Order of the Pug

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And I promise we won't spam you. And after the episode, we hope you'll stick around because we've got more to the story. Little bonus content, little conversation, some bloodthirsty stuff right after the episode. At first glance, it looks like the sort of thing that would be collecting dust on a shelf at your grandmother's house, porcelain figurine, not quite 12 inches tall, fine lady in a delicately painted flowery hoop skirt standing atop a pedestal.

With her left arm, she's cradling a little dog, it's a pug peeking from beneath her wide belled skirt is another pug. If you didn't know what you're looking at, you might never guess that this fussy little knickknack is actually a highly collectible, valuable piece of German porcelain worth at least a couple thousand dollars on the auction circuit.

And what you might also not know about this figure is that it's much more than just a decorative object. It was a kind of code, a way of signaling your membership or your support of a mysterious and secret organization that's found it to thumb its nose at the 246th Pope of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. All rise, this meeting of the Order of the Pug is about to commence.

They got a small beam of light. The Catholic Church has had beef with Freemasonry, the oldest secular fraternity in human history for, let's see, forever. OK, the Catholic Church has had beef with Freemasonry, the oldest secular fraternity in human history since forever. The church just made it official in the year 1738.

That's when Pope Clement XII issued the first papal bull against Freemasonry. The temporal and spiritual communities are enjoined in the name of holy obedience, neither to enter the society of Freemasons, to disseminate its principles, to defend, nor to admit, nor conceal it within their houses or places or elsewhere under the pain of excommunication.

To be excommunicated from the church was a big deal, not exactly a fast pass to hell, but a grievous punishment. The excommunicated are banned from receiving sacraments like Holy Communion. An excommunicated Catholic is still a Catholic and still expected to attend Mass, but is denied certain rights and privileges that belong to the faithful.

For devout Catholics, it's an excruciating punishment, the sort of thing reserved for the worst of crimes, heresy, apostasy, assaulting the pope. But it also used to potentially apply to Catholics who divorced and then got remarried outside the church. That was a real thing up until August 2015, when then Pope Francis called on Catholic communities to please be for real and try to get a grip.

Pope Francis was like, hello, come on. Yes, the pope said divorcing and remarrying outside the church may be a contradiction, but the church must look out for the welfare of its people with the heart of a mother while being the open house of the father. No more closed doors, said Pope Francis, knock it off. Pope Francis, who just recently passed away in April 2025, would likely have handled the whole Freemasonry situation very differently than his predecessors.

But then it was a different time. The Catholic Church, powerful and wealthy as it is today, once was the single most powerful and stable institution in all of Europe. It was the biggest landowner, the biggest landlord. Heck, during the medieval period, the Catholic Church pretty much had the monopoly not just on education, but on knowledge itself.

Want to know who ran the schools up until about the 12th century? The Catholic Church. Curious about who wrote and produced books? The Catholic Church again. Many monasteries had a scriptoria, a special room set aside for the creation of books where monks painstakingly copied manuscripts by hand, illustrating their work.

They called it illuminating with all sorts of drawings and borders and flourishes. Those monasteries did more than just create these manuscripts. They preserved them in vast libraries, not just religious texts, but scientific treatises and historical documents, too. It's impossible to even guess at how many of the great works of humanity are still in existence thanks to this system.

But we all owe those monks and the church our gratitude for what they did to safeguard so much of our collective knowledge, given, you know, the seemingly endless cycle of terrified barbarians who think burning books is ever a solution to any social crisis. Bless their little hearts. All of this is to say that the Catholic Church back in the day was about as powerful as any institution on earth ever could be or would be.

And from the jump, the church headed out for the Freemasons. But why? Why take such a militant stand against something that began as a medieval guild for stonemasons? For real. So here's the deal. These were highly skilled craftsmen who brought their knowledge and experience to the building of castles and churches and cathedrals.

They were respected and well-paid for their work, often earning substantially more than the other trades. To be a stonemason was an elite profession, and these craftsmen organized themselves into guilds. Now, the point of the guild was as much to protect the craft as it was the craftsmen. The guilds were structured so that the workers would share knowledge and continually develop the next generation of stonemasons.

You began as an apprentice as young as age 12. Apprentices typically were given room and board in the home of their boss called the master, but weren't paid any wages. The goal of the apprentice was to earn journeyman status, which meant being paid for your work by the day. The ultimate goal was to become a master, an honor that allowed the member to have his own business.

The stonemason guilds had another agenda, protecting their trade secrets and controlling their piece of the employment market. Guild membership was restricted, fairly exclusive. When times were fat and there was a cathedral to be erected, you could be sure that more young apprentices would be accepted, more journeymen promoted to master.

And when times were lean, the guilds tightened up. It was a huge honor to belong to a guild, and it was a system that worked well for workers. Guild membership offered both upward mobility and protection for their craftsmen. Some of these guilds became incredibly influential and powerful, which made them, in the eyes of the church, a bit of a threat.

If you're thinking, wait, these medieval guilds sound about as threatening as a piece of toast. Why did the Catholic Church even care that they existed, much less care enough to declare war on them? Well, the church's fury had nothing to do with secret techniques involving flying buttresses or vaulted stone arches. And the Freemasons weren't worshiping the devil or spitting on the crucifix either.

In fact, there was a strong religious component to Freemasonry, one very compatible with Christianity. Just not fully aligned with Catholic doctrine. Do Freemasons believe in a supreme being? Check. Is morality a core tenet of Freemasonry? Check. Do some rituals in Freemasonry have roots in biblical and Christian tradition?

