Steve, you’re on the right track for answers to natural curiosity. A smaller question can turn into a maze quickly, they say.
I am no expert on Masonic-anything in the Church, and avoid the discussion, preferring to lop it off as one more satanic vehicle used against the Church along with every other, of which scriptures warn.
The prickly part for Catholics is the simple story of Fr. Michael McGiviny, the Knights of Columbus, and
seeing the leap into Babylonian sourcery and withcraft intruding on that simpler story, and on poor Columbus.
It’s typical to hear even basic Traditional Roman Catholicism explained mostly by non-Catholics, which for Catholics is naturally tiresome. But, being not to long ago a considered “peculiar people” themselves, Catholics became quite outnumbered by non-Catholic critics, historians, agnostics, etc.
Since Vatican II Catholics
seem less harshly criticised by modern media, because the New Order Mass and social direction is no longer “peculiar” at all, but quite more pedestrian and much more compatible with the world and the marketplace. The VII fruits fulfilled, regardless of the objections.
All this to hope you weight maybe even equally, 50-50, pre-60’s sources who are actually Catholic within the scope of your study. Its very interesting.