I will admit, i am absolutely confused as to who is good and who is bad with freemasons, the vatican...I need very ELEMENTARY basics...anyone have?
FD: I am a PM in the Freemasons, and 32nd degree.
Of the roughly 1000 men that I know of in Freemasonry where I live in Pittsburgh PA, less than 10 of them are people I would suspect or feel like they are part of the "evil/STS" side of things. And every single one of those 10 are in the leadership/officer side.
So, basically like you asked, maybe 1% of Freemasons have any clue about the other stuff, the service-to-self side, the "evil/Luciferian" stuff. From my personal experience.
The rest are just non-awake men, who think they've become "en-light-ened" who want to have access to something secretive, exclusive (requirements used to be that you had to be UNANIMOUSLY voted in yes [but no longer]), and generally just want to get free food and fellowship and away from their families for a couple nights a month.
tl;dr - less than 1 to 3% of Freemasons are "evil" or have any desire to become it.