Check. Do Freemasons allow their members to freely practice their own faith? Check. What the Catholic Church objected to was, well, almost everything. For starters, the Freemasons did and do welcome members from all sorts of faith practices. And the church was like, yeah, about that, that's not going to work for us because we're like the one holy apostolic church and all that.

What the Freemasons saw as encouraging belief in God, the Catholic Church saw as leading their members astray from the one true God. Then there was the whole issue of symbols and rituals of Freemasonry, not Christian, not even close, according to the church. Plus, the Freemasons were made to take an oath upon joining and the church feared the ways that oath could conflict with its own teachings.

Fast forward 150 years to Pope Leo XIII, who came for the Freemasons in an even bigger way, accusing them of publicly and openly plotting the destruction of the church. Strong stuff. This pope was sideways over what he called Freemasonry's adherence to naturalism, which in this case doesn't mean the love of flowers and trees.

Naturalism is the idea that human nature and human reason ought in all things to be mistress and guide. The Freemasons deny that anything has been taught by God. They allow no dogma of religion or truth, which cannot be understood by the human intelligence, nor any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of his authority.

Another thing that Pope Leo XIII tied up in knots back in 1884 was the fact that any person practicing any religion could become a Freemason. And even worse than that, religion is held as an indifferent matter and that all religions are alike, which ruins all forms of religion and especially the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot without great injustice be regarded as merely equal to other religions.

Oh, heads surely exploded this. But the pope was on a roll. Look here, said Pope Leo XIII. Let me tell you what else those Freemasons are up to. They want to allow for marriages to be simple civil contracts, fiendish and the children of those marriages, no proper formal religious instruction for those kids. They'll be allowed to choose their own religion when they come of age.

Infernal. As for governments, the Freemasons say that all governments should refuse to even recognize God diabolical. Meanwhile, the Freemasons were like, you know, we don't consider this to be a religion. So maybe settle down because we're so not competing with you. And the Catholic Church was like, oh, you're not a religion.

Then why do your lodges feature altars? Why do you pray to something you call the great architect of the universe? And what's up with all those secret rituals? Hmm. No answer. Cat got your tongue, Freemasons. And just in case the church's position on Freemasonry still wasn't absolutely clear. Pope Leo XIII went ahead and instructed his bishops to take formal action against any Catholic suspected of membership.

But it didn't stop there. The pope also turned the church's inquisitors loose on the problem, too. No one in their right mind, one at the Vatican, inquisitors at their door. Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition. These were church officials empowered not just to gather evidence, but to mete out punishment to those found guilty of heresy.

The Catholic charged with heresy might face a steep penance or maybe prison or execution, though that did tend to be reserved for only the most extreme cases. No matter what the sentence, the inquisitors had their ways of making you talk. Torture wasn't unheard of. The Freemasons knew very well how the church felt, and they had their own ideas about the Vatican's targeting of their membership, as they pointed out in their own Masonic Encyclopedia.

The inquisition was not directed against criminals, but against men accused of heresy, an exceptionally flexible term because the inquisition could decide for itself and on the spot what it meant by heresy. It really wasn't exactly a fair fight. The most powerful institution in the entire world versus a fraternal order.

In proportion to their numbers, the Masons probably suffered more excommunications, tortures and martyrdoms than any other one group. And not just at the hands of the inquisitors. The Society of Jesuits is in theory an army, a church militant. Its members are enlisted. They receive a training. Each is under an oath of allegiance to a general.

They go as troops, singly or in companies, wherever they may be sent to carry out whatever orders are given to them. And sometimes in places they have been ordered to make a war on Freemasonry and others, they have been ordered to join in with it, to weaken or divide it from within by infiltration. It sounds melodramatic, but the whole story of Jesuit dealings with Freemasonry reads like a page out of a detective novel of a rather trashy sort and causes adult men still unbereft of their senses to wonder how other grown up men have indulged in practices so childish.

The Jesuit author of the article on Freemasonry and the Catholic Encyclopedia even charged the Masons with phallic worship. And Pope Leo XIII solemnly assured the whole of France that Masons worship the devil. Melodramatic. But you know, it was the year 2000 before the church even acknowledged the abuses of the Inquisition.

That apology delivered by Pope John Paul was the most sweeping acknowledgement of wrongdoing in the history of the church. Two thousand years worth of wrongdoing, including the Inquisition. That historic apology, though, did not extend to banning the faithful from joining the Freemasons and not in some dusty old way like, oh, that's just tradition and no one pays any attention nowadays.

No, the church came out in 1983 with the renewed prohibition as part of their congregation for the doctrine of the faith. The cardinal in charge of that went on to become Pope Benedict XVI. That's how high level the decision on the Masons was. They laid the rules out. A Catholic who became a Freemason was a Catholic living in a state of grave sin.

Still, even now, in the year 2025, the church is intensely opposed to something that, again, began in the Middle Ages as a craft guild for stonemasons. You know how it is with people, people hate being told what to do, and if you really want to wind them up, tell them the thing they want is forbidden. So it's 1738 and Pope Clement XII has banned the flock from joining the Freemasons and other secret societies.

