Case Closed on a Controversial FBI Memo

Anti-Catholic Bias or Sloppy Analysis?

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General issued a letter, addressed to several congressional committees, on April 18 closing the books on an investigation into a controversial memo produced by the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia office that linked what it called “radical-traditionalist Catholics” with “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism” (“RMVE”, a law enforcement term that includes white nationalist and antisemitic groups and individuals, among others) and that was made public in February, 2023 (I will use these two terms introduced in the FBI memo, “radical-traditionalist Catholics” and “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists,” throughout the article, for the sake of consistency). The Inspector General concluded that the crafting of the memo was not motivated by anti-Catholic bias or “malicious intent,” but also that the memo did not meet the “professional standards” of the FBI or the Department of Justice (DOJ) in its analysis. What was this memo, and why was it controversial? What did the Inspector General’s investigation discover? And what significance does this controversy have for Catholicism in the United States?

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On February 8, 2023, a former FBI agent and “whistleblower” Kyle Seraphin posted a highly-redacted version of the FBI memo, dated January 23, 2023 (Seraphin’s hyperlink to the memo now seems to be missing), along with an analysis of what he considered the flawed methodology of the memo. The FBI rescinded the memo the next day. Seraphin also engaged with conservative Catholic media outlets, for example LifeSite News, that began to portray the memo as biased against Catholics. Secular conservative outlets, like National Review (which referred to the memo as a “slander” of traditionalist Catholics) and The Heritage Foundation, also condemned the memo.

Church leaders also publicly criticized the FBI’s work. For example, the since-dismissed Bishop of Tyler, Texas, Joseph Strickland, issued a statement to LifeSite News suggesting that the FBI was wrong to conclude that Catholics’ beliefs would lead them to commit violence:

[The memo] underscores our society’s deep ignorance of what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ or as presently stated “radical traditional Catholic.” . . . Yes committed traditional Catholics will defend the unborn and others who are helpless but attacks of violent aggression are antithetical to what it means to be a radically committed traditional Catholic.

Criticism was not limited to more politically controversial leaders like Strickland. Bishop Barry Knestout of Richmond, where the memo was produced, made a similar statement:

The leaked document should be troubling and offensive to all communities of faith, as well as all Americans. Our faith and our church instruct us to be a people of peace and to uphold human dignity. We do not condone violence.

He added: “A preference for traditional forms of worship and holding closely to the Church’s teachings on marriage, family, human sexuality, and the dignity of the human person does not equate with extremism.”

Virginia’s other bishop, Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, raised a similar point: “To be linked in any way because of the way you worship or live and practice your faith, and to be labeled as an extremist and a threat to society, it is . . . outrageous.” Both Knestout and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York and chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty, called for an investigation into the origins of the memo.

Republican politicians in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, appealing to hostility toward the DOJ and FBI over investigations into former President Donald Trump, obliged the bishops, initiating investigations into the memo’s production and dissemination. The most thorough investigation was conducted by the House Judiciary Committee, which issued a report in December of last year. The report brings together many of the key claims made about the memo by its critics:

• The memo targets “radical-traditionalist Catholics,” and even Catholics more generally, as potential violent extremists;

• The memo lays the groundwork for targeting Americans who are pro-life, who oppose same-sex marriage, or who favor restrictions on immigration as potential domestic terrorists;

• The FBI had begun to use undercover agents or informants to infiltrate Catholic parishes and spy on their members.

The committee report also reviews several criticisms of how the memo was produced and disseminated:

• The analysts who wrote the report used politically biased sources in their analysis of “radical-traditionalist Catholics” and did not adequately support the conclusions drawn in the memo;

• The memo does not adequately define who “radical-traditionalist Catholics” are and risks conflating them with those who hold conservative religious or political views;

• Although the memo originated in the FBI’s Richmond office, the analysts collaborated with other FBI field offices, including those in Los Angeles, Portland, and Milwaukee, when drafting the memo;

• Although the memo was supposedly restricted to the FBI’s Richmond office, in reality it had been made available to FBI field offices across the U.S.

