Masons far more than the English and Scottish explanation of evolving from a group of scruffy old rock-carving stonemasons. Consequently, the Templar story appears today in the degrees of the U.S. York Rite, the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, the Royal Order of Scotland, the Knights Beneficent of the Holy City, and others. 

"Are we knights?"

"Do you want to be?"

If you're a fan of the film National Treasure, the Templar connection to the Freemasons appears right up front in the opening five minutes of the picture, as kindly old Grandpa Gates answers his grandson's question, "Are we knights?" Which, of course, folds in the theory about the infamous Oak Island Money Pit (eight seasons of A&E shows about it and STILL no treasure) as being the spot where fleeing Templars dumped the "greatest treasure the world has ever known," where it sat undisturbed until George Washington and the American Masons, led by their French Masonic allies from the Lodge of the Nine Muses, dug it up, paid the bills of the Revolution, and then reburied it under Trinity Church on Wall Street in New York.

But that's another story...

Anniversary of the Death of Jacque DeMolay

Today, March 18th marks the 709th anniversary of the death of Jacques de Molay,  the last Grand Master of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ, the Knights Templar. (Some accounts say March 11th. Even the two commemorative plaques at the execution site in Paris have conflicting dates.)

He was born in the eastern French village of Molay in 1244 or 45. Almost nothing is known of his early life, but he joined the Templars at the age of 21, and served 42 years as a warrior monk.

In 1291, the Holy Land fell back into the hands of the infidel, and would never fully return to Christian rule. The Templars and the Knights Hospitallers fell back to the coastal city of Acre, which was quickly lost. Both orders subsequently went to the island of Cyprus. The Templars remained here, while the Hospitallers later took the island of Rhodes. That too would be lost eventually, and the Hospitallers finally settled in Malta, where they became known as the Knights of Malta. In spite of the modern Masonic orders that unite these two orders of knights, they were bitter rivals for the wealth and favor of Europe and the Church.

Jacques de Molay was elected Grand Master in 1293 at the age of 47. Immediately he set off to England, France, Aragon and Italy to drum up support for a new crusade to the Holy Land, as well as to fend off a growing call for merging the two orders of warrior monks. Politiucally, the Templars were regarded as the men who lost the Holy Land, and monarchies were becoming distrustful of them. France in particular was feeling overrun with returning, aging knights, who still were free from any kind of taxation or even civil laws, by virtue of Papal bulls that held the Order above anyone but the Pope.

King Phillip IV of France and his personal henchman Guillaume de Nogaret had been in severe conflict with the then-reigning pope, Boniface VIII. The pope had declared that the king of France had no right to tax Church property, and the king had, obviously, disagreed. De Nogaret kidnapped an important French bishop, and the pope had come out swinging over it. He issued a papal bull proclaiming that kings must be subordinate to the Church, and that popes held ultimate authority over both spiritual and temporal matters on Earth. To make sure they got the message, Boniface excommunicated Phillip and de Nogaret. Phillip answered his challenge by sending the brutal, devious and bad-tempered de Nogaret at the head of an army to meet up with Italian allies and capture the pope. Boniface was indeed kidnapped and held for three days. After literally being beaten to a pulp, he was released and died a month later. The French king had proved just who was subordinate to whom, and he didn’t mind a little papal blood on his hands. Pope Boniface’s successor, Pope Benedict XI, lasted only a year in office, poisoned, it was said, by de Nogaret.

But there had been diplomatic difficulties to suffer for killing two popes. Consequently, King Phillip decided it would be easier to just buy himself one. He began procuring cardinals, pulling strings behind the scenes until the number of French cardinals in the Vatican’s College of Cardinals was equal to the Italian ones. They then obligingly elected his handpicked candidate, Bertrand de Goth, making him Pope Clement V. The city of Rome was in turmoil, and the safety of the Vatican was in question. So, it didn’t take much to convince the new French pope that his life would be in serious danger by living there. Clement obliged by staying in France, having his ceremony of investiture in Lyons. He remained in France, eventually moving the Holy See to the city of Avignon (which was actually owned by the King of Sicily at the time) in 1309, right on Phillip’s back door step, where he built a new papal palace. Catholics often refer to it as the “Babylonian Captivity.” Nowadays it’s usually called the Avignon Papacy or the Great Schism.

