(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The Biden-led FBI distributed its infamous memo targeting traditional Catholics to over 1,000 employees nationwide before it was exposed by a whistleblower in 2023, newly released documents showed.
The memo’s broad distribution contradicts the Biden administration’s defense that it was created solely by the Richmond Field Office and did not represent official government policy.
Unearthed internal documents released Tuesday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, dismantle that narrative.
According to Grassley, the FBI produced 13 additional documents and five attachments using derogatory terminology against traditional Catholics.
What’s worse, the field office relied heavily on the Southern Poverty Law Center—a leftist group notorious for its campaigns against conservatives, Republicans and religious groups.
One FBI agent even admitted that their “overreliance” on the SPLC for the “hate designation” of Catholics was “problematic.”
The FBI Richmond Field Office also manufactured a second memo dubiously linking traditional Catholicism to extremism. That document was never published after the fierce backlash aimed at the first memo.
The existence of this second memo directly contradicts then-FBI Director Chris Wray’s testimony to Congress that the Richmond office had produced “a single product.”
Grassley has asked current FBI Director Kash Patel to release more documents related to both memos, specifically their origins.
“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 Monday to Patel. “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.”
The FBI’s targeting of traditional Catholics follows a years-long campaign by the SPLC against what it describes as “radical traditional Catholics.”
The SPLC’s claims, however, are based on vague associations and ideological assumptions. The group claims that some “white power activists” have “embraced the aesthetics and practices” of traditional Catholicism to supposedly reverse the Civil Rights movement and the Novus Ordo Missae reforms enacted after the Second Vatican Council.
The New Order replaced the Traditional Latin Mass—introduced by Pope Pius V in 1570—with the modern Mass instituted by Pope Paul VI in 1969.
The left’s attempt to link traditional Catholicism to so-called extremism conveniently ignores the faith’s historic and spiritual roots. What’s more, there is no evidence that traditional Catholicism leads to violent extremism.
