Fretful,
I can’t remember it either. Then again, the cabal hasn’t invited me to any world-domination meetings around here, so it hasn’t come up.
I was inducted into phi beta kappa just over a month ago, so I remember the “secret handshake” better than CrankyAsAnOldMan. A search on Google Images led to
this picture of the handshake, which is shown on
this page along with a fairly accurate description.
You know, I’m not sure we’re even expected to keep it a secret. IIRC, the only thing we were sworn to keep secret was the whole selection-of-initiates process, and I was never let in on that anyway. Maybe it will come up at some point.
Or it’s for some big secret reason that you are not privy too…oooooooh…
I met a girl in a bar, the other week who showed me what she said was the secret handshake of the freemasons, I told her she couldn’t know becasue the freemasons don’t let women in!
I am a Knight of Columbus. I have attained the Fourth Degree, the highest degree of the Order. I am a Past Grand Knight of my council, a Former District Deputy in my jurisdiction, and a Past Faithful Navigator of my Assembly.
The Knights do not have a secret handshake.
There are secret rituals, but there is no handshake as described above.
Slight hijack… is the KoC a fraternal order? I’d always thought it was sort of a retired gent’s club, which is perhaps the same thing…(no offense intended Bricker)
My college fraternity has a secret handshake… and 11811 I’m assuming your reasons for deactivating involved some kind of unpleasantness, but its a little unfair to the members of your organization who came before you to be showing off something they considered a secret.
Alpha Phi Omega, which is a coed service fraternity, has a secret handshake. Which, of course, I have to ask how to do every time initiation comes around.
It’s a Roman Catholic fraternal organization, founded because Catholics were not allowed to become Freemasons.
Terry Pratchett - Night Watch
This leave it open whether non-Master Masons have a different handshake, or none at all.
None taken… although I’m about forty years away from retirement, I think!
The Knights of Columbus are a Catholic, family, fraternal, service organization.
- Rick
Okay, so Catholics aren’t allowed to become Freemasons… yet they trace the origins of their organization/order/cult/insert your term of choice here to the Knights Templar, (or Hospitaler, I can’t quite remember) which would have been a pre-Reformation group and thus Catholic…
I don’t know enough about the Freemasons to endorse or reject your statement that their origins lie with the Knights Templar. I had always heard that they began in 1717 in London with a “Grand Lodge” of Freemasonry which then spread itself to other “lodges” throughout Britian and the rest of the world.
But I can tell you that for a long period of time, the Catholic Church believed that the organization was anti-clerical, and execommunicated a Catholic who joined the Masonic order.
In 1983, the penalty of excommunication seems to have been lifted. However, the Church still forbids Catholics from enrolling in masonic associations, stating that those who are “…are involved in serious sin and may not approach Holy Communion…”
- Rick