Clement had everything Phillip wanted in a pope: he was puny, weak, new in the job, and owed everything to his French king. Now was the time for the boldest move of Phillip’s reign – the arrest of the Knights Templar.

Jacques de Molay left Cyprus to head straight for a meeting with the new Pope, and he had high hopes for success, especially since they were countrymen. He couldn’t at this point have known of the dark forces that were assembling against him behind the scenes. In June of 1307, de Molay rode into Paris at the head of a column of his knights, with a dozen horses laden with gold and silver, to begin the financing the new Crusade. For the next several months, Phillip treated the aging Grand Master with interest and diplomacy, and de Molay believed he and the Order were at a new turning point.

The circumstances of the arrests on October 13th, 1307, and the next seven years of torture and trials of the Templars are well known to most of us, but we are most concerned with the last Grand Master today. By 1314, both the Pope and public opinion had completely abandoned the Knights Templar. The four senior Templar officers in Phillip’s custody had been waiting in prison for seven grim years. All of them were old, the youngest being Geoffroi de Charney, who was almost 60. Jacques de Molay was in his 70s, and had spent four years in solitary confinement.

On March 18th, 1314, the four men were finally led onto a platform in front of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral to hear the charges and make their public confessions. The charges were read, and two of the men accepted their fate of perpetual imprisonment. They were led away.

But Jacques de Molay and his trusted friend Geoffroi de Charney did not follow suit. Weakened with age and imprisonment, de Molay shouted in a voice that startled the assembly that he and the Templars were innocent of all the charges. They were returned to their cells at once, while Phillip called together his council and quickly pronounced sentence, using the insane logic of the Inquisition; if they had recanted their confessions, then they were considered “relapsed heretics,” and the penalty was the stake.

Late that afternoon, de Molay and de Charney were led to the place of execution, which was a tiny isolated island in the Seine adjacent to the Isle de la Citè, called the Ile aux Juifs, the “Island of the Jews.” The condemned men could see Notre Dame Cathedral in the east, but the site was not chosen for their view. Rather, it was chosen so that King Phillip could enjoy the entertainment without leaving his palace just across the river.


Each man was stripped down to his shirt and tied to the stake. Jacques de Molay, with unbelievable courage, asked not only that he be turned to face the Cathedral, but that his hands be freed, so that he could die at prayer. His request was granted. The two men were then roasted alive by the Inquisitional method that began slowly with hot coals, so that their agony could be prolonged as long as possible.


When the Pont Neuf was built, the Île aux Juifs was joined to the rest of the Île de la Cité, and today there are not one, but two plaques near the bridge to commemorate this event. According to legend, Jacques de Molay did not go to his God in silence. Instead, he died defiantly shouting his innocence and that of the Templars, calling on King Phillip and Pope Clement to both meet him before the throne of God in one year’s time, where they would all be judged together. Both men, relatively young, would indeed be dead within the year. One month after the death of de Molay, Pope Clement V, age 54, died, it was said, of cancer. Phillip the Fair, age 46, would die in a hunting accident probably brought on by a stroke. He died on November 29th.

A non-Masonic order of modern Knights Templar claim deMolay appointed a successor to himself secretly, and the order survived the centuries. Masonic Templars make no such claim, but the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem tells the tale that DeMolay’s skull and leg bones were pulled from the ashes and secretly buried with the document of succession, called the Larmenius Charter. 

Others claim that during the French Revolution, as King Louis XVI’s head was chopped off by the guillotine, someone rushed up from the crowd and proclaimed, “Jacques De Molay, Thou art avenged!” in celebration of the (not quite) end of the French monarchy.

The gruesome death of Jacques de Molay is the last act of the Templar story. At least, the last act of the accepted, scholarly story of the medieval Knights Templar that is told in names and dates between the covers of the history books. But in reality, his death is only the beginning. It’s the beginning of the myth of the Knights Templar, which is the maelstrom around which an endless stream of fact blended with speculation swirls, unabated.

In 2001, a document was found in the Vatican archives called the Chinon Parchment, and was later released to the public. The folio had been misfiled and had been lost to scholars for centuries. In it, it was revealed that a private team of Papal investigators had looked into the charges against the Templars, and on August 20, 1308, Pope Clement V had secretly absolved the Order of all charges of heresy. It had been Clement's intention to save DeMolay and the Templars from death at the hands of the French king. But in retaliation, Phillip threatened the weak Pope with military action if he did not dissolve the Order, which was done at the Council of Vienne in 1312.