The DOJ Inspector General’s letter, and indeed a careful reading of the FBI memo itself, however, show that many of these claims are false or misleading, but also that there were serious flaws in its analysis.

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In the first case, the memo originated in response to the investigation and eventual arrest and conviction of an actual violent extremist (whose name is redacted in the FBI memo and omitted in the Inspector General report, but whom the New York Times has identified as Xavier Lopez) who had engaged in violent antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ, anti-racial minority, and anti-abortion rhetoric, and who had expressed plans to stockpile weapons and explosives and a desire to take up arms against the government. Lopez became affiliated with a Richmond-area church associated with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), the canonically irregular Catholic organization that rejects the teachings of Vatican II. There, Lopez unsuccessfully sought to recruit co-conspirators to take part in a terrorist plot, and likewise made social media posts linking his religious beliefs to his violent ambitions. Lopez was eventually arrested on state charges of planning a terrorist attack and federal charges of illegal possession of ammunition (as a result of a prior felony) and illegal possession of explosives.

During the course of the investigation, the FBI recruited an informant tasked with attending the SSPX church Lopez frequented to gather information on him. As the Inspector General specifies, “The CHS [“confidential human source”] was instructed to report only information about [Lopez], not about [the church] generally or other parishioners.” After Lopez’s arrest, an FBI agent interviewed members of the parish who had previously been in contact with Lopez, including the pastor, most of whom noted that they had been concerned about Lopez’s behavior prior to his arrest. These entirely legitimate investigative steps are a far cry from the allegations that the FBI was spying on Catholics.

The memo also recommended that the FBI reach out to SSPX-affiliated parishes in the Richmond area, a parish associated with the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (a traditionalist order of priests who were formerly members of the SSPX but who are in full communion with Rome), and even the Diocese of Richmond to inform them of the risks of violent extremism and to identify warning signs of radicalization in their congregations. Although of course there are risks in this kind of engagement of law enforcement with religious communities, this is not at all the same thing as spying on these religious communities or treating their religious beliefs as suspect.

The analysts at the FBI’s Richmond office were intrigued by Lopez’s case and researched whether there had been similar cases of violent extremists drawn to traditionalist Catholic communities. They identified a white supremacist in Portland, Oregon who was under investigation by the FBI for several violent acts before he passed away; the suspect had joined a local SSPX church and made social media posts linking his religious beliefs to his violent extremism. Similarly, they identified a neo-Nazi in California who likewise attended a SSPX parish and was a member of Legio Christi, a militant organization that, according to Paul Moses at Commonweal, advocates explicitly antisemitic views on its web site and calls on its members to engage in training in firearms and hand-to-hand combat in preparation for violent conflict. As the Inspector General notes, the Richmond analysts contacted FBI field offices in Portland, Los Angeles, and Milwaukee to gather information on these cases, not as part of a concerted effort to paint Catholics as extremists or to spy on Catholics, as alleged in the House Judiciary Committee’s report.

Contrary to the critics, then, the FBI does not paint traditionalist Catholics, let alone Catholics in general, as potential terrorists. Instead, it notes a potential trend among racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists of being drawn to traditionalist communities like the SSPX and seeks to explain this trend. Indeed, the underlying assumption of the memo is that traditionalist communities would reject these extremists if they were aware of their existence, which is why the memo recommends informing religious communities of the trend and enlisting their assistance.

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(Photo: David Trinks, Unsplash)

As the DOJ Inspector General points out, however, the primary flaw with the memo is not its intent, but with the quality of analysis. Contrary to some critics, the memo does attempt to distinguish “radical-traditionalist Catholics” from other Catholics:

RTCs are typically characterized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council; disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II, particularly Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology. Radical-traditionalist Catholics compose a small minority of overall Roman Catholic adherents and are separate and distinct from “traditionalist Catholics” who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings and traditions, but without the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric. Vatican II took place from 1962- 1965 and essentially shaped the modern Roman Rite Catholic Church. It was intended to help the church respond to global cultural changes in the aftermath of World War II and resulted in significant reforms to the liturgy, attitudes toward non-Christian religions, roles and responsibilities of the laity, views on religious freedom, etc.

