Why You May Have Missed News About The FBI Memo Calling Out ‘Radical Traditionalist’ Catholics
An Unsplash photo from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Pennsylvania.
(ANALYSIS) The politicization of American society has affected a great number of institutions — from universities to major sports leagues to large corporations. Right now, there are a great many things that divide us as Americans.
The FBI has also become politicized. This is a belief that picked up momentum during Donald Trump’s presidency but continues to exist now under the Joe Biden administration. If journalism is the place that you believe should shed a light on this painful paradox, then you’d be sadly mistaken.
Not only has the FBI possibly been politicized, but so has journalism, and we’re all poorer for it. A great example of this journalistic disconnect is an important story that “conservative” and “religious” media covered, while it was ignored by the vast majority of mainstream news outlets, including our culture’s most elite and powerful newsrooms.
READ: FBI Fears Faithful Catholics
The key question: Has the FBI decided that “radical” Catholics are dangerous and a threat to American public life? On Feb. 8, a website called UncoveredDC reported on an FBI document titled “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”
UncoveredDC says on its website that it pledges “to work hard to bring you the unvarnished truth, a concept the legacy media abandoned long ago.” It is considered a right-wing news website given the people it covers and the angles it takes on stories. That doesn’t mean that what it is reporting on isn’t true, especially if it comes in the form of official government documents.
The memo, out of the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office, zeroed in on what it called “radical-traditionalist Catholics.” The memo notes that FBI investigations have found that there is a “growing overlap” between White nationalists and these RTCs. The Jan. 23 memo claimed that RTCs are a small minority within Catholicism. It said that they adhere to beliefs that are antisemitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT and linked to White supremacy.
That sounds like a big story, especially with a rosary-carrying Catholic in the White House, even if he is a Catholic who has — in word and deed — rejected some ancient doctrines of the church.
Why was this story not covered by most news outlets? Many journalists who hold progressive beliefs are no longer interested in reporting on or exploring stories that they think could injure the people who they share beliefs with. That lack of curiosity — combined with this new sense of partisanship — has led to a dearth of reporting on more than a few topics and issues that affect people of faith, especially traditional and conservative believers.
This fear of pursuing stories that could injure “their side” — and lead to the possible election of political figures they despise — is increasingly seeping into elite newsroom thinking when it comes to which stories get covered. Thus, while all sorts of institutions have become politicized, it’s journalism’s inability to stick to its neutral role that has hurt the information business.
In response, there have been many conservative news outlets that have emerged over the past three decades. While many of these news organizations often cover stories mainstream ones won’t, they have suffered a credibility gap given their open political slant. They also don’t have the credibility that legacy news media have accumulated over the decades, even if that trust is now in a shocking decline.
Certainly, the website where the story originated matters. In a matter of hours and days, the story was reported in other places, primarily conservative media and, yes, the Catholic press.
National Review reported the story this way on Feb. 8, attributing the documentation to UncoverDC:
The FBI’s Richmond field office released an internal memo last month warning against “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology,” and claiming it “almost certainly presents new mitigation opportunities,” according to a document shared by an FBI whistleblower on Wednesday.
Kyle Seraphin, who was a special agent at the bureau for six years before he was indefinitely suspended without pay in June 2022, published the document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” on UncoverDC.com.
“In making this assessment, FBI Richmond relied on the key assumption that [racially or ethnically motivated extremists] will continue to find [radical-traditionalist Catholic or RTC] ideology attractive and will continue to attempt to connect with RTC adherents, both virtually via social media and in-person at places of worship,” the document from January 23 states.
It adds that “RTCs are typically categorized 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, without the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.”
Following this story, and others like it, National Review did a follow-up the following day, when the FBI retracted the memo. By the way, it is hard to retract a memo that didn’t exist.
The FBI said … that an internal memo released by its Richmond field office last month warning against “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology” does not meet the bureau’s standards.
Kyle Seraphin, who was a special agent at the bureau for six years before he was indefinitely suspended without pay in June 2022, published the document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” on UncoverDC.com on Wednesday, after obtaining it from a whistleblower.
“While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, this particular field office product – disseminated only within the FBI – regarding racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI,” the bureau said in a statement to National Review. “Upon learning of the document, FBI Headquarters quickly began taking action to remove the document from FBI systems and conduct a review of the basis for the document. ”
The statement adds: “The FBI is committed to sound analytic tradecraft and to investigating and preventing acts of violence and other crimes while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
Once again, this FBI statement is journalistic proof that the original memo was indeed real, the signal that this story doesn’t lack veracity. However, the three major news networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, did not report on this story on their websites. Furthermore, it was ignored by legacy newspapers such as The New York Times and Washington Post. Hold that thought.
This follows a trend I wrote about in my last GetReligion post on the lack of mainstream news coverage regarding the vandalism of Catholic churches across the United States. The FBI memo may be a different story, but it follows the same playbook of media bias when it comes to which subjects warrant news coverage.
Certainly having the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops respond to the memo was deserving of news coverage? What about 20 state attorneys general demanding answers in the days following the leak?
The answer was “no” and “no.” This was not a real story.