(Adapted from The Templar Code For Dummies by Christopher Hodapp and Alice Von Kannon.)

As the Sword Turns: Called Conclave Removes Templar Grand Master Michael B. Johnson

by Christopher Hodapp

“You stubborn and hardheaded people! 

You are always fighting against the Holy Spirit,

just as your ancestors did” 

(Acts 7:51; CEV)

An historic gathering took place today, and I don't mean in a happy, smiley-face historic way. Michael B. Johnson, Most Eminent Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the United States, has been removed from office at a Called Special Conclave held in Fort Wayne, Indiana. 

Johnson has been replaced as Grand Master by David Kussman, and will retain the title of Past Deputy Grand Master. Some 291 Templars in attendance cast their votes, and the decision to remove Johnson was overwhelming: 219 in favor of his removal, 57 against, with 15 spoiled ballots.

I've long felt that the members of the Knights Templars who actively seek high office positions carry swords to stab each other in the back with. Go get yourself a big cup of coffee, because this tale is long and winding, along with being a tedious Masonic equivalent of an "inside baseball" discussion.

Michael B. Johnson has been removed as Grand Master of the Grand Encampment.

Called Special Conclaves are extremely rare. In fact, several Templar Knights who have searched the archives of the Grand Encampment have said there is no record of a single Special Conclave ever being called throughout the 20th century.

Michael Johnson's time in office has been turbulent. Upon his election last August, Johnson issued an official decision which immediately overturned a resolution passed at the Grand Encampment's 2021 Triennial Conclave in Minneapolis. That resolution passed by a super-majority and had been intended to put an end to the long-running battles over the Grand Priory of America (GPA) of the Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte (CBCS), otherwise known in English as the Knights Beneficent of the Holy City. 

That overwhelmingly lopsided August vote had reversed Grand Encampment decisions made back in 2010, which had branded the GPA a "clandestine Templar organization." Then-Grand Master William H. Koon had controversially demanded the resignation of all Templar Sir Knights belonging to the GPA, and then, using a French charter of dubious parentage, the Grand Encampment established its own Grand Priory of the Scottish Reformed and Rectified Rite of the United States of America. In the wake of those actions, longstanding Templar Knights who remained as GPA/CBCS members were suspended or expelled from the Grand Encampment, and a flurry of lawsuits - both institutional and personal - erupted over the years.

(NOTE: The Grand Encampment's declaration of the GPA to be clandestine and the subsequent establishment of its own CBCS body took place during the years of Grand Master William H. Koon. In the spirit of full disclosure, I became a member of the Grand Encampment's new CBCS Grand Priory in 2011, as did the now-deposed Grand Master Michael Johnson.)

In the midst of arguments, suspensions, expulsions, lawsuits and lots of broken friendships, the Grand Encampment's Grand Priory of the Scottish Reformed and Rectified Rite of the United States of America CBCS body was dissolved in January 2013 by Grand Master David Dixon Goodwin, but the decisions declaring the GPA clandestine and forbidding Templar membership in it remained. And so, the resolution to end the feud by compromise eleven years after all this began passed by an overwhelming 77% of the vote at the 2021 Triennial. 

Just about now is when your eyes will really begin to glaze over.

GM Michael Johnson issued his decision to ignore the vote and return the status of the GPA to being a clandestine Templar order in a matter of days after taking office.

  

SIDEBAR: Who the heck is the Grand Priory of America?

The GPA was established in the US back in 1934 with a charter from the Grand Prieuré Indépendant d'Helvetie (Great Priory of Switzerland) CBCS, the Swiss organization that has long been considered to be the definitive fountainhead of the the Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte, or Knights Beneficent of the Holy City. Outside of the U.S. The CBCS is a system of the Rite Ecossais Rectifie (Scottish Rectified Rite), and considered to be the oldest continuously operating Christian chivalric Masonic Order in the world, tracing its roots back to Baron Karl Gotthelf von Hund's "Rite of Strict Observance" in Germany in the 1750s. By widespread agreement, even though it possesses its own degree rituals for the Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason degrees, like the Scottish Rite systems in the U.S. and most of Europe, it acknowledges that those degrees are the sole domain of Masonic grand lodges.

