Joey Jo-Jo: I'll just show you a few brief examples. Keep in mind that despite the opposition of Catholicism to Freemasonry, some prominent Catholics did become Masons, and the Masonic lodge did infiltrate the Catholic Church later on. (Freemasonry had an easier time infiltrating the Protestant churches for somer reason, all around the time C.T. Russell, Joseph Smith, and others got their big starts. The Watchtower was only one of many to receive their financing and influence from the Masonic movement and the Illuminists)
"The two systems of Romanism and Freemasonry are not only incompatible, but they are radically opposed to each other" (Freemason's Chronicle, 1884, II, I7). This is so well understood that we are not surprised to know that Masons as a body do not want Catholics in their ranks. "We won't make a man a Freemason until we know that he isn't a Catholic" (Freemason's Chronicle, 1890, II,347).
Now, you have to understand that Freemasonry, which promoted itself under the banner of "liberty, fraternity, and equality" was all about snuffing out the moralists, epitomized by the Christian Church and the aristocracy.
A pamphlet, Freemasonry (revised edition, 1935), published by the Catholic Truth Society, makes quite clear that the solemn oath of secrecy is one of the "two main grounds of objection," the other and apparently more serious one being that freemasonry " tends to undermine belief in Catholic Christianity by substituting for it what is practically a rival religion based on deistic or naturalistic principles."
And it turns out that liberty, fraternity, and equality were not about actual freedom but ended up being another sophisticated system of control, guiding men and women by their passions. The same could be argued for today's predicament of the dominance of liberal ideologies.
"The whole business is more serious than you think. The plot has so carefully been hatched that it's practically impossible for the Church and the Monarchy to escape." —Henry de Virieu (Freemason), 1782.
That the Freemasons had a leading role in both the French and Russian revolutions is undeniable. France was the stronghold of the Catholic Church while Russia was the stronghold of the Orthodox Church under the Christian Tsar. The Illuminati, under Adam Weishaupt, also played a leading role in the revolutions, particularly the sexual revolution, which began with the Marquis de Sade (from whom we get sadism). Illuminism, as a perverse adaption of Catholic confession, was the precursor to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis and, later, espionage. Perhaps this knowledge of the revolutionary nature of Freemasonry gives us some insight into the motivation for the Masonic B'nai Brith's financing of Charles Taze Russell and the early Watchtower. Is not the Jehovah's Witness doctrine revolutionary standing amongst the Catholic and Orthodox Church? Although it does not deconstruct moralism the way the Masons did in the 18th and 19th centuries, it deliberately attacks "Christendom" and goes out of its way to oppose all of its core tenets (grace by faith, divinity of Christ, etc.).
During the revolutionary period, Freemasonry attacked moralism through the press, literature, and, obviously, through the bloody overthrow of "throne and altar." It appears that key doctrines of Illuminism were spread through key writers, like the Marquis de Sade, William Godwin, Abbe Augustin Barruel, etc.