This definition makes an entirely valid distinction between more radical traditionalist Catholics, like the SSPX, who have a tenuous relationship with the main body of the Church, and Catholics who may identify as “traditionalist” but who exist more comfortably within the institutions of the Church, like Cardinal Raymond Burke, for example.

But nearly everything else in the definition falls apart upon close analysis. Why are radical-traditionalists associated with violent rhetoric in this case, in contrast to other traditionalists? What is the evidence for this association? Is it really the case that the vehemence with which a Catholic rejects the teachings of Vatican II or the legitimacy of the post-conciliar popes correlates with the likelihood of their resorting to violent extremism? Or could we just as well find more mainstream Catholics among the ranks of violent right-wing groups like the Proud Boys, for example?

Similarly, why is radical-traditionalism here associated with white supremacy? As the three cases in the memo demonstrate, there are certainly radical-traditionalist Catholics who are white supremacists, but is that a defining characteristic of these Catholics? Remember, the memo’s analysis seems to suggest that radical-traditionalist Catholics would want to exclude racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists from their communities, but here, without evidence, the memo links radical-traditionalists’ religious views to racial and ethnic extremism. The SSPX has had problems with antisemitism, perhaps most notoriously the controversy over Bishop Richard Williamson’s Holocaust denial in 2009, but this is inexplicably never mentioned in the memo.

On the other hand, are radical-traditionalists and more mainstream traditionalists really distinguished by their views on immigration or homosexuality? Not really. Despite a surprising knowledge of the varied receptions of Vatican II in the Catholic Church, the memo’s attempt to define the group being analyzed is sloppy, seemingly conflating a number of distinct phenomena, and unsupported by evidence.

The memo also claims that racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists might be drawn to radical-traditionalist Catholic communities because of their shared opposition to “abortion rights, immigration, affirmative action, and LGBTQ protections.” Contrary to many critics, the memo is not associating these fairly widespread conservative political beliefs themselves with extremism, but rather noting views that racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists and radical-traditionalist Catholics have in common that might explain the affinity of the former for the latter. Still, as an analytical judgment, this connection makes little sense. Why would an affinity with political beliefs held by millions of Americans, including many mainstream Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and other religious groups, explain why violent extremists are drawn specifically to radical-traditionalist Catholic communities? It strikes me that a more adequate analysis would point to a deep suspicion of modernity and the modern belief in the fundamental equality and rights of all people (their “infinite dignity”) as something potentially linking white supremacists and radical-traditionalist Catholics that would not be true of mainstream Catholics or evangelical Protestants.

Finally, as many critics, including the House Judiciary Committee’s report, have pointed out, the memo relies on biased or flimsy sources for its analysis. For example, it relies on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for information on radical-traditionalist “hate groups”; although the SPLC does good work tracking far right violent extremists, some have argued it defines “hate groups” too broadly, including mainstream conservative groups in its net. The memo also relies on articles from the web publication Salon in support of its claims of a growing affinity between white nationalists and radical-traditionalist Catholic groups. The problem is not necessarily that the information gleaned from these sources is wrong, but rather that such a consequential analysis should have drawn on more thorough and scholarly sources in developing its understanding of radical-traditionalist Catholics. Of course, the difficulty here, as the DOJ Inspector General notes, is that this group’s links to violent extremism have hardly been studied. The Inspector General adds that the memo’s analysis was improperly approved by the analysts’ supervisors, despite the subpar analysis.

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What can we take away from the imbroglio over the FBI’s memo? For one, even though the memo’s analysis was flawed, we shouldn’t discount the potential for violence at the fringes of U.S. Catholicism. After all, the memo was written in response to real cases exemplifying such a nexus. The memo notes that on social media, Lopez had identified himself as a “radical traditional Catholic Clerical Fascist.” Many readers who have frequented social media sites like Twitter/X and Reddit have likely encountered individuals, usually young males, adopting similar identities, expressing an affinity for Catholic fascist or quasi-fascist movements from the first half of the 20th century, and using crusader or anime avatars. And, as several terrorist attacks and mass shootings over the past few years have shown, online rhetoric can very easily turn into violence in the “real world,” even if in the vast majority of cases online trolls remain merely an annoyance.