The Grand Priory of America CBCS was established in Raleigh, North Carolina by Dr. William Moseley Brown and J. Raymond Shute II, the founding brethren of what became Masonic Week in Washington DC each year. The GPA was established as an invitation-only group, but it quickly became little more than a private supper club for Grand Encampment Past Grand Masters and a few celebrity Masons, because, as one wag famously put it, "there's too much riff-raff in the 33rds." Its constitution limited membership to just 81 in the U.S., dividing the country into three prefectures with 27 members each.

 In 1927, the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the United States granted recognition to the Swiss Grand Prieuré Indépendant d'Helvetie as a Templar body. When the Grand Prieuré Indépendant d'Helvetie issued a charter to the Raleigh group to form the Great Priory of America in 1934, that placed it in direct conflict with the notion that all Masonic Knights Templar in the U.S. work under the authority of the Grand Encampment. In fact, the 1934 charter itself is worded, "Grand Prieuré Indépendant d'Helvetie de Province ORDRE TEMPLIERE." The way the jurisdictional problem got solved was that the Great Priory's leadership assured the Grand Encampment that it was nothing but a social club, conferred no Templar orders on its members, and did not exchange official representatives with other Great Priories. With that understanding, CBCS became a regular participant in the annual "Masonic Week" festivities in Washington D.C. (later Alexandria, VA) held every February. Instead of its deeply spiritual and esoteric degrees being conferred upon seekers of Masonic wisdom, it became little more than a title to be passed to the luminaries of American Masonry. But by 1994, several officers of the GPA began attending international Knight Templar gatherings representing themselves as a Templar group. It was at this point the Grand Encampment stepped in. And then the fight started... 

 For more about this topic, see this post from back in 2010.

The drama thickened in September when GM Johnson took the surprising step of removing the duly elected Deputy Grand Master, David J. Kussman, from office for "malfeasance and disloyalty." 

Then-Grand Generalisimo David Kussman had been appointed last year by then-Grand Master Jeffrey Nelson to chair a committee to investigate the whole GPA imbroglio and find a way to end the feud and reinstate its suspended members. As chairman of the committee, Kussman and his group worked out a truce between the GPA and the Grand Encampment, which became the basis of the resolution that passed at the 2021 Triennial. In Johnson's order removing Kussman from the grand officer's line, his chairing of that committee and the subsequent resulting vote led to Johnson's declaration in other venues that he was "disloyal." (No charges were ever brought against Kussman, and no trial was ever conducted. He remained a member in good standing.)

By late September, a website had been set up to facilitate the organization of a Called Special Conclave to address the actions of GM Mike Johnson. The "Call To Conclave" laid out the Constitutional method and requirements to call for an extraordinary meeting for the purpose of reviewing- and perhaps reversing - the actions of a grand master. According to the Constitution, representatives from at least nine different statewide Grand Commanderies are required to make a quorum in order to trigger a called meeting. That minimum was quickly reached.

In October, a letter was sent to KT officers across the Grand Encampment's voting delegates, written by Sir Knight Thomas Tsirimokos, Chairman of the Grand Encampment Jurisprudence Committee. Tsirimokos weighed in on the appropriateness of the GM's actions and what he saw as constitutional reasons why a called conclave didn't have the power to reverse or amend the decisions of a sitting Grand Master. Other members of that committee saw it differently, as a letter from David Kussman made clear (see it HERE). 

In an additional attempt to dissuade those calling for a conclave, the Grand Encampment opined that those nine Grand Commanderies should be required to foot the bill for calling the meeting, including all hotel and dining expenses. In a counter to that, the Conclave was attached to the already scheduled East Central Department Conference at the Grand Wayne Convention Center in Fort Wayne, so additional expenses would be minimal.

Further agitating members, the monthly Knight Templar Magazine became a source of contention. The front page of the September 2021 issue showed GM Johnson perched on a horse and dressed in his Templar finery. Not especially surprising, since in real life he is a Wyoming rancher, and many Masonic Templar commanderies historically had mounted drill teams until the middle of the 20th century. But the headline at the bottom of the cover was both a disturbing and shocking message from the brand new leader of a purportedly Christian-based Masonic organization: 

"I never forget loyalty, nor do I forget betrayal."

