The FBI Targeted Traditional Catholics Because They Will Never Accept The Left’s Pagan Morality
It turns out the FBI memo targeting Catholics as potential domestic terrorists wasn’t limited to “a single field office,” as FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed under oath last month to Congress. In addition to the Richmond, Virginia, field office, the agency’s Los Angeles and Portland offices were also involved.
The memo, which was leaked earlier this year, singled out what it called “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” who attend parishes that offer the Latin Mass, which the FBI seems to think are hotbeds of “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists.”
Outrageous as it was for the FBI to try to monitor, surveil, and investigate American citizens based on their religion, it appears to have been a coordinated effort — an effort that Wray lied to Congress about, according to a newly unredacted memo obtained by House Republicans after months of FBI stonewalling.
Setting aside the absurd pretext that traditionalist Catholic parishes are fonts of “white supremacy” and potential terrorism, it should come as no surprise that the FBI would target Latin Mass-attending Catholics.
Why? Because the FBI has become a tool of the permanent regime in Washington, which will tolerate no resistance to their ideology, which is best understood as pagan morality. Abortion, gender ideology, and the thinly-veiled racism of critical race theory in particular are considered sacred by the regime. Traditional Catholics — or “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” in FBI parlance — oppose these things and will never accept them.
That’s the real reason the FBI was targeting Catholics. It had nothing to do with the alleged threat of “white supremacy,” as the leaked memo claimed. Anyone with a passing familiarity with Latin Mass parishes knows they are just about the last place in America where you’re likely to encounter white supremacists.
The reason why is that Catholics who attend Latin Mass tend to take the Catholic Church’s teachings seriously. Unlike supposedly “devout” Catholic Democrat politicians, including President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Latin Mass-attending Catholics oppose abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, and racism in the guise of CRT.
They oppose these things not because of politics, but because they accept the Catholic Church’s teachings on marriage and homosexuality, as well as the doctrine of imago Dei, that all people are created in God’s image, regardless of race or sex, and therefore all are equal in the eyes of God. This doctrine, by the way, is one of the pillars of Western civilization, without which our entire system of constitutional self-government would collapse.
In fact, it’s precisely this doctrine that so offends the FBI and the regime it serves. Dividing people according to immutable and unchosen characteristics such as race or sex is what the political left wants to do. It’s what drives the left’s obsession with skin color and so-called gender identity. Instead of a republic of free and equal citizens, the regime wants a collection of favored and disfavored groups to rule over, pitting them against one another while doling out rewards and punishments based on alleged guilt and grievance.
Faithful Christians will never accept this. Nor will they accept abortion as a fundamental right that trumps all others, or the castration and sterilization of children in the name of transgenderism. Catholics who accept and obey the church’s teachings on human sexuality, the dignity and rights of the unborn, and the equality of all people before God — teachings that are unchanged and unchangeable — will never submit to the regime or adopt its pagan morality.
Understood in that light, the FBI is right to treat traditional Catholics as a threat. If your goal is to force the country to accept abortion, transgenderism, or race essentialism, then yes, Catholics — especially Catholics who attend Latin Mass — are going to be a problem for you. You’re going to want to keep an eye on them, maybe infiltrate their parishes with informants and spies. Maybe tap their phones. Maybe more.
In order to pull that off under the guise of a legitimate federal law enforcement investigation, you also might have to pretend you’re doing it for fear of “white supremacy,” which Biden himself has named as the No. 1 threat facing America today. What better excuse could the FBI have to monitor Christians than stopping white supremacists from launching terrorist attacks?
Three FBI field offices were involved in drafting this memo. How many hundreds of FBI agents and supervisors had a hand in crafting it? How many saw it? Those are questions Wray is going to have to answer. But he won’t have to tell us why the FBI did it in the first place. We already know.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
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