Catholics throughout the USA were appalled in February 2023 upon hearing the news of a document leaked from the Richmond, Virginia FBI office that targeted traditional Catholics for surveillance. Kyle Seraphim, a former FBI special agent, leaked a memo created by an analyst in the Richmond Virginia FBI Field Office warning that “traditionalist” Catholics posed an extremist threat and could be considered as potential terrorists. The document, which was of a type known as a “domain perspective,” implied that individuals who hold traditional Catholic beliefs were somehow linked with and “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.”
In this document, which can be found in largely unredacted form on the House Judiciary Committee web page [1], traditional Catholics were singled out as people who are pro-life and pro-family, and who believe in a biological basis for distinguishing between male and female. Although all Catholics supposedly hold these positions, “traditional” Catholics, those who attend the Traditional Latin Mass, were the only ones identified as potential domestic terrorists. We know from a widely-published study conducted in 2018 by Fr. Donald Kloster [2] that Catholics who attend the Traditional Latin Mass are practically in universal agreement with what the Church teaches on issues involving human life, contraception, and marriage.
Fr. Kloster’s study shows, by percentage, an enormous gap between those who attend the Latin Mass vs. those who attend the Novus Ordo in terms of adherence to Catholic doctrine. What this means is that, in this classified FBI memo that was expected never to be seen by the public, the analyst proposed the targeting of a sub-culture within the Catholic Church that actually complies with what the Church teaches. The leaked memo suggests that this “traditional” category of Catholics poses a danger, and that this alleged danger presented opportunities for the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of threat mitigation. The document was laced with acronyms such as “RTC” for “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” and “RMVE” for “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.”
This memo was developed under the shroud of secrecy. Had it not been for the courage of a small group of whistleblowers who chose to expose this obvious assault on fundamental Constitutional rights, we would know nothing about it and it would be considered a sound piece of analysis and it would be used as a basis for enacting widespread surveillance.
The two FBI employees who co-authored the memorandum told FBI internal investigators that they knew the sources cited in the memorandum had a political bias—sources including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and The Atlantic.
The analyst who produced this memo accidentally reveals that he knows absolutely nothing about the people he is slandering from behind the curtain of secrecy. In just a few lines he reveals the weakness of his case:
Ultimately, there may be limits to the level of engagement between RTCs and other far-right white nationalists. For example, many RTCs consider other forms of Christianity to be heretical and an over-emphasis on white US nationalism may be off-putting to RTCs of different ethnicities and countries of origin. Conversely, deep-seated anti-Catholicism remains a characteristic of many far-right white nationalists.
Had the analyst done his homework, he would know that the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2089) defines other forms of Christianity to be heretical. All who claim to follow Church teaching supposedly believe this, but the poorly-informed FBI analyst seems to think it’s just a belief held by traditional Catholics. On the contrary, these “RTCs,” or “Radical Traditionalist Catholics,” are simply adhering to what is explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Reading further into this paragraph, it’s interesting to see the analyst’s observation that “…an over-emphasis on white US nationalism may be off-putting to RTCs of different ethnicities and countries of origin.” This is an admission that traditional Catholics are of varying ethnicities and countries of origin.
If this is true, which of course it is, how can such a diverse group be linked to racially motivated extremists? Which race do they favor? Reading further, the analyst notes that “…deep-seated anti-Catholicism remains a characteristic of many far-right white nationalists.” Here he is indirectly acknowledging that “far-right white nationalists” are not to be easily found among traditional Catholics. If “far-right white nationalists” have a tendency toward “deep-seated anti-Catholicism,” then what is the basis for this effort by this analyst to link any Catholics to such a group?
Deep-seated anti-Catholicism, however, does appear to be a motive behind the actions of this particular analyst and all in the FBI who saw this document and thought nothing of it until it was made public. The document specifically mentions both the FSSP and the SSPX. In one footnote we find information lifted directly from both the FSSP and SSPX websites, detailing information about their “houses of worship in the FBI Richmond AOR.”