In the February 2022 issue of the Knight Templar Magazine, GM Johnson penned a message ostensibly about "Cancel Culture" in society, and attempting to link that topic to the motives of the Called Conclave:

"There are brothers who do not agree with the Constitution of the Grand Encampment or the powers of the grand master. The Grand Encampment Constitution is clear that only at a stated conclave can decisions be reviewed. Sections of the Constitution may be added or deleted by the voting delegates of the Triennial Conclave. Some of the “Canceled Culture” think they can be loud enough or disruptive enough at other Grand Encampment meetings to get their way on certain matters concerning our Constitution or decisions of the grand master. The Knights Templar are Christian sol- diers who are bound by the obligation they took upon the Holy Bible to defend our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to be governed by our Constitution. Our Constitution states that you must be a Christian to become a Templar, and it is the duty of every Knight Templar to uphold our Constitution."

For some time, Sir Knight Benjamin Williams of Colorado had been the associate editor of the KT magazine, assisting longtime editor John Palmer. The masthead of the last few issues shows that Ben has recently been removed from that position. Williams had been an excellent choice to assist on the magazine, as he was responsible for the beautifully designed Rocky Mountain Mason magazine several years ago, and is a talented Masonic author and blogcaster. SK Ben is also an attorney and was on the committee headed by Kussman working on the GPA compromise. 

Since GM Johnson issued his decision rescinding the action of the Grand Encampment, Ben has reported on the developments and presented his legal opinions online of the KT Constitution regarding the powers of the Grand Master vs. those of the voting members of the Grand Encampment. His most recent podcast was posted March 2nd and summarizes the run-up to the Conclave taking place today in Fort Wayne.

Listen HERE: RMM-062: Special Conclave of the Grand Encampment

Further documentation for the Called Conclave can be found HERE.

The "Call To Conclave" resolution set out the order of business to be taken up at today's meeting. 

According to the Constitution, "An elected officer of the Grand Encampment may be removed from Office by a two-thirds vote of the members present and voting at a Conclave of the Grand Encampment. This section is enforceable upon adoption." (Emphasis mine.)

The voting members of the Grand Encampment have now exercised that option. And there's probably some irony in the fact that the Conclave was held in the "Mad" Anthony Wayne Room of the Ft. Wayne Convention Center.

I am starting to feel like Harland and Wolff sitting back in Belfast reading the morning reports of the Titanic sinking.

NOTE: An earlier version of this story mistakenly named John Cooper as the author of the dissenting letter, and referred to PGM Jeffrey Nelson incorrectly as John Nelson. I regret the errors. This revision also added the actual vote counts for removing former Grand Master Johnson.

UPDATED: Knights Templar GM Removes DGM from Officers' Line

by Christopher Hodapp

UPDATED Friday 9/11/2021-

Instead of posting new articles every time a new letter is issued or becomes available, I am adding updates to this original message. This most recent update adds a letter written by David Kussman in response to Templar Grand Master Johnson's demand for his resignation on September 4th. I also include a rebuttal penned by Past Grand Master Nelson this past week.

As Katherine Hepburn famously quipped in The Lion In Winter, "What family doesn't have its little ups and downs..."

I was hoping for at least one good news story to post between last week's Grand Encampment vs. Great Priory of America CBCS related drama, but, alas, no. Masonic social media was atwitter over the Labor Day weekend with more drama out of the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar in the United States (GEKT). On Friday, September 3rd, Templar Grand Master Michael B. Johnson issued a letter to his Deputy Grand Master, David J. Kussman, calling for his resignation (image below):

On Saturday, DGM Kussman responded to GM Johnson's demand with the following letter:

(Please note that these letters were posted to a public website that was created to call for a special conclave to deal with issues of the last two weeks. I have not obtained them improperly.)

In response, GM Johnson formally removed DGM Kussman from office on Monday in a letter that was circulated to officers, Past KT Grand Masters and others (image below):

Yes, Kussman's removal is at least partially related to the GPA drama and attempts to negotiate some kind of mutually agreeable truce between the two organizations. The word is that the Grand Encampment officer line will be advanced this coming Saturday, September 11th to fill Kussman's vacancy, and a new Captain General will be appointed.