Problem solved, or so His Holiness thought. The Archbishop Clemens August of Bavaria, the elector of Cologne, had other plans. Now, an elector in the Catholic Church is a member of the College of Cardinals, which means he gets to vote in the papal conclave. So for a man with the power of Archbishop Clemens August to defy the Vatican, that was a huge deal.

In a direct and extremely sassy rebuke to the Vatican, the Archbishop whipped around and created a whole new secret society. He had an assist from a handful of dedicated Freemasons and a pair of German princes. This was a secret society that only Catholics could join. Take that, Pope Clement. It was called the Order of the Pug.

There were many shocking things about the Order of the Pug, but most shocking and scandalous of all, women were permitted to join. So maybe the first big question is, why the Pug, with its precious little smooshed up face and roly poly physique, such a little munchkin dog? Who's my little man? Who's my little man? Well, Pugs were really having a moment in the 18th century as a breed.

They were still fairly new to Europe, having been brought to the continent from China only 200 years earlier. They were the dogs of royalty at first, peeing on the rugs and chewing up the furniture in the House of Stuart in Scotland and in the House of Orange in the Netherlands. By the 18th century, Pugs were the beloved subjects of painters like William Hogarth and Giuseppe Duprat.

Museums are stocked with pictures of the wealthy and the nobility with their Pugs, the little dogs symbolic of class and privilege. An epic Pug story from the time goes like this. Before Josephine de Beauharnais became the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, she was married to a man named Alexander de Beauharnais. He was snatched up during the French Revolution, you know, let them eat cake and off with their heads and all that, and carted off to the guillotine.

Josephine was imprisoned. Though she was allowed visits from her children and their governess, she was kept under the strictest watch and private conversation was impossible. Then the governess had an idea. Would the jailers permit her to bring Josephine's beloved little Pug, Fortune, a long for these visits? The answer was, well, yeah, I guess the governess carefully wrote the news of the day, including plans for getting Josephine released in very small script and concealed the piece of paper inside a new collar for the dog that was made just for this purpose. The group arrived at the Karma prison and truly who can resist the whimsical charms of a Pug, not even an 18th century French revolutionary, apparently they were allowed to enter.

Josephine immediately spotting Fortune's new collar, guessed what was up. She was a clever woman used to the plotting and intrigues of life at the court of Versailles. The dog's presence in the prison was too novel, too unexpected and wearing an unfamiliar collar. And so this is how Fortune the Pug began his career as a canine spy, ferrying messages back and forth from the prison to Josephine's allies, knowing that she hadn't been abandoned, gave Josephine hope and the will to keep going.

And Fortune the Pug became an unlikely hero, though not everyone was impressed. The French poet Antoine Arnault described the Pug like this. Fortune was neither handsome, good natured or nice. He was short legged. His body was long. His collar was more red than fawn colored. His East Pug with a nose like a weasel only represents his distant relations by his black muzzle and corkscrew tail.

In his infancy, he had promised to be handsome, but as he grew up, these promises came to naught. Nevertheless, Josephine and her children were very fond of him. So the order of the Pug Archbishop Clemens August was well versed in the power of symbolism. Pugs, the German word is Mops, which is just so adorable, isn't it?

Anyway, the beloved Mops was known for its steadfast devotion, its loyalty and its trusting nature. Oh, that's perfect, thought the archbishop. Next thing to figure out, the rites and rituals of membership. What elements of Catholicism and Freemasonry could be reconciled and how? There would have to be a hierarchy of leadership, special rites of initiation, and all members would be required to take an oath of loyalty.

Commoners and nobility alike would be welcomed. And in an unprecedented move, a betrayal of both Catholic and Masonic tradition, women would be permitted to join. Even more scandalous and shocking, women would be granted positions of authority. What in the eternal flames of never ending hell was the archbishop up to? A woman with authority?

Vatican heads blew up. This was a church that didn't even permit female altar servers until May 1994. It was outrageous and sinful and every other bad thing those boys could think to call it. Hey, hey, hey, hey, now settle down there, said the order of the Pugs. Yes, women can join and yes, women can be leaders, but no women can ascend to the office of Grand Master.

OK, and that's a lifetime appointment. OK. That said, every lodge had a male master and a female master. They called themselves the Grand Pugs and the pair alternated leadership, swapping positions every six months. Now that that's out of the way, what was the process to become a member of the order of the Pug? Candidates were chosen based on a list of attributes, some of which can definitely be said to describe the Pug dog loyalty, trust, tenderness, sweetness, discretion and humanity.

Plus, of course, Catholic. You had to be Catholic. The ritual to become a member must have really been something to behold. Dressed in flowing white robes with slippers woven of grass, the rite began with the ceremonial fastening of a bronze dog collar around the initiate's neck. The collar symbolized servitude and obedience to the masters.

Next, while down on all fours and blindfolded, the would be members were required to scratch at the door of the chamber to be admitted. Still on hands and knees, the initiate was walked around a special carpet nine times as the already established Pugs of the order barked and howled. This was supposed to test the steadiness of the initiate's nerves.

There was a little history lesson for the would be Pugs and the teaching of the order's catechism, that blending of Catholicism and Freemasonry that the archbishop was so determined to create. Then a blood oath. Initiates mixed drops of their own blood with wine, swallowing it to prove their loyalty. For no known reason, a toilet stood in the center of the room, weird and mysterious, maybe just for the sake of being weirdly mysterious.

