Here is my reasoning behind my dislike of the openness in Freemasonry in some jurisdictions. It is based on the Twenty Third Landmark of our Order.
LANDMARK TWENTY-THIRD
The secrecy of the institution is another and a most important Landmark. There is some difficulty in precisely defining what is meant by a "secret society," If the term refers, as perhaps in strictly logical language it should, to those associations whose designs are concealed from the public eye, and whose members are unknowing which produce their results in darkness, and whose operations are carefully hidden from the public gaze - a definition which will be appropriate to many political clubs and revolutionary combinations in despotic countries, where reform, if it is at all to be effected, must be effected by stealth - then clearly Freemasonry is not a secret society. Its design is not only publicly proclaimed. but is vaunted by its disciples as something to be venerated; its disciples are known, for its membership is considered an honor to be coveted; it works for a result of which it boasts, the civilization, and reformation of his manners. But if by a Secret society is meant, and this is the most popular understanding of the term, a society in which there is a certain amount of knowledge, whether it be of methods of recognition, or of legendary and traditional learning, which is imported to those only who have passed through an established form of initiation, the form itself being also concealed or esoteric, then in this sense is Freemasonry undoubtedly a secret society.
Now this form of secrecy is a form inherent in it, existing with It from its very foundation, and secured to it by its ancient Landmarks. If divested of its secret character, it would lose its identity, and would cease to be Freemasonry. whatever objections may, therefore, be made to the institution, on account of its secrecy, and however much some unskillful brethren have been willing in times of trial, for the sake of expediency, to divest it of its secret character, it will be ever impossible to do so, even were this Landmark not standing before us as an insurmountable obstacle; because such change of its character would be social suicide, and the death of the Order would follow its legalized exposure. Freemasonry, as a secret association, has lived unchanged for centuries an open society it would not last for as many years.