The document lists the SSPX chapels: Immaculate Heart of Mary and Our Lady of Fatima, providing addresses of the chapels and phone numbers for the coordinators. It then goes on to provide the address and phone number for the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary. It provides the address and phone number for the FSSP apostolate, St. Joseph Parish. Also, the Diocese of Richmond Pastoral Center was listed as a point of contact.
What is the purpose of this detailed information? The memo proposes to “Engage in outreach with the leadership … to sensitize the congregation to the warning signs of radicalization and enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.” Stated simply, this is a proposal to enlist the assistance of the priest and/or the congregation in looking for suspicious characters in the congregation. The document also proposes “…to develop new sources with the placement and access to report on RMVEs frequenting RTC social media platforms/forums/websites, RMVEs currently attending RTC places of worship, or RMVEs expressing an interest in attending RTC places of worship. In other words, the proposal is to spy on the “places of worship” in which people practice their Catholic Faith by attending Mass in the old Rite and believing what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches. This would require the development of sources who would be responsible for reporting on any “Racially Motivated Violent Extremists” hanging around such congregations. This absurd proposal comes with the admission, previously noted, that it is highly unlikely that any such characters are to be found.
The memo’s author does not describe what he means by “anti-Semitic discourses”, but in recent years we see that any critique of the policies of the Israeli state is considered, by some, to be “anti-Semitic discourse.” Is that what the analyst is referring to? Is this just a tool by which those who benefit from constant conflict in the Middle East are going after a group of Christians who have the moral courage to challenge their nation’s foreign relations policies?
The following paragraph is included in an apparent attempt to justify this outrageous proposal:
Potential criminality exhibited by certain members of a group referenced herein does not negate nor is it a comment on the constitutional rights of the group itself or its members to exercise their rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The FBI does not investigate, collect, or maintain information on U.S. persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment.
It’s good to know, after seeing the detailed plan to set up an informant network by an FBI analyst who believes that our core convictions are all wrong, that the proposal to monitor of our “places of worship” is not a violation of the First Amendment.
The document lists, in Appendix D, “nine RTC hate groups operating in the United States in 2021 as defined by the Southern Policy Law Center, followed by the location of their organizational headquarters” and in this list we find none other than The Remnant/The Remnant Press, Forest Lake, Minnesota. The Remnant has been on the highly discredited SPLC “hate map” for decades, but we have no insight into the standards by which this or any other organization is determined to be a “hate group.” Nor does it matter.
At some point it begins to become clear what this may all be about. The paragraph at the top of Page 4 ends with this:
Much of the interaction between far-right white nationalists and RTCs takes place online, and adherents of RTCs and other far-right white nationalist groups frequently share language and symbolism, such as crusader references or anti-Semitic discourses.
Note, first of all, the language “…RTCs and other far-right white nationalist groups….” This particular wording implies that, in the mind of the struggling FBI analyst who composed this document, that “RTCs” (people who attend the Latin Mass) are a subset of the general category “far-right white nationalist groups.” Setting that aside, the salient point in this sentence is that there are “anti-Semitic discourses.”
The author does not describe what these discourses are, but in recent years we see that any critique of the policies of the Israeli state is considered, by some, to be “anti-Semitic discourse.” Is that what the analyst is referring to? Is this just a tool by which those who benefit from constant conflict in the Middle East are going after a group of Christians who have the moral courage to challenge their nation’s foreign relations policies? It’s not clear, because no examples are provided.
In the wake of the immediate backlash that followed the leaking of the document, the FBI claimed to have taken the document down and purged it from their system. They issued a public statement claiming that it “does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI.” On February 16, 2023, the House Judiciary Committee wrote to FBI Director Wray requesting documents and information regarding the FBI’s targeting of traditional Catholic Americans for our beliefs. [3] The FBI failed to respond, so a second letter was sent on March 20, 2023, to which the FBI sent a heavily redacted response that was largely unhelpful, but it did provide a few additional clues as to the nature of what was going on behind the curtain of secrecy.
The Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, then issued a subpoena on April 10, 2023 to compel FBI Director Christopher Wray to produce additional material regarding the memorandum. The FBI responded on the last possible day to comply, on April 28, with an additional 248 pages of documents. I have not been able to obtain copies of these documents, so we have no clue as to the contents. On August 22, 2023, the Judiciary Committee received a briefing from the FBI’s Inspection Division describing the internal review process, and following that briefing the FBI provided an additional 31 pages of documents. At no point in this process did the FBI provide the names of the FBI analyst(s) who were involved in drafting, reviewing, approving, or disseminating the memo, and they consistently indicated that it was the work of a single field office.
Had it not been for the leaking of the document and the immediate backlash, it would have remained in an FBI-wide system as a legitimate piece of threat analysis. Furthermore, FBI officials in the Richmond office to convey it to other field offices so that everyone could be aware of this very dangerous threat posed by Catholics praying in Latin.
Ten months after this memo was revealed, on December 4, 2023, a report was issued by the House Judiciary Committee entitled “The FBI’s Breach of Religious Freedom: The Weaponization of Law Enforcement Against Catholic Americans.” The document was assembled by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. [3] As this report points out, throughout the process of drafting, reviewing, approving, and eventually removing the FBI memo there were numerous errors at every step. Some of these errors included:
- “…there was no legitimate basis for the memorandum to insert federal law enforcement into Catholic houses of worship.”
- The “FBI employees could not define the meaning of an RTC when preparing, editing, or reviewing the memorandum.”
- The two FBI employees who co-authored the memorandum … told FBI internal investigators that they knew the sources cited in the memorandum had a political bias—sources including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and The Atlantic.
- “The Committee and Select Subcommittee’s oversight shows that the FBI abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists. The Committee and Select Subcommittee discovered that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment and the FBI even proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership. Not only did the FBI propose to develop sources, but it already interviewed a priest and choir director affiliated with a Catholic church in Richmond, Virginia for the memorandum. Most concerning of all, without the disclosure of the whistleblower, the Richmond memorandum would still be operative in FBI systems, violating the religious liberties of millions of Catholic Americans.”
The report goes on to point out that, had it not been for the leaking of the document and the immediate backlash, it would have remained in an FBI-wide system as a legitimate piece of threat analysis. Furthermore, FBI officials in the Richmond office retained a desire to keep this information in the system and convey it to other field offices so that everyone could be aware of this very dangerous threat posed by Catholics praying in Latin.
I personally called an old friend who had spent about two and a half decades as a Special Agent with the FBI after our short time together in the Army in the 1980s. Although he had been retired from the FBI for several years prior to the leaking of the Richmond memo, he assured me that it was just a case of an analyst producing a terribly bad piece of work, and that he had never seen any evidence, in any field office he had worked in, of an operation in which Catholics are placed under surveillance.
He is himself a practicing Catholic. I asked him whether Kyle Seraphim would have been in serious trouble as a result of leaking the document, to which he affirmed that leaking classified information was a serious crime. In other words, he would not have been able to tell me if there was a long-existing program within the FBI for monitoring and surveilling traditional Catholics, because by doing so he would have been committing the same crime.
It wasn’t long before new information demonstrated that it was not, in fact, the product of a single field office. The Senate Judiciary Committee released a report [4][5] that showed that:
“The files contradict sworn testimony from then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, who in 2023 described the infamous Richmond memo targeting “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” as an isolated incident. In reality, it was sent to over 1,000 employees and coordinated with at least four field offices.”
“…the FBI analysts in Richmond also consulted with the Louisville, Portland, and Milwaukee field offices as they prepared the Richmond memo.”