Next, the ritual kiss. Initiates had to pucker up and smooch the backside of a pug dog made of porcelain. Thankfully, this was meant to show complete devotion to the order. After that, the master of that particular order will present a long sword called a rapier to male initiates and a hand mirror to female initiates placing a hand on the designated item. The initiates swore a vow of fidelity to the order of the pug.

This was followed by a dramatic command from the master. She like and with that, the blindfolds were removed. The newbies would find themselves surrounded by the membership, each holding either a sword or a mirror in one hand and in the other hand, a pug. Huzzah! Even if you're not much of a joiner, same, you have to admit this would be one very unusual and entertaining evening.

Outside of their secret lodges, members of the order recognized each other by the small silver pug medallion many wore around their necks. There were also secret phrases and slogans and hand signals. It didn't take long for this forbidden society to expand from Germany to France and the Netherlands. I mean, come on, a chance to rebel against the Vatican and pretend to be a pug and being on a secret.

That would be hard to resist at any point in history, much less at a time when the Catholic Church had such an iron chokehold on power. One challenge this particular secret society had was the fact that it wasn't all that secret, which you can understand because how much fun would it be to join and be a pug and go to special pug parties?

The temptation to rub the church's nose in it was just so strong. Plus, the whole female membership thing set tongues to wagging. It simply wasn't done. And yet here were the pugs calling each other not just brother, but brother and sister. Their meetings reflected this scandalous violation of nature, with men and women seated based on their position and hierarchy in the same room at the same table.

In fact, it was ultimately revealed that the order of the pug used a seating strategy better known to us as boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, until the table was full. That something so simple as this was perceived as utter depravity tells you everything about the times the pugs were living in. It all seems harmless and silly, but it wasn't.

The order of the pug not only offered women near full equality, it offered Catholics an alternative to the forbidden Freemasonry, but it did these things outside the church's authority. And that, my little pugs, simply would not do. If you're not a religious person, this may seem like the grossest overreach you can imagine. If you are a religious person, but not a Catholic, this may seem wildly offensive. How dare any one religious organization dictate how you live, how you choose to spend your time, whether or not you decide to wear a dog collar and scratch at a door. Yeah, because you came up in a society that preaches freedom of religion, something that ideally means freedom to and freedom from.

But people, people and their need to control any and everything that threatens the powers that be. And this is exactly what brought the order of the pug to heal. In 1745, the pugs discovered that they had been betrayed. A man they'd welcome into their secret society turned out to be an enemy infiltrator. The result of that mission was a book called The Order of Freemasons Betrayed and the Secret of the Pugs Revealed.

The title sounds much zippier in the original French. The author was a Catholic abbot named Gabriel-Louis Calabre Pérau, who had an axe to grind. He was deeply offended by the order's defiance of the church. The book revealed every one of the order's secret rituals, and you can see the problem. It's one thing to slip into your white robes and dog collars and the privacy of your lodge, barking at each other and scratching the furniture, candlelight and wine, a feeling of shared purpose, the specialness of belonging to an exclusive and hidden club.

It's another thing altogether to be the subject of raised eyebrows and laughter and open mockery. No one likes that. Not now and not 300 years ago, either. Criticism flooded in from all directions. It was almost obscene, wasn't it? Men and women mingling together on all fours, barking and howling like hounds. And the church, already super sideways over Freemasonry, never mind people pretending to be dogs, pounced.

The order of the pug never stood a chance, with very little support and even fewer members. It didn't take long for this odd little organization to crumble, a decade at most. Though it was rumored that a rogue band of pugs in England managed to hold their order together until at least 1902. Some say it was a rogue band of French pugs that kept it all going in the city of Lyon.

But no one knows for certain. Either way, once the balloon of secrecy was popped, it was all over for the pugs. Membership was driven almost entirely by the thrill of the forbidden. There was something so deliciously rebellious about an organization where men and women were free to share each other's company. Something so playful about wearing the silver pug medallion, flashing the secret hand signals. Take that away.

And what was left? The condemnation of the church and all of the social and civic and financial penalties that went with that. Pity the poor Catholics banned from becoming Freemasons, denied the right to wear the bronze collar of the order of the pug. Could the Vatican ever just once please throw the faithful a bone? It did. The Catholics finally got their very own fraternal organization on March 29th, 1882, the Knights of Columbus, founded by a Catholic priest named Michael J. McGivney. Membership was and is limited to Catholic men, though women are allowed to participate in various auxiliaries and in something called the Columbiettes.

I know they mean well and all, but being a Columbiette feels like a pretty dramatic fall from the glorious heights of being a grand pug. Now, the Knights of Columbus are notable for being the only fraternal organization in the United States whose constitution didn't explicitly prohibit black men from joining, which is not to say that there wasn't racial discrimination in practice, because there was. Since new candidates were voted in by the membership of their local chapters, it was easy enough to deny a man entry based on the color of his skin, because bigots will always find a way.

But I guess it was so bothersome to the race obsessed cockroaches that the Knights didn't make an explicit point of excluding minorities that the Ku Klux Klan eventually stuck its pasty face into the conversation. The KKK pushed a conspiracy theory about the Knights of Columbus swearing some crazy blood oath to eliminate the Freemasons and exterminate all the Protestants.

Speaking as someone who once won a regional Knights of Columbus spelling bee, the idea of that crowd of old pop pops wearing hats with giant feathers launching some kind of 21st century crusade is almost as silly as picturing them on all fours barking and scratching at the door. But it took years and multiple lawsuits to get the bed sheet and hoods crowd to quit libeling the Knights.

