Please disable your Ad Blocker to better interact with this website.

News Clash

FBI Retracts Memo That Labels Catholics Attending Latin Mass As Domestic Extremist Threat

Photo of K. Walker K. WalkerFebruary 13, 2023
41 5 minutes read

The document labels traditional Catholic (and Christian) views of abortion and marriage as “anti-woman” and “anti-LGBTQ” along with a number of other criticisms.

An intelligence memo from an analyst in the FBI’s Field Office in Richmond, Virginia dated January 23, 2023, listed Catholics who attend the Latin Mass among the group of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extermists (RMVE). The FBI even gave them their own label — Radical Traditional Catholics (RTC).

[CLICK TO BROWSE COLLECTION]

Kyle Seraphin, a recently-suspended FBI agent who still has contacts within the bureau, first reported on the memo on Uncover DC.

An intelligence analyst within the Richmond Field Office of the FBI released in a new finished intelligence product dated January 23, 2023, on Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVE) and their interests in “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” or RTCs. The document assesses with “high confidence” the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church.
The acronym, new to many in the Domestic Counterterrorism field, comes with a footnote by the writer explaining RTCs are “typically characterized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council.” The writer makes an unsubstantiated leap that a preference for the Catholic Mass in Latin instead of the vernacular and a number of more traditional views on other world religions can amount to an “adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.” This writer draws the important distinction between “traditional Catholics,” who simply prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings, and RTCs, who espouse “more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.”
Source: Uncover DC

Kyle Seraphin appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Thursday saying that he believes that this is just the beginning of targeting Christians more widely.

The intelligence document was highly partisan and relied on reports by left-leaning news outlets and the highly suspect and overtly progressive Southern Poverty Law Center.

https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1623356906919153666?s=20&t=i4Kl1ZmtczkcgaYpypcy2A

That would be the same Southern Poverty Law Center that inspired attacks on Christian organizations and perhaps the shooter that opened fire during a Congressional Baseball practice hoping to gun down Republicans.

In 2020, the Republican National Convention put forward a resolution condemning the SPLC for targeting conservatives.

And it isn’t just the RNC. In 2019, The Washington Post ran an opinion piece by veteran journalist Jim Tharpe questioning what the heck happened to the SPLC.

It would seem that far-left activists have hijacked the prominent civil rights organization to target those on the right, and are fundraising off of the SPLC’s reputation while wearing its branding as a skin suit.

Back to Seraphin’s excellent article:

The attached appendices refer to a number of articles and the out-of-FBI-policy Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) at the end of the document. For example, Appendix D is a direct copy of the SPLC list of “Radical Traditional Catholicism Hate Groups,” including the web address accessed. The SPLC appears to be a source for the intelligence analyst’s beliefs that RTCs exist and that they are anti-Semitic. The SPLC description for this “hate group” states RTCs “may make up the largest single group of serious anti-semites in America.” Often in the intelligence world, this type of statement without any established evidence is often followed by the acronym “NFI” or “No Further Information” to indicate it is an unsubstantiated opinion. Additionally, SPLC states RTCs “embrace extremely conservative social ideals with respect to women.” Nothing reported by the SPLC indicates the number of adherents to this alleged ideology nor any instances of violence. This lack of evidence and blatant partisan blindness is one of many reasons the FBI has distanced itself from the SPLC as a source in the past 10 years.The intelligence product includes endnote citations from two other sources: the far-Left online magazine Salon and the equally left-leaning The Atlantic. The Salon articles cited are typical of partisan click-bait writing: “Traditional Catholics and White Nationalist Groypers Forge a new Far-Right Youth Movement” and “White Nationalists Get Religion: On the Far-Right Fringe, Catholics and Racists Forge a movement.” These articles were released a day apart as a series but include substantially the same information. The articles offer only circumstantial suggestions of affiliations between inflammatory figures like Milo Yiannopoulos and Nick Fuentes and a man pictured standing on the steps of a Catholic church in New York after the Dobbs decision. The Salon writer makes the wild leap that using a photo of someone at a church indicates the pictured individual or his beliefs are relevant within a religious institution with 70 million adherents in the United States alone and over 2000 years of tradition and history.
Source: Uncovered DC

This is the same FBI that went after concerned parents at school board meetings, called on social media platforms to censor conservatives by suggesting they were Russian agents, and is targeting pro-life protesters.

The FBI has ignored attacks on churches and pro-life organizations by pro-abortion activists. They also didn’t seem in much of a rush to investigate the sexual abuse claims by gymnasts against Larry Nassar. We’ve also seen a number of mass shooters who were “known to the FBI” prior to committing their heinous acts.

We know that the FBI was involved in the Whitmer kidnapping plot, but the agency won’t admit if they played a role in the January 6th riot in D.C.

It really looks like the FBI’s focus on domestic terrorism threats doesn’t have a similar focus on left-wing groups despite Antifa and BLM rioting nonstop for much of the spring and summer of 2020.

Seraphin tweeted that the FBI retracted the memo because they were embarrassed by it, not because they wouldn’t approve of the targeting of traditional Catholics.

The only proper response to this is calling them out for it and mockery… both of which happened on Twitter.

Social media has a lot of downsides, but when things like this happen, you can see the value of having an immediate condemnation and shaming of the FBI brass for what appears to be overt bias based on political and religious beliefs.

Sources:

1. Seraphin, Kyle. “The FBI Doubles Down on Christians and White Supremacy in 2023.” Uncover DC. February 8, 2023. https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/02/08/the-fbi-doubles-down-on-christians-and-white-supremacy-in-2023/

2. Bedard, Paul. “Support for Southern Poverty Law Center links Scalise, Family Research Council shooters.” The Washington Examiner. June 14, 2017. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/support-for-southern-poverty-law-center-links-scalise-family-research-council-shooters

3. O’Neil, Tyler. “Focus on the Family Blamed for Club Q Shooting Despite Jim Daly Condemnation, Suspect’s Nonbinary Identity.” The Daily Signal. November 29, 2022. https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/11/29/blood-your-hands-christian-group-vandalized-splc-suggests-hate-inspired-club-q-shooting/

Psalms of War: Prayers That Literally Kick Ass is a collection, from the book of Psalms, regarding how David rolled in prayer. I bet you haven’t heard these read, prayed, or sung in church against our formidable enemies — and therein lies the Church’s problem. We’re not using the spiritual weapons God gave us to waylay the powers of darkness. It might be time to dust them off and offer ‘em up if you’re truly concerned about the state of Christ’s Church and of our nation.

Also included in this book, Psalms of War, are reproductions of the author’s original art from his Biblical Badass Series of oil paintings.

This is a great gift for the prayer warriors. Real. Raw. Relevant.

Photo of K. Walker K. WalkerFebruary 13, 2023
41 5 minutes read
Photo of K. Walker

K. Walker

ClashDaily's Associate Editor since August 2016. Self-described political junkie, anti-Third Wave Feminist, and a nightmare to the 'intersectional' crowd. Mrs. Walker has taken a stand against 'white privilege' education in public schools. She's also an amateur Playwright, former Drama teacher, and staunch defender of the Oxford comma. Follow her humble musings on Twitter: @TheMrsKnowItAll and on Gettr @KarenWalker