Meanwhile, Sir Knight Ben Williams has devoted today's episode of his Rocky Mountain Mason Podcast, RMM-060, to explaining the ongoing situation within the GEKT. Ben was named by the immediate Past Grand Master Jeff Nelson to chair the Jurisprudence Committee at the Triennial last week when its appointed chairman was unable to attend. HEAR IT HERE.

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UPDATED 9/8/2021 4:43PM

My understanding late Wednesday is that Sir Knights Bolstad and Harper shall be advancing to R.E. Deputy Grand Master and R.E. Grand Generalissimo, respectively, and that Past Department Commander James McGee shall be appointed as Grand Captain General.

Two large documents were prepared for the Triennial explaining the origins and opposing positions of the Great Priory of America/CBCS and the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar USA. You need to read both documents to see the disagreement from both sides. These two pdf documents can be accessed HERE.

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UPDATED 9/10/2021 11:50PM:

Past Grand Master Jeffrey N. Nelson has now weighed in with his own statement in defense of David Kussman:

Petition Calls for Special Conclave Over Grand Encampment/GPA Saga

by Christopher Hodapp

That took almost no time at all.

In the wake of the official decisions regarding the Great Priory of America CBCS issued last week by Grand Master Michael Johnson of the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the US, a website has already popped up with a petition to call for a Special Conclave in an attempt to finally put this issue to rest.

UPDATED 9/8/2021 4:43PM

Two large documents were prepared for the Triennial explaining the historical origins and opposing positions of the Great Priory of America/CBCS and the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar USA. You need to read both documents to see the disagreement from both sides. These two pdf documents can be accessed HERE.

It Goes On: Knights Templar GM Johnson Issues Decisions Against Great Priory CBCS

by Christopher Hodapp

It seems that the troublesome Grand Encampment/CBCS/Great Priory of America issue continues to rise up like the ghostly mists and miasmas that drift over once-bloody ancient battlefields, awakening the souls of the long-dead from their brief slumber 'neath the silent clods of the valley to forever walk the Earth in search of peace.

Or something like that.

At the Triennial of the Knights Templar Grand Encampment of the US last week, the assembled members of the Grand Encampment overwhelmingly voted to nullify former edicts and decisions from the last decade that had forbidden Templar members from belonging to the Great Priory of America (GPA) of the Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte (CBCS), and expelled existing members of the GPA from its ranks. The resolution to bury the hatchet passed last week with more than 75% in favor. They also voted against a totally separate resolution (again with more than 75%) that attempted to declare the GPA clandestine.

(Forgive the imprecise wording here – I'm trying to summarize for the sake of brevity. You can see the actual resolutions HERE at this post from August 24th.)

With a super-majority voting in favor of putting this issue to rest, it would appear that the rank and file Knights are in favor of moving on. But it seems that GEKT/GPA feud hasn't ended after all. 

Or as said Stephen Boyd said to Charleton Heston after getting scuffed up in the chariot race in Ben Hur, "It goes on!"

After little over a week in office, Grand Master Michael B. Johnson of the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the US issued four official decisions (see image below) regarding the actions of the GEKT's Jurisprudence Committee, actions of the immediate Past Grand Master, and the CBCS Great Priory of America during the Triennial. Further, the final notice in his letter declares that, regardless of the vote taken at the Triennial, the GEKT still officially finds the GPA to be an "unrecognized Templar Order operating within the United States of America, in direct conflict with Section 3 of the Constitution of the Grand Encampment" and that membership in the GPA remains incompatible with membership in the GEKT (to enlarge, click images below):

Templars, interested bystanders, and train wreck enthusiasts who have been around for ten or fifteen years want to make this struggle about clashing egos and personalities, and there's no denying that has played a part. But there's a lot more to it besides "Let me in to your snooty club or I'll burn down your tree fort." 

The GEKT says the GPA is a competing Templar Order, based on the Latin wording identifying themselves that's found on their originating charter, and GPA says it isn't anything of the kind. Legal arguments center around the minutiae of each organizations' constitutional laws and regulations, and whether the GEKT has any right to claim what they've claimed and do what they've done over the last decade. 