As of 2024, the Knights of Columbus claim more than 2.1 million members doing nearly 50 million hours of volunteer work a year and donating almost 200 million dollars annually to various charitable causes. Very noble, very generous, super duper Catholic, but sadly, not a pug in sight. Next time on True Weird Stuff, to outsiders, it looked like the most peaceful of places, a religious commune where Germans lived a simple life, faith, farming, family.

The truth of the place was much darker. Was that farm actually a torture and death camp run by a pedophile Nazi flunky who brainwashed his own people and cheerfully helped a dictator disappear his enemies? We're going behind the barbed wire at Colonia Dignidad on the next True Weird Stuff. Special thanks to our voice talents on this episode, Kary "Doc" Bowser and Don Morgan.

One of the things about growing up Catholic, and you and I both know this, and that is the Catholic Church loves their rules. So when I went to parochial school, the high school that I went to, not the seminary school, but the regular Catholic high school I went to, this business of excommunication was endlessly fascinating to us because we'd try to figure out how can we get them to excommunicate us?

So what we said was, so they had demerits. We had a demerit system at school. Ten demerits equal to suspension. Four suspensions equal an expulsion. And two expulsions would equal an excommunication. Did you understand as a kid that being excommunicated didn't let you sleep in on Sunday? You still were expected to show up at Mass?

We just weren't allowed to participate in the sacraments. But, you know, as a kid, when you look at rules, you're like, how can I get around these rules? How can I fly in the face of this? You know, I mean, that's just kids are kids. But apparently everybody feels that way about rules. You know, that German that German archbishop who just thought Pope Leo was out of his mind and banning Freemasonry was like, hold my beer.

I'll show you. I mean, when you think about the Order of the Pugs having been formed by a member of the College of the Cardinals and a couple of German princes, this wasn't some drunken stunt in somebody's basement. So it was a legitimate act of rebellion. Yeah, so that that answers my question in a way, because on the face of it, when you say it's the Order of the Pug, you almost feel like they were doing it the order of the Pug wink wink.

I mean, so they were serious about this or were they doing it so they were flying in the face of the church authority, obviously. But were they doing this kind of in a funny way at all? It's it's so hard for me to believe there wasn't a wink wink, especially when you step back and look at the initiation rituals, you know, the dog collar, the barking, the all fours toilet in the center of the room.

Yeah. I mean, it definitely feels it felt like a very sassy rebellion, like a deliberate in your face Pope and Vatican. But it was people people loved it. And it was for its time. It had a very brief moment, just flared up and was gone. But it was a really popular thing. And and it was so novel. It was so outrageous to have men and women together in this order and have women in leadership. Everything about the Order of the Pug was just an absolute outrage.

So for that reason, Max, I think that if Archbishop Clement August wasn't wink winking, he missed a chance because it feels so intentional, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. So I love the fact I love the fact that there's always this this rules come from fear. Do you know? And I think that there was this sense of fear within the Catholic Church that wait a second, we're not going to have the ultimate authority if anybody comes up in opposition to that, if there's any new organization that we can't control.

And that always leads to problems when you try to control people. And we see it. This is one of those cycles of history that we see repeating over and over and over again, because history is made of people and we're people and people are very slow learners. Right. So you see this like and you see it and you see it all over the world, all different cultures, governments, all different flavors of religion.

You know, we saw with the Ayatollah Khomeini, right, this idea that this faith, this way, no other way. And if you won't accept it with joy in your heart, we'll force it on to you at the point of a gun. It's a dangerous it's a dangerous phenomenon, but one that is so familiar now to humanity that I don't know how anybody when when it's coming doesn't see it coming.

Like, I don't know how it isn't so freaking obvious. But then again, I guess you'd have to have troubled yourself to. I don't know, know anything about your species and about our limited little brief history on this planet, because it is wild to me that the same dynamic that was at play back in the 12th century when the pope was like, no, you can't be Freemasons and here's why we're starting to see that same thing happening again in this country.

And it's just what people do. You know, everything old is new again. It's why my kids are dressing in clothes that I wore in the 90s. And you look at it, you go, well, yeah, everything eventually comes back. So the Freemasons, can we talk about them just for a minute? They do a lot of charitable work. They do an enormous amount of charitable work.

And in fact, you and I saw the Freemason temple. It's this tower that is in Alexandria, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C. Spectacular. Yes. In fact, when we were going to the conference we were going to, we passed that every single day. It's just amazing to me that they decided to have problems with this particular organization.

I could not be more obsessed with Freemasonry. And as a kid who grew up in Catholic school with older grandparents who were old country pre-Vatican II Catholics, I mean, I was pretty much taught as a kid that the Freemasons were in league with the devil. Right. Which, you know, I know you were too, right? I mean, wasn't that sort of like the subtext?

Like, oh, yeah. Well, the thing is, because it's a secret society and they have their rituals and their handshakes or whatever it is that they have, I think because of the mystique of that, you go, what are they hiding? You know, and I think that a lot of that stuff now with the Internet and everything else, all of that stuff kind of comes out.

But before then, you were like, well, what is it that they're hiding? Why are they doing things this way? And it's just it's just a secret society. They're really not up to anything. You know, it's just a fraternal organization. I mean, I think it's a powerful nowadays. I think it's a powerful networking organization.