As of December 5th, 2023, when Senator Grassley directly questioned Christopher Wray and he was still continuing to pretend that it was the single product of a single field office. From the Senate Judiciary Committee report: “Director Wray’s testimony was inaccurate not only because it failed to reveal the scope of the memo’s production and dissemination, but also because it failed to reveal the existence of a second, draft product on the same topic intended for external distribution to the whole FBI. That draft product was intended for distribution as a Strategic Perspective Executive Analytic Report (SPEAR). It was clearly a separate product, since it involved a different planned distribution to the whole Bureau, and a different chain of review, through the Counterterrorism Division. It also contained different content from the internal Domain Perspective, notably deleting references to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Nevertheless, this draft external memo repeated the unfounded link between traditional Catholicism and violent extremism that was present in the internal Domain Perspective. It concluded that, “RMVE [racially and ethnically-motivated violent extremism] in RTCs [“radical-traditional Catholicism”] is likely to increase . . . .” This shows once again that Director Wray’s claim the Richmond analysts produced a “single product” was false.”
To this date we have been informed of no disciplinary action. We have not heard of the analysts being fired, and we have not had closure on this issue. All we have had is revelations that the initial FBI public relations knee-jerk response, that this memo was the work of a single field office, was an absolute lie. This raises an obvious question: what else are they lying about?
Chicago lawyer Liz Yore submitted FOIA requests to the FBI in late March of this year. To summarize the requests, we asked for:
– underlying documents, memoranda, and communications related to the FBI-nationwide investigation of Traditional Catholics
– documentation that justifies the designation of traditional Catholics as a threat
– names of government officials who initiated, and participated in the compilation and submission of information or intelligence regarding this investigation
– names of anyone in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy and clergy that supported, aided, or requested this investigative effort to target traditional Catholics
– documentation that describes in detail “New Mitigation Opportunities” set forth in the Richmond memo.
– training materials, power points, or manuals which clarify the alleged threat
– documentation, video, audio recordings relating to observations of traditional Catholics.
Within a couple of weeks, the FOIA requests were rejected for being too broad and for requesting third party information.
We have a right to all of the documents that have been turned over to Congress, regardless of their level of classification. These documents demonstrate a particular form of abuse by our government, in which a group of Catholics are slandered and misrepresented under the shroud of secrecy by a secret police unit whose goal is to infiltrate our places of worship and place us under surveillance. All such documents should be declassified and released to the public. From [3] we also find out that on April 28, 2023 the Bureau was forced, by subpoena, to produce “…an additional 248 pages of documents in response to the subpoena.”
Where are these documents? These should be declassified and made public with no redactions. If any FBI employees are embarrassed by the revelation, this is a small price to pay for engaging in such behavior.
Acting on the firm belief that we have a right to refute what is being said about us under the shroud of secrecy, we submitted the same FOIA requests to several senators, congressmen and government officials to hand-deliver to FBI Director Kash Patel. To this date there has been very little response.
I personally requested of Arkansas Senators Cotton and Boozman that this be done, as well as Representative Rick Crawford. Normally all of their offices are efficient, helpful, responsive, and dripping with Southern charm, but on this issue they remain eerily silent. Senator Cotton’s office did call to inform me that they were working on it, but could not guarantee that we would get what we were seeking due to the difficulty of declassifying documents.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was born out of a need to have a police authority at the federal level so that it would not be subservient to a particular state. The need for such an authority seemed obvious in the wake of the Osage Tribe murders in the 1920s in Oklahoma. The local corruption seemed to force a conclusion that some federal agency must be given authority to investigate and prosecute certain crimes because the local law enforcement agencies were thoroughly corrupt, and without federal involvement there would be no justice.
Whether this need was perceived or real, the FBI has now become a law enforcement agency at the federal level with the ability to secretly construct an artificial case against law-abiding American citizens and then spy on them. That artificial case can be constructed using discredited grifters such as the Southern Poverty Law Center. In this case, these corrupt officials are going after precisely that portion of the Catholic population that makes a serious effort to conform to what the Church teaches.
Traditional Catholicism is an obstacle to tyrants, oligarchs and bureaucrats. To the government bureaucrats who benefit from an uneducated, complacent and compliant populace, the targeting of traditional Catholics is understandable.
What do we do now, when the federal investigation and law enforcement agency is itself thoroughly corrupt and no amount of writing to senators, congressmen, or government officials will suffice to bring misbehaving federal law enforcement officials to justice?