Second, it is worth asking how many Catholics, including Catholic leaders like Cardinal Dolan and Bishops Knestout and Burbidge, could be taken in by politically-motivated, misleading accounts of the memo’s contents. As I’ve hopefully shown, despite its flaws, the memo did not insinuate that Catholics are prone to violence, or claim that the Church’s teachings on marriage, family, human sexuality, and the dignity of the human person are extremist. As I already noted, politicians such as Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who heads the House Judiciary Committee, used the memo to undermine trust in the Department of Justice and FBI for political purposes. More subtly, they also used it to further the narrative that faithful Christians are under siege from an increasingly secular culture that has infiltrated the most powerful institutions in the land, and in turn portraying themselves as defenders of American Christians. Jordan and House Speaker Mike Johnson, neither of whom is Catholic, supported the celebration of a Latin Mass in the U.S. Capitol in January of this year, on the one-year anniversary of the internal publication of the FBI memo, coordinated by the Arlington Latin Mass Society. I think many Catholics, including many bishops, to one degree or another buy into that narrative of the Church under siege and therefore were willing to uncritically accept claims about the memo that proved to be untrue.

It’s also worth pointing out that, by coincidence, the FBI memo became public at a time when traditionalist Catholics already felt under attack, in this case by the Vatican itself. In 2021, Pope Francis had issued the apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes, which prohibited most celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass. Not surprisingly, many traditionalist Catholics viewed Traditionis Custodes as an act of hostility by Pope Francis toward their understanding of the Church and its sacramental life. On February 21, 2023, less than two weeks after the FBI memo had been made public in the U.S., Cardinal Arthur Roche, the Vatican’s Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, issued a document explaining that a precept of canon law that some bishops were using to dispense with the requirements of Traditionis Custodes could not be used in that way. The confluence of these events undoubtedly created a sense of persecution among traditionalist Catholics, expressed, for example, by the traditionalist web site OnePeterFive, which explicitly links the FBI memo and Traditionis Custodes.

The controversy over the FBI memo is a relatively minor blip in the long history of Church-State relations int he United States, but it nevertheless provides an interesting snapshot into the divisions within U.S. Catholicism, Catholic perceptions of their status in American society, and the real risks of violent extremism on the fringes of the Catholic Church.

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Of Interest…

• Speaking of Catholics and the FBI, back in March, Commonweal published an interesting account by Arvin Alaigh of the FBI’s search for the Berrigan brothers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including phony accusations that the Berrigans were plotting to kidnap Henry Kissinger!

• The National Eucharistic Congress, the high point of the U.S. bishops’ Eucharistic Revival, will gather in July of this year. In America, Wayne Hellmann, O.F.M.Conv. and Thomas A. Piolata, O.F.M.Cap., both scholars of the work of the medieval Franciscan theologian St. Bonaventure, offer a thought-provoking meditation on “spiritual communion.” Breaking down the dichotomy between the physical reception of the Eucharist and “spiritual communion” understood as a substitute when one cannot receive the Eucharist, they show how in Bonaventure’s thought, the physical and the spiritual are united, and spiritual communion is the goal of the physical reception of the Eucharist. Well worth the read!

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Coming Soon…

• Next week, I’ll publish my third and final commentary on Dignitas Infinita, the Vatican’s recent declaration on the dignity of the human person. Previous articles examined how the document proposes that dignity can be a unifying principle for Catholics seemingly divided over different priorities and political perspectives, and how it defends the notion of dignity against secular skeptics. The upcoming article will look at how Dignitas Infinita can be read as a response to traditionalist Catholics who have quested the Catholic Church’s recent teaching on dignity, but also how the document fails to give an adequate account of the development of the Church’s own understanding of human dignity.

• This weekend I’ll hopefully also publish another article exclusively for paid subscribers (although with a preview for free subscribers!), topic TBD.