And we know that like the Shriners are the Shriners, not like in part of Freemasonry, they are, you know, the little phases and the tiny cars and the children, the hospitals and a lot of our founding fathers of Freemasons. We're going to. Yes, here's what's going to I know what's going to come out of this because the History Channel would lose a lot of programming if they didn't have the conspiracy theory Freemasonry to be able to put into programming because there's all kinds of stuff and all kinds of theories about that sort of thing.

So we are aware of that, you know. I worked on a movie right out of college, a low budget P.O.S. direct to video movie that was just it couldn't be worse. Like it was a masterpiece of badness. And one of the backers, one of the financial backers of this wretched thing was a Freemason and he was pretty high up in his lodge.

And the only reason I found that out is because his wife told me and she was like she was Aquanet lipstick and really expensive clothes coming toward you in a cloud of perfume. She was that kind of lady, very, very beautiful, older woman, very well put together and polished. And she would tell me she had a big Southern accent.

She was like, Bill can't be here tonight because he has a meeting at his lodge. What do you mean his meeting is a lodge? Is he an elk? Is he a moose? Is he in the VFW? Bill's a Freemason and he's and I don't remember his title, but they have some pretty wild titles. The next time I saw that man, I was like, I have so many questions.

He just laughed and he said, well, I can't answer them probably. I'll do what I can. And I asked a million questions and he just was wiping tears of laughter off his face at these notions that I had about what was going on inside these Freemason lodges. And if you remember the movie, the Francis Ford Coppola movie, Peggy Sue got married with Nicolas Cage and Kathleen Turner.

Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. That movie, you know, it has stood up to time, even with Nicolas Cage's goofy teeth or whatever he was doing in that. Right. Yeah. That movie has really stood up. And if you have a chance to watch it again, if it pops up on your cable or, you know, if it's on Netflix or whatever, one of the things in that movie is Peggy Sue's grandpa is a member of a lodge.

They don't call them Freemasons, but they're modeled on the Freemasons and they have these secret rituals and lodge meetings and they they enable Peggy Sue to travel in time. And which, you know, feeds into all of these conspiracy ideas about the Freemasons. As soon as you make something a secret, as soon as you make something forbidden, you have fertilized the field for wild, crazy conspiracy theories and there may be someone listening right now who is a grand poobah in some Freemason cult who's like, we drink our grandparents blood like they don't, you know, these fools don't know. But my feeling is it's probably not nearly as exciting as we wish it was.

My first introduction to secret societies was by watching the Flintstones because Fred and Barney belong to some secret society. That was the first time that I had any inkling about that. This is terrible what I'm going to say about the Knights of Columbus. But when I was a kid, I thought that for Catholic men went to drink.

I'm sorry. I may not be wrong. Well, I think there is an element of truth in that. I don't want to cast any sort of doubt on the amount of charitable work that the Knights of Columbus do. I mean, they do tons of charitable work, but that was the thought that I had as a kid because whenever I saw them like I see them as an altar boy and I was around the church a lot and stuff. But whenever I saw them, they seemed to be sitting around drinking.

Well, my my only experience, but it ended up being quite up close with the Knights of Columbus was so I won my school spelling bee. And then the next step was this Knights of Columbus regional spelling bee where a bunch of different Catholic schools sent their school winner. So there were like a dozen of us. Right. And I had never I'd seen the Knights of Columbus dudes at a distance at like parades or like, you know, festivals.

Right. The festival of whatever saint in the parking lot of the school. And for people that have had no experience with this and you're going, isn't that an episode of The Sopranos? Yeah, it's very much close to that. It's very like that. So I'd seen Knights of Columbus out in the wild, but I'd never been in one of their lodges or part of one of their rituals.

So I win this Knights of Columbus spelling bee. And when it was time to present me with my little plaque, you know, declaring me the school winner. The Knights, they were in these dark blue uniforms with hats, with giant plumy feathers. Remember? Oh, yeah. And they and they had swords. And these men, they they looked like everybody's grandpa.

They were all older because even then it was hard to get younger men involved in these kind of organizations. Right. So these old pawpaws in these sort of military theatrical looking uniforms with giant ass feather hats and big, shiny, polished silver swords, they marched onto the stage. Half came from one direction. Half came from the other.

They met in the middle, turned, faced the audience, did some little zhuzhi thing and created an arch with their swords that I got to walk under to get my plaque for winning the spelling bee. How trippy. It was so trippy. And this was this was four months after my father abducted me from the bus stop in Wyoming, put me on a plane and sent me back east to my grandparents.

My entire second half of seventh grade felt like I'd been roofied. It was just one. You didn't need to do any hallucinogens. It was all happening to you in real time, real life. That's why I was such a straight edge kid, because my reality was such an acid trip. I didn't dare do drugs. So there I am. I'm literally like, I don't know if I'm ever going to see my mom again.

I had just been like out of school for months with bronchitis. I weighed about 80 pounds and I'm like bug eyed with wonderment at what's happening to me. And I'm walking under this archway of grandpas with swords to be awarded my plaque as the winner of the spelling bee. So it wasn't until many, many years later as an adult that I really paid any attention to the Knights of Columbus and was pretty shocked at the way the KKK came for them.

Just because they don't get all like misty eyed about the Knights of Columbus just because their charter did not explicitly exclude black men. I mean, women were a no go. Just because their charter didn't explicitly exclude black men did not mean there was a real good chance of a black man becoming a Knight of Columbus because, you know, they could do that voting thing and keep you out.

