FBI memo with ‘anti-Catholic terminology’ said to be distributed to over 1,000 FBI agents

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Amid an investigation into a controversial and retracted FBI memo that suggested some “radical traditionalist” Catholics pose threats of racial or ethnically motivated violence, a GOP senator alleged the FBI distributed the memo that “used anti-Catholic terminology” more widely than previously known.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote in a June 2 letter to FBI Director Kash Patel that the memo was “widely distributed” within the bureau before it was retracted, including in consultations by the authors with agents in the Louisville, Kentucky, Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee field offices.

“I’m determined to get to the bottom of the Richmond memo, and of the FBI’s contempt for oversight in the last administration,” Grassley wrote. “I look forward to continuing to work with you to restore the FBI to excellence and prove once again that justice can and must be fairly and evenly administered, blind to whether we are Democrats or Republicans, believers or nonbelievers.”

Grassley’s office June 2 released the letter as well as additional documents it said showed the controversial so-called Richmond memo, from the agency’s Virginia field office, “was widely distributed to over 1,000 FBI employees across the country before it was publicly disclosed by a whistleblower in 2023.”

A spokesperson for the FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from OSV News. But Patel appeared to acknowledge Grassley’s letter by retweeting a post on X calling him “a key partner in the Bureau’s commitment to transparency.”

A 2024 review by the Department of Justice’s watchdog found “no evidence” of religious bias in the creation of the leaked and retracted memo dated Jan. 23, 2023. In that memo, an analyst at the FBI’s Richmond division said that “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” are “typically characterized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council,” adding the ideology can include an “adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.”

While the memo differentiated between “radical traditionalist” Catholics as “separate and distinct” from “traditionalist Catholics” — or Catholics who “simply prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings” — some accused the bureau of labeling Catholics as a whole as a threat or unfairly scrutinizing their worship, and accused the Biden administration of orchestrating improper religious surveillance.

The memo was retracted and condemned by both then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, the latter of whom was initially appointed to the post by President Donald Trump during his first term.

While some of the groups named in the withdrawn FBI memo identify as Catholic, some have taken positions flouting either the Catholic Church’s leadership or its official teachings — including one group denounced by its local bishop as “blatantly antisemitic” and forbidden by the Vatican from calling itself Catholic.

The original memo cited the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors “hate groups” but has faced criticism from some who say the group too widely applies that label. A spokesperson for that group told OSV News in 2023 that there is “a stark difference between traditionalist Catholics — who celebrate the Latin Mass and rebuff many of the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council — and the radical traditionalist Catholics tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

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