Traditional Catholicism is an obstacle to tyrants, oligarchs and bureaucrats. It is to the benefit of bureaucrats working in a government that is bloated and dependent on constant international aggression to not have an educated Catholic populace that would insist on every war being a just war. It is to the benefit government bureaucrats to not have a large network of Catholics who place Faith and Family above government dictates and edicts. To the government bureaucrats who benefit from an uneducated, complacent and compliant populace, the targeting of traditional Catholics is understandable.
It is true that the Church has a long history of receiving Her former persecutors into Her ranks, going back to the Roman soldiers who assisted in the Crucifixion and subsequently became followers of Christ. Some of my friends and colleagues argue that it could be providential to have government informants monitoring our communities because in that manner they would be forced to see the difference between what they have been told in some classified memo and the actual state of things. They may see the light, to which they would otherwise never be exposed, and convert.
That is certainly possible, but allowing this kind of targeting is too dangerous to tolerate. It can lead to entrapment schemes such as the alleged kidnapping scheme of Governor Whitmer, in which the majority of participants were FBI agents. To have some struggling young person who is trying to improve his or her life become entrapped because of attendance at one of our churches would be beyond tragic, and would only lead to further targeting.
During the past two years we have seen numerous closures of Latin Mass communities throughout the USA. Chicago, Detroit, and Charlotte provide some recent examples. Is this related in some way to the targeting by the FBI that has recently been exposed? Liz Yore is convinced that the profiling by the FBI is meant to serve as a threat, the means by which the faint of heart could be intimidated into staying away from traditional Catholic practice and doctrine. Leftist-ideologue bishops, those inclined to take a harsh and authoritarian position, would be enabled to close Latin Masses in their dioceses with the comfort of knowing that Uncle Sam has their back.
The whole reason for our religion is to assist people in salvation, by way of following Jesus Christ. If a criminal begins to frequently attend Mass and show a desire to be a member of our congregation, are we not to all rejoice and hope for their best? If the FBI found, as they claim in the leaked memo, that someone who holds radical or racist views is attending a Latin Mass somewhere, isn’t this, more likely than not, a good thing? This person will either buy into the Decalogue and the traditional Catholic notion that we are all created in the image and likeness of God, regardless of race, or he/she will soon move on from attempting to live up the traditional Catholic ideal. No such person could hold “white nationalist” views for long.
Some of the heroes of the effort to keep and preserve traditional Catholic liturgy and doctrine have been Africans; Cardinal Sarah comes to mind, along with some Nigerian priests who provided for Latin Mass communities in Arkansas during a difficult period a few years ago. Americans of African descent have played, and continue to play pivotal roles in the preservation of traditional Catholic liturgy and doctrine in the USA.
An attempted list of these Catholic heroes of our era is beyond the scope, but it includes bishops, priests, musicians, and numerous public figures. Without attempting such a lengthy list, we can at least see it as providential that, shortly after the Richmond memo was leaked, the news was filled with stories of Mother Wilhelmina Lancaster. The discovery that we were being secretly slandered as white nationalists by the FBI was followed almost immediately by widespread circulation of stories of an African American woman who had played a pivotal role in the founding of the Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles. At this point the FBI became ridiculous in the minds of anyone paying attention.
Perhaps the FBI has outlived its usefulness. If the bureau cannot muster the will to discipline their rogue employees and come clean with us, then it should simply be abolished.
Latest RTV includes video clips of FBI/Latin Mass congressional hearings (See Minute 17:00)
MASS DECEPTION: Vatican Push to Cancel Latin Mass Based on Fake News
[1] https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/fbi-anti-catholic-memo.pdf
[2] https://thecatholicherald.com/traditional-latin-mass-attendees-more-devout-and-orthodox-study-says/
[3] https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2023-12-04-the-fbis-breach-of-religious-freedom-the-weaponization-of-law-enforcement-against-catholic-americans.pdf
[4] https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/grassley_to_fbi_-_richmond_memo_productions.pdf
[5] https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/fbis-surveillance-of-traditional-catholics-more-widespread-than-previously-reported/