But it pissed KKK off so much that the Knights of Columbus were not like loud and proud in their racism that the KKK came for the Knights of Columbus. So what we had here was this weird like, you know, West Side Story jets and sharks or whatever. Dudes in bed sheets and pointy hats coming for grandpas in blue costumes and swords. It was terrible, but it was so real the way they tried to keep the Knights of Columbus from integrating.

And there were chapters that didn't need to be told by the KKK not to do that. They were absolutely not going to allow a black man in. But there were other chapters that were like, take a seat, Percale. We do what we do here. We serve. We're the Knights of Columbus. We're here for the Catholic Church. So the whole thing has a really interesting history, doesn't it?

It does. It really does. And your dad wasn't a Knights of Columbus dude? You know, I don't remember that he was. He may have been at some point along the line. I know he was a scout leader. My father was very involved and he did a lot of things. And so he perhaps just didn't have enough time for that because he was a reader at church. I mean, he did all kinds of things.

I mean, I can remember as a kid before I became an altar boy, if the altar boys didn't show up, he'd go up on the altar and he'd fill in. He had no problem. He'd just go to the priest. Want me to help? Yeah. OK, fine. I know what to do. And so my father was always very involved. I want to talk about this idea in this order of the pug that had to be so revolutionary at the time that they were not only permitting women into the organization, but putting them in positions of power and whether that was really a threat to the Catholic Church.

Because even to this day, women, I mean, at some point along the line and my father, a Catholic, his entire life said they're going to have to let women be priests or they're going to have to let them marry. But something going to have to happen. And I think my father was right about that. But women do not have positions of power in the church.

One of the things that I didn't realize, that does not mean that there aren't powerful women who are involved with religious orders, because the seminary school that I went to, the woman who ran the kitchen, the nun who ran the kitchen, she has been put on the path to sainthood because of her influence. Although she didn't have the power, she didn't have the title of being like a bishop or anything like that.

She had so much influence over some of the priests and whatnot in the Catholic Church. They put her on the path to sainthood. So to this day, they still don't have the opportunity to be able to preach from a pulpit or anything else. Only a deacon or a priest can do that. So there's no shortage of truly devout, faithful, holy women in the Catholic faith.

They're just blocked from any sort of voice or leadership. I do feel like we're at one of those pivot points in history where we're going to go a couple of steps back again before we can go forward. It's so tiresome, but this is what humans do. I don't really see that changing anytime soon. Like as a little girl, I would have loved to have been an altar server.

It looked like a really cool gig. No way. It was. I was already past that age when they finally allowed it to happen. Free wine. There was free wine. We used to, my brother and I would take the jug. So it was like a jug. And because we had watched the Beverly Hillbillies, we knew how to drink out of a jug. And they say TV is an education.

I know. We would hoist the jug up on our shoulder and we would drink out of it that way. And so my brother and I knew I was missing stuff. So here's what would happen. My brother and I had to serve as altar boys a lot. They always they always a sweeten brothers. We always were together. So they would have us do stuff.

We would get out of class to go and do funerals and whatnot. Or if there was anything special, because we were reliable altar boys and we were good at what we did. But we would go in there and we would drink the wine. And we'd head back to class with a buzz. I knew I was missing. I knew I was missing. Oh, my God. When I think about this now.

At the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, my elementary school, the Callaghan brothers were what you're talking about. They all looked like Roman gods. It was ridiculous. The genetics in that family, Anthony, Michael and what was the other one's name? Anyway, Joey, there were three Callaghan brothers, Anthony, Michael and Joey, stair-step grades.

And my senior would come and get them and pull them out of school and they'd get to go do exactly what you're talking about. I knew I knew I was getting cheated. Bastards. The thing about the Order of the Pug, it's a very flimsy little story. Like sometimes like next week's episode on Colonia Dignidad is actually a two parter because there's so much there.

Not a lot that the Order of the Pug was a brief little flash on the timeline and not a lot is was really ever known about it. Not a lot was written about it. It wasn't again. It was supposed to be a secret society. And when it broke up, people disappeared from it. So there's there's not a lot out there about it. But it it it's so unusual that it's crazy to me that it should be forgotten like that.

I mean, you have to laugh. What they did with the Order of the Pug's rituals, they created rituals that were what you think happens at like the Elks and the Moose and the Freemasons, but doesn't. The dog collars, the barking, the all fours, all of a scratching at the doors. I mean, they were intentional about they were they were almost like they were a parody.

They were they were themselves and they were serious and committed and they all had a good time. But they were also a parody of these fraternal organizations. It was very meta for the day, you know, for the Age of Enlightenment. It was very meta. And it's such a neat little obscure, neat little footnote in history. But it brings to the foreground something that you'd never really think about if you walk through a museum or an antique store.

What's with all the pug art from that period? And that's it. That's part of it. Yeah, that's part of it, because you would go to someone's home and you wouldn't know necessarily that they were in the Order of the Pug, just like you wouldn't know necessarily if someone was a Freemason. But you'd be ushered into the drawing room or the salon by the butler or whatever, and there would be these objects that kind of signal, hey, we're pugs here.

And then you yourself might be a pug in a different chapter, in a different city, and you might flash your little medallion. And then we we all know that we're pugs together. So the combination of the pug being symbolic of like steadfastness and loyalty, and it was not every piece of pug art is connected to the Order of the Pug, the pug.