Instead, it was the Catholic press, like Catholic News Agency, that reported it this way:
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) responded Thursday to a leaked document from the FBI that appears to reveal that the bureau’s Richmond division launched an investigation into “radical traditionalist” Catholics and their possible ties to “the far-right white nationalist movement.”
“Let me first be clear: Anyone who espouses racism or promotes violence is rejecting Catholic teaching on the inherent dignity of each and every person,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee for Religious Liberty, said in a Feb. 16 statement. “The USCCB roundly condemns such extremism and fully supports the work of law enforcement officials to keep our communities safe.”
The leaked document has been condemned by several federal and state officials, as well as clergy, including Bishop Barry Knestout of the Diocese of Richmond, who recently called the memo a “threat to religious liberty.”
“I agree with my brother Bishop Barry Knestout that the leaked memorandum was nonetheless ‘troubling and offensive’ in several respects — such as in its religious profiling and reliance on dubious sourcing — and am glad it has been rescinded,” Dolan said. “We encourage federal law enforcement authorities to take appropriate measures to ensure the problematic aspects of the memo do not recur in any of their agencies’ work going forward.”
Since the document was leaked, many Catholics have criticized the FBI, but in a statement to CNA Feb. 9, the bureau said it would remove the document because “it does not meet our exacting standards.”
Conservative news outlets like Fox News Channel reported on Feb. 10 that Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and 19 Republican state attorneys general are “demanding answers from the FBI and Justice Department and threatening legal action.”
Once again, this was a public action taken by major political leaders. This is what the story reported:
Miyares and his colleagues, in a letter exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital, told the FBI and DOJ to "desist from investigating and surveilling Americans who have done nothing more than exercise their natural and constitutional right to practice their religion in a manner of their choosing" and asked that they "reveal to the American public the extent to which they have engaged in such activities."
"Anti-Catholic bigotry appears to be festering in the FBI, and the Bureau is treating Catholics as potential terrorists because of their beliefs," the AGs wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
"We are the chief legal officers of our respective States charged not only with enforcing the law, but also with securing the civil rights of our citizens," they continued. "The FBI must immediately and unequivocally order agency personnel not to target Americans based on their religious beliefs and practices," they said, adding that they will take "and appropriate means to protect the rights of our constituents as guaranteed by our Constitution."
And this:
The memo cited a list of Catholic "hate groups" assembled by the Southern Poverty Law Center to allocate these "sources," according to the AGs.
The AGs note that they are "particularly alarmed" by the memo's suggestion that FBI operatives should be developing sources with access, including in places of worship to identify the bad Catholics.
"The FBI has been down this road before," they note, "having infiltrated countless mosques throughout the country in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The FBI disavowed this ignominious practice in 2008, and revised its internal guidelines in 2010 and 2013 to prevent its operatives from callously disregarding the religious liberty of American citizens."
To be fair, despite so many people and groups voicing concern — eventually even members of Congress — The New York Times did mention the FBI memo, albeit framed in a very different context.
The Feb. 16 news story was about a new GOP-led panel tasked with investigating the weaponization of government. The angle chosen by the Times, our culture’s most influential news source? Here’s how the story opened:
As the new Republican-led panel tasked with investigating the weaponization of government continued to issue new subpoenas this week, those who orchestrated the inquiry that its leaders have claimed as a model are warning the chairman against allowing his work to veer into partisan territory.
More than two dozen staff members from the panel formed in the 1970s that came to be known as the Church Committee sent an open letter on Wednesday to Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and its powerful new subcommittee. They offered advice for how he could follow in the footsteps of their panel, which uncovered decades of intelligence and civil liberties abuses under presidents of both parties and set the gold standard in Congress for scrutinizing the executive branch.
The counsel is simple: Pursue a bipartisan inquiry, follow the facts, do not try to interfere with open investigations and operate in good faith.
The part about the FBI memo finally shows up in paragraph 13. Here it is:
On Thursday, Mr. Jordan sent a letter to Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, demanding answers about what he called the bureau’s “targeting of a set of Catholic Americans for their religious beliefs.” At issue is a Jan. 23 memo from the F.B.I.’s Richmond field office that linked “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” with a “radical traditionalist Catholic” ideology, prompting outrage from Catholic groups and Republican attorneys general. The F.B.I. headquarters in Washington has since disavowed the document and blamed the field office for its creation.
The letter requires Mr. Wray to produce documents about the memo by March 2.
At the weaponization committee’s first hearing, Democrats fought against the panel’s very premise and argued that Mr. Jordan had not given agencies enough time to respond to him before issuing subpoenas.
That’s one way of framing it. The story reads as if Jordan is the one making a big deal of something that, according to the Times, isn’t important because the FBI has already “disavowed” it.
It was merely a mistake. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Instead, if it wasn’t for the leak — and the subsequent news accounts from one side of our divided journalism world — no one would have known about this FBI memo in the first place.
It’s also true that half of America may not know about this — to this day — because the media they consume didn’t properly tell them about it. It’s another example of media bias and the abandoning of old-school journalism standards that leaves readers knowing less, not more, about the country and its ever-polarized institutions.
This post originally appeared at GetReligion.
Clemente Lisi is a senior editor at Religion Unplugged and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. He is the author of “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event.” Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.