LIFE NEWS - Tyler O'Neil - FEB 14, 2023
Brian Burch, the president of Catholic Vote, is demanding that Congress investigate the recent FBI memo urging agents to probe the alleged nexus between racially-motivated violent extremists and “radical-traditional Catholics,” citing the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Burch warned against a “pattern of anti-Catholic bigotry” at the Department of Justice that represents “the new Inquisition” against Roman Catholics. He told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Tuesday that he is in contact with multiple members of Congress, urging an investigation.
“We’d like to understand what’s happening here. How far up does this go?” he asked. “American Catholics, and frankly fairminded Americans deserve answers about whether or not the Department of Justice has breeched a historic norm whereby Catholics and those who believe what Catholics believe are no longer given the protections of equal justice under the law.”
“It’s a very dangerous slippery slope we’re on, where holding to unpopular political speech that poses no violent threat becomes grounds for criminal action by the federal government,” Burch warned.
The FBI issued a rare public retraction last week after an FBI whistleblower published the memo. The document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” characterizes radical-traditional Catholics or “RTCs” 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.”
The memo suggests that the FBI should monitor these Catholics through “the development of sources with access,” including in “places of worship,” and it cites a list of “hate groups” published by the SPLC.