So the pug was a powerful symbol for like the British aristocracy and monarchy. There was a powerful symbol of like loyalty and face of rebellion. So there's a lot of pug art, but almost none of it is just for its own sake. Like when you look at a painting from that era or a piece of ceramic or whatever, and it's a pug, you're almost never looking at just the artist like the pugs.

You're almost always looking at a message embedded in that painting. You know, that country squire who's looking at you down the bridge of his nose with his pug at his feet is signaling something to you. There's code to it. And that's just fascinating to think about. Like all those little pug statues. And I don't know if you've ever given that any thought.

I don't know that anyone's ever gone. You know, sure is a lot of pug art from back then. I had I had never thought about any of that. I've seen I have seen a lot of pug art, but, you know, all breeds have their fans. And so I figure, well, you know, these people are just fans of the pug. I had no idea the society existed.

The pug meant the pug was more than a pug in Europe and Great Britain. For a long time, the pug stood for other things. And even even when the pug came to Europe, so the pug had been like the fierce, loyal guard dog of the Chinese emperors. Right. So when the pug came to Europe, it had like it's this whole mystique and, you know, kind of back story, this whole reputation.

They were they were so rare and so precious when they first came to Europe that, of course, they weren't going to be chasing chickens in some farmers, some peasant farmers yard. Of course, they were going to be living at the court of Versailles. And how much did you love the Josephine Boarnet story? Oh, yeah. About being in prison and the pug being a little canine spy.

That is a fascinating part of this as well. I had no idea. Like it was it's just a super it's again, you know, it's just one of those quirky little footnotes that doesn't mean anything like you could have gone your whole life not knowing any of this and you'd have been just fine. But it's a fun little thing to know. And it's a powerful reminder that people in the olden times, you know, hundreds of years ago, we have a hard time remembering that they were people with they had appetites, they had attitudes, they had senses of humor.

You know, they got pissed off when they got bossed around, they chafed under the restrictions of their day, the government, the church, what have you. And they and they pushed back the way people always push back. And so what I love about the Order of the Pug in this whole little story is that it shows you kind of the flesh and blood snarky people underneath those powdered wigs and velvet frock coats.

Which is a neat thing. It is. You don't get to see a lot. It is. But you know what? People are people. It doesn't matter. Weren't you weren't you shocked the first time when you started to read like English literature or something and realize, oh, my God, these people are having sex. I was and enjoying it and enjoying it.

Not just for procreation, but they seem to be they seem to be chasing tail like for funsies. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No idea. Yeah. I didn't think sex was invented till I don't know. The other thing that I like, I like how and we get to we get to experience this a lot working on this show. I like how the interconnectedness of everything, you know, like we did a whole episode on Louis the 14th, the Sun King, the Enema King and the Court of Versailles where we touched on Marie Antoinette and we've touched on Napoleon in our episode, the Casket Girls.

And so we see that all of these historical figures that to us seem very serious and very removed. We see them and we see flashes of their flesh and blood humanity. And and these popes like the Pope Leo was like, I need a rhinoceros as a gift. You can't belong to the Freemasons. Like these, we see that these aren't just historical figures and monarchs and leaders and kings.

And, you know, we see them as people. Which is super, super fun, especially the more like oil painting, powdered wig, the further back you go, the less real they seem. I mean, Max, even Louis the 14th, even when we spent an entire episode in that poor man's anal fistula, you know, we were so up in that man's anal fistula and you still felt very much.

Did you not feel very much that you were dealing with a king in that story? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Whereas with the Order of the Pug, you get like a little bit of a glimpse of the people, the regular people on their hands and knees, barking at each other like dogs. That's the part of it where I went, are they serious?

Oh, just love it. Just love, love, love it. So there you go. That's the Order of the Pug. Kind of we've had some murder and mayhem on the recent episodes. We've had family annihilators and bloodthirsty farmers and just all sorts of mayhem. And sometimes you just need a little palate cleanser. And if you can't have cannibalism, people barking at each other is good, right?

Well, next week. I'm glad you're feeling better. I'm glad you're feeling better and we're up to it this week. Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh, I've been so sick. Thank you for your patience and letting us repeat an episode. Next week, oh my God, we are going, this is a story that I can't believe it's real. It's real. I want you to imagine a guy that quits school at the age of 14.

He's a pedophile. He casts himself as a minister. He ends up running from the law in his native country, but somehow persuades several hundred hardworking, decent German farmers to follow him to another country where he forms a commune that he then rings in barbed, electrified barbed wire and basically turns into a concentration camp.

He practices on his own people and then he's ready for the big show. He's ready to step up to the majors and do the dirty work for one of modern history's most terrible dictators, Augusto Pinochet. This, I mean, this is a Nazi pedophile, funky freak face and what he did and the connections to the life you're living right now are going to melt your brain.

You will be on all fours barking and scratching at the door in disbelief. The Colonia Dignidad not only was a real place, it is a real place and you can go visit it on TripAdvisor or Booking.com. How's that for your next vacation? We're going to take you to the rolling and beautiful farmland of Chile and we're going to go behind the gates at this bizarre Nazi commune.

That's on the next True Weird Stuff. Hit our website TrueWeirdStuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content. Everything True Weird is waiting for you at TrueWeirdStuff.com. And follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia.

The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser. Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call. Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland.

True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash. Copyright 2025 Now! Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered. © 2012 The Ultimate Parody Site. All Rights Reserved.