Dear Brad C.,
For the Catholic Church, the difficulty comes from as much as what is NOT said as what is said.
The protests of Masons notwithstanding, it is my understanding that the ceremonials of the Lodge do impart lessons with religious content, urging men to recognize the Creator through His natural works.
For Catholics, the recognition of God through His creation is called natural revelation. We believe that all men can come to know of the existence of God through reasoned apprehension of natural revelation. And we believe that this knowledge is a good thing.
However, we believe that men should not be taught about natural revelation without also being taught about Divine revelation. At least, we don't believe that Catholics should be taught this way. We believe that the result of this sort of teaching is the error of naturalism, seeing only the natural revelation, and rejecting the Divine revelation.
Personally, I used to give short shrift to this argument. How can one condemn an organization for teaching that part of the truth that is most universally accepted, while leaving alone that part of the truth that is most universally controverted?
However, over the years, I've encountered a fair number of "Catholic Masons." These were Catholic men who had become Masons in good faith, not fully realizing the Church's prohibition against Masonic membership. In conversing with these men, they were initially unbelieving that Catholics may not hold Masonic membership. However, with a little bit of time, they all came to accept that the Catholic Church authentically prohibits Catholics from belonging to the Lodge.
But I then noticed a curious, and very alarming thing in these men. Almost without exception, these men began to bitterly ridicule the Catholic Church and Catholic Faith. They used naturalistic arguments against various doctrines and dogmas, including the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, the Real Presence of the Eucharist, even the Resurrection.
These incidents happened years apart, and the men with whom I conversed didn't know each other, or belong to the same Lodges. Nonetheless, every single one of them chose to remain a Mason and to leave the Catholic Church, on the way, rejecting most of Divine revelation.
Whether this is an intentional result of Freemasonry or not is way beyond my ability to discern. I can only look at the results. It appeared that these men were so imbued with the natural revelation that they had come to disdain the Divine revelation, just as the Catholic Church had said men would.
I don't know whether the poster MarkBsnr was a Mason before becoming a Catholic, or vice versa. If the former, he is the first Catholic man to become a Mason, and to ultimately reject Masonry, of whom I'm aware.
sitetest
There are suppositions and premises which I do not believe in, and it kinda irks me that I had to read through publications that have absolutely convinced me here on this site and not had realized it before.
Working together with men of other faiths is not the point; assuming a deist framework utilizing the Christian Bible and twisting the meaning of many portions of it, is.