The Knights of Columbus is just a pious society, originally a burial and mutual aid society for Catholic men in the US, that has no idependent creed or beliefs of its own. Knights believe what the Church believes, and in fact its rules and practices have to be approved by the Church, and it has Catholic priests as its chaplains. One of the reasons it has “grand knights” and things like that is because it was intended to give upwardly mobile Catholic men an alternative to Masonry.
Freemasonry has an entirely different set of beliefs that actually have very little to do with Christianity. Freemasons are deists and also believe in having a small, select group of those “in the know” who get admitted to their “mysteries.”
In the case of mainstream Protestantism, many of the members of these churches are little more than deists, anyway, and see Jesus basically as a prophet; their beliefs wouldn’t be inconsistent with Freemasonry or even Islam, for that matter. Note, I’m not saying anyone on this thread is like this, simply that mainstream Protestantism as a whole barely qualifies as Christian anymore.
Freemasonry in the US does not have to be aggressive because there is really not much a faith system that would present it with any opposition, at any rate, among the social classes it usually targets. It’s basically just a social club for Protestants who are seeking status in smaller towns and communities.
However, in Europe, many Freemasons are Communists or Communist supporters, and they are all radically opposed to the Catholic Church. And they take their odd beliefs and rites very seriously and usually insist, for example, on being buried with Masonic rites and not from a church, if they happen to be members of one.
This would be you speculating about something you could only know if you were a sworn Mason. In fact, everything anyone can reliably know about Masonry is known to every Master Mason (that would be, you know, all of them). So it's not select in the least. If some Masons are plotting the downfall of the Church, then they should be rooted out like you would root out deadwood from any organization of whatever degree of exclusivity. But no Mason of my acquaintance has the least interest in world domination. We'd like to get the Past Masters to show up to meeting once in a while. That seems a big enough challenge at the moment.
“However, in Europe, many Freemasons are Communists or Communist supporters, and they are all radically opposed to the Catholic Church. And they take their odd beliefs and rites very seriously and usually insist, for example, on being buried with Masonic rites and not from a church, if they happen to be members of one.”
That is strange since it is the Catholics in this country that have the communists (Ted Kennedy, John Kerry etc.)
I have not heard of any communist Masons here.