A coalition of Republican attorneys general led by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares expressed shock and outrage Friday at a leaked FBI memo that proposed investigating traditional Catholics for links to white supremacy.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Miyares and 19 other Republican AGs said they were “horrified” to learn that the FBI’s Richmond field office had circulated a report that linked “radical traditionalist Catholics” to white supremacists and violent extremism and said the agency should explore intelligence gathering in certain Catholic parishes.
FBI HQ DISAVOWS FBI FIELD OFFICE INTEL REPORT TARGETING ‘RADICAL TRADITIONALIST CATHOLICS’
The report cited a number of left-wing sources, including a Southern Poverty Law Center report, as evidence of the emergence of white supremacy among “radical traditionalist Catholics.” Traditional Catholic religious orders such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, which maintains a parish community in the Richmond area, were listed as possible locations that could warrant surveillance.
The FBI retracted the report Thursday, saying it did not meet the agency’s “exacting standards” and that there would be an internal review. But the retraction did not appease Virginia’s Republican attorney general, who accused the FBI of harboring anti-Catholic sentiments.
“Countless millions were drawn to our country because of that very right,” Miyares wrote. “Indeed, some of our first states were founded as safe havens for religious dissenters. There is no right more sacred to American democracy than the right to worship freely. We are horrified to learn that at least one field office of the FBI apparently does not agree with this proposition. Anti-Catholic bigotry appears to be festering in the FBI, and the bureau is treating Catholics as potential terrorists because of their beliefs.”
Miyares and his 19 counterparts told Garland and Wray that they are “not persuaded” by the FBI’s attempt to withdraw the memo following public outcry and media reports and expressed concern that the agency is surveilling and infiltrating houses of worship.
“Suffice to say we are not persuaded by the FBI’s damage-control efforts,” the Virginia attorney general wrote. “The FBI’s scrubbing of the document from its systems and the purported ‘review’ of the process that created it in no way reassures us that this memorandum does not reflect a broader program of secretive surveillance of American Catholics or other religious adherents, and infiltration of their houses of worship. It assures us only that the FBI is embarrassed at the public revelation of the memorandum’s contents.”
Traditional Catholic communities are typically recognized by their devotion to the traditional form of the Mass that was standard in the Roman Catholic church until the 1960s following the Second Vatican Council. The Mass is celebrated entirely in Latin, with the priest facing away from the congregation in an orientation known as “ad orientem” or “to the east.” A select number of Catholic religious orders, such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, known simply as the “FSSP,” solely celebrate this form of the Mass.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, a spokesman for the FSSP’s North American headquarters said that religious order was “surprised” to hear of their inclusion in the FBI’s memo linking them to white supremacy.
“One American archdiocese recently did a study of the ethnic makeup of its parishes and the result was that the fraternity’s apostolate was the most ethnically diverse parish in that particular archdiocese,” the spokesman said. “The Latin language and timelessness of our liturgies tends to bring together people of diverse racial backgrounds rather than to separate them. Also, the members of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter itself (i.e. priests and seminarians) come from almost every continent and many diverse cultural backgrounds.”
Steve Friend, a former FBI agent and a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, told the Washington Examiner in an interview that the agency only retracted the memo “because they got caught and they’re trying to save face.”
“The FBI has become a political apparatchik for an administration that has certain political leanings that are opposed to pro-life, opposed to support for traditional marriage, and opposed to support for border security,” Friend said. “This calls into question the FBI’s role. Is it charged with protecting and upholding the Constitution of the United States and ensuring the continuity of the government[‘s] operations? Or is it content to just be an enforcement arm for a rogue administrative state that is hell-bent on going after its political enemies?”
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The FBI’s retraction of the memo came the same day that the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held its first hearing. On Friday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) touted the revelation of the memo as further evidence of the government investigating constitutionally protected speech.
A leaked FBI report revealed that the Bureau’s Richmond, Virginia Division was investigating the threat of “white supremacy” among Catholics.
How could that be?
Democrats tell us the government isn’t weaponized against the First Amendment!
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 10, 2023
“A leaked FBI report revealed that the Bureau’s Richmond, Virginia Division was investigating the threat of ‘white supremacy’ among Catholics,” Jordan said in a tweet. “How could that be? Democrats tell us the government isn’t weaponized against the First Amendment!”
