Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is joining nineteen other chief legal officers from around the nation to demand all information related to an anti-Catholic internal memo from a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) field office in Virginia to be released.
According to the letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray: the memorandum identifies “radical-traditionalist Catholic[s]” as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.”
The memorandum deploys alarmingly detailed theological distinctions to distinguish between the Catholics whom the FBI deems acceptable, and those it does not. Among those beliefs which distinguish the bad Catholics from the good ones are a preference for “the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings,” and adherence to traditional Catholic teachings on sex and marriage (which the memorandum glibly describes as “anti-LGBTQ”)
The letter to Garland and Wray continues to point out alarming points found in the memo, after defining which Catholics are the dangerous ones, the memorandum proposes dealing
with those Catholics through “the development of sources with access,” including in “places of
worship.”In other words, the memorandum proposes recruiting Catholics to enter a sacred house of worship, talk to their fellow Catholics, and report those conversations back to the FBI so that the federal government can keep tabs on the bad Catholics.
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Links of Interest:
- FBI Richmond Field Office – Report on Radical-Traditionalist Catholics 012323
- Full Attorney General Letter
- Chairman Jim Jordan – US House of Representatives – Committee on the Judiciary – Letter to FBI 021623
- Cloud-Lankford Letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray about Catholic Religious Beliefs – Cosigned by Sen. Roger Marshall 021623
- Traditional Catholics and white nationalist groypers forge a new far-right youth movement Salon 051322
- Radical Traditional Catholicism web page for the Southern Poverty Law Center on 021923 (1)
- How Extremist Gun Culture Is Trying to Co-opt the Rosary The Atlantic 081422 (3)
- White nationists get religion – On the far-right fringe, Catholics and racists forge a movement Salon 051223