Esotericists decry the GPA for holding the CBCS Rectified Rite degree system hostage in the U.S., suitable only for a little clot of Extra Special Masons. Indeed, the GPA declares on its website that the CBCS is "the summit of Christian Knighthood and is the only comparable Order in this country approaching civil knighthood in Europe. It is guarded carefully and only conferred infrequently upon those who are deemed worthy." The GPA is constitutionally restricted to no more than 100 members nationwide, and for much of their 78 year history, it's been less than 48. In fact, the GPA has protested when American Masons have traveled to foreign countries to receive the Rectified Right degrees in another priory, claiming this infringes on their territorial rights over the whole of the United States and, presumably, all of its Masonic citizens, even though the GPA  likely would never have invited those traveling Masons to join them. And they have long fought against the formation of additional U.S. priories.

Meanwhile, rank and file Masons want to know "This affects me...how?" Truth is, it doesn't. 

While the conflict appears close up to resemble a pair of bellowing mastodons having a go at each other over who owns the watering hole, in reality it is a distraction that continues to turn off potential Templar members who want nothing to do with what appears to them to be a pissing match between big-shots. Or as one former Sir Knight said to me years ago shortly before demitting, "The only reason the Templars wear swords as part of their uniforms is so their officers can stab each other in the back."

Not everybody has been following this epic saga for the last eleven years. Right Worshipful Brother Oscar Alleyne gave an online presentation ("What's the Beef?") earlier this week on a Refracted Light podcast about the origin of the CBCS and Great Priory of America, and the ongoing discord with the Grant Encampment. 

Oscar is a talented researcher and a careful presenter – his talk does not take sides, and he doesn't assign blame or virtue to anyone in this conflict personally. If you are interested in the history of the Rectified Rite, the CBCS, the GPA and the Grand Encampment's ongoing battle, give it a listen.

Meanwhile, "It goes on..."

UPDATED 9/8/2021 4:43PM

Two large documents were prepared for the Triennial explaining the historical origins and opposing positions of the Great Priory of America/CBCS and the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar USA. You need to read both documents to see the disagreement from both sides. These two pdf documents can be accessed HERE.

Templar Eye Foundation Offers Historic 19th Century 'Knight Templar Monitor' Reprint

by Christopher Hodapp

UPDATED 8/31/2021 at 11:30PM: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that this is a leather-bound edition. I have also added more ordering options at the end of the story.

In the late 1880s, Sir Knight George Cooper Connor of Tennessee made a florid, handwritten transcript of the rituals of the Masonic Knights Templar Orders of the Red Cross, Malta and the Temple for use in the Grand Commandery of Tennessee. His manuscript later became a basis for the development of the adopted Templar Orders we know today. Now researchers and students of the evolution of Masonic-related rituals have a beautiful new historical reprint to pore over, thanks to the Knights Templar Eye Foundation and Lookout Commandery No. 14 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

This hard-bound reprint of George Cooper Connor's Templar Monitor was designed by Brother Steve Adams, who has designed and illustrated several recent books for the Scottish Rite Research Society. The Monitor includes commentary from PGC George Marshall, KGT, on the ritual of each of the Orders, and the publication reflects the tireless efforts of SK Piers Vaughan, KCT. Like some recent Scottish Rite NMJ publications of the Francken Manuscript and several early French Masonic manuscripts, this volume features Connor's beautifully handwritten text and illustrations on one page, and a modern typeset version with new, clearer graphic illustrations and diagrams on the facing page. 

Unlike the relatively simple choreography of degree floor work in a Craft Lodge, the Templar Orders require more cast members and much more complexity of movement with the candidate throughout the asylum. Consequently, Cooper's original manuscript included many hand-drawn watercolor images relating to staging each of the Orders, along with illustrating the design of the jewels of the Orders.

Connor served as Right Eminent Grand Commander and Most Worshipful Grand Master of Masons in Tennessee. He later served as Grand Recorder of the Grand Commandery of Tennessee as well as serving on several committees of the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar US. You will find more information about him in the preface to the book, along with items regarding his Templar Funeral Service and the Templars and dignitaries from around the nation who attended his funeral.

There is a limited supply of the Templar Monitor, and it is being offered as a fundraising item for the Knight Templar Eye Foundation. The price is $150 and 100% of the proceeds go directly to the KTEF. Please note that there are no online sales offered at this time. To purchase it, you must CLICK HERE, print, and mail the order form along with a check or money order, or fax the form with your credit card information. I'm only reporting it.

I'm also informed that it can be ordered by phone from the Foundation office at 214-888-0220.

(Images are shamelessly snagged from Steve Adams' Facebook page.)