Endangered Conspirators

Nostalgically, Bill Feingold intones the excruciating litany. "Having your tongue torn out, and your throat cut across," he rumbles, recalling words memorized on a New York City rooftop 38 years ago. "And buried in the sands of the sea, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in every 24 hours--if you should reveal the secrets belonging to the degree of first-degree Mason. The second degree is to have your breast torn open and left prey to the vultures of the air. The third degree..." If he wonders whether anyone really cares what happens when you reveal the secrets of a third-degree Mason, Feingold doesn't let on.

First degree, third degree. Ceremonial apron and secret handshake; the Square and the Compass; the letter G for the Grand Architect himself. There was a time when America was dying to know and no one was telling. Freemasonry, which claims to be the world's oldest fraternal society, has been called the civil religion of the American Revolution. As recently as 1959, its U.S. branch constituted an earnest and convivial army of 4.1 million. Yet today those ranks are decimated. True, the group is still a philanthropic presence, donating some $750 million a year to charities. But its 2.1 million national membership, notes Richard Fletcher of the Masonic Information Center in Silver Spring, Md., is "the lowest it's been in some time." By which he means since around 1888. And it will plummet further, since the average brother is pushing 70. To baby boomers the Masons are a fusty memory. To the boomers' children, well, it's a philosophical conundrum: if a million-member secret society dies quietly, does anybody notice--or care?

Feingold does. It has come so far: he is the secret society's flak. His opening gambit is to invite a reporter to a gathering of worldwide Masonic grand masters at the New York Grand Lodge. And the event is grandly international: 75 delegations in Masonic aprons of every color and design, Lebanese hobnobbing with Cote d'Ivoirans and multitudinous Brazilians, engaged for the first time (although the cabal-obsessed may dispute this) in establishing an international Masonic coordination. Still Feingold can't forgo bragging about the domestic organization. "Fourteen Presidents have been Masons," he says; "nine signers of the Declaration of Independence..."