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Yes, the NMJ has its own Council, based in Lexington, Massachusetts.
So the Lodge of Perfection degrees are much different? I'd be interested to see some of them worked in the Southern Jurisdiction. From what I know Rose Croix is quite similar in both Jurisdictions, though from what I have read Rose Croix was highly re-worked by Pike. A.E.Waite was very critical of it in his excellent "Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry" though one must realize that Waite was writing nearly 100 years ago--though quite a time after Pike re-worked the Scottish Rite. Interestinly, Waite's criticism goes to the use of Christian allegory while at the same time obscuring it. It would seem Waite's sense would be to either keep one or the other, especially since there are Templar implications. Who knows. So many people have had their hands on Freemasonry and especially the appendent degrees over the last couple of centuries there is really no "purity" to be found, something Waite I think really got right in his essays on Scottish Rite/ Ancient and Accepted Masonry.
It is also fair to say that Waite--who practiced Masonry both in Britain and in the US--appears to be generally critical of what he refers to as "High Grade Masonry" in general and especially to anything that smacks of Templars or "ridiculous claims and empty titles" regarding to knighthood or "princes". While he's considered by many to be scholarly, and I agree, he certainly has his biases. What keeps Waite scholarly is that his work is well-researched an plainly spoken--as plainly spoken as someone writing in about 1920 might be, at least in his last edition of his Encylopaedia, given that many of the papers which comprise it were written much earlier but clearly AFTER Pike, whom he does praise as a Mason who should "remain in the memory of Masons throughout the world".
Sorry for the long response, but my last on Waite's "Encylopaedia": it is the very best and fairly concise (it spans about 8 pages) expository on the Leo Taxil hoax I have yet read and includes the most important (up to the time of publication, again, nearly 100 years ago) distillation of the Papal Bulls and other screeds against Freemasonry by the Roman Church and how they were based on the Taxil hoax.
