The FBI: Anti-Catholic?

12-24-2023Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

The reporting that the FBI was targeting traditional Catholics has led to an investigation by the House of Representatives. Also taking up this matter and commenting on the House-Investigation is the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Some of its commentary:

-There is a hate group inside the FBI that needs to be purged. It is targeting practicing Catholics and is relying on the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon and The Atlantic to dig up dirt on them. The House Report on this issue is startling.

-It is painfully clear that there is an anti-Catholic cell group within the FBI. Most alarming, even after the release of the evidence showing how compromised certain units in the FBI have become, the Report concludes that “the FBI still apparently desires to convey the outrageous message that some Catholic Americans with traditional beliefs pose a domestic threat to our country.”

-…the only ones on their radar were those who are “pro-life, profamily, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists.” That’s right. The FBI sees as potential domestic terrorists those who defend the life of the unborn, those who prize the family, and those who believe that we cannot change our nature-determined sex as male or female. There is an anti-Catholic cell group in the FBI. It needs to be purged.

The Catholic League noted the reliance of the FBI on anti-Catholic sources cited above:

In the Report issued by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the FBI, and its probe of traditional Catholics, it says the following about the memo that revealed the Bureau’s caper: “The two FBI employees who co-authored the memorandum later told FBI internal investigators that they knew the sources cited in the memorandum had a political bias—sources including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Salon, and The Atlantic.”

Both The Atlantic and Salon have long evinced an antipathy to Catholicism. Two years ago, The Atlantic published a piece titled, “The Real Threat to American Catholicism.” And who might that be? Why the bishops, of course. It was their opposition to abortion that made them a threat to Catholicism. Last year, Salon ran a story on how the Catholic Church is “dictating reproductive health care—even in blue states.” It was concluded that we have too many Catholic hospitals nationwide, facilities that do not permit abortion. That is the source of the alleged dictatorship.

SPLC is the real clincher. As corrupt as it is partisan, it can no longer lay claim to being a beacon of information on hate groups in the United States. Its penchant for smearing innocent individuals and institutions is legendary. The Report said that one of the FBI analysts even acknowledged that the “SPLC was known to have a political bias.” Despite this, they accepted “with high confidence” the information they gleaned from SPLC on the Catholic Church (their italics.)On the SPLC website, they offer a list of “hate groups.” Lumped in with real hate groups is an organization of mothers concerned about what their children are being taught in the public schools. It has 220 entries on Moms for Liberty. Only a deranged person would consider them a hate group. Other organizations that espouse traditional values, but are in no way hateful—yet are labeled as such by SPLC—include the Family Research Council, Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom and the American College of Pediatricians.

In 2017, when Carol Swain was a professor at Vanderbilt University, she recommended against allowing the president of SPLC to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee. She did so for a principled reason. “Rather than monitoring hate groups,” she said, “the Southern Poverty Law Center has become one.” As a result, SPLC conducted a smear campaign against her, claiming she is “an apologist for white supremacists.” Swain is black. Other notable Americans who are anything but hateful, but who have been branded as such by SPLC, include Somali refuge Ayaan Hirsi Ali, political scientist Guenter Lewy, and Princeton professor Robert P. George (he is a member of the Catholic League’s board of advisors).

SPLC’s smear tactics backfired when a noted evangelical organization, D. James Kennedy Ministries, sued SPLC in 2017 for defamation. It accused the far-left “hate group” specialist of making “false and misleading descriptions,” subjecting it to “disgrace, ridicule, odium, and contempt in the estimation of the public.” In other words, SPLC is a master propagandist, branding as “hate groups” institutions that are merely advocates for traditional moral values. One might think that Antifa, which is a real terrorist group—it is responsible for countless acts of violence against innocent persons—might be included in SPLC’s list of hate groups (if for no other reason than to give it cover as an objective source). Instead, it is one of their biggest fans.

In 2020, it posted an article entitled, “Designating Antifa as domestic terrorist organization is dangerous, threaten civil liberties.” Just substitute the Klan for Antifa to get a sense of how absurd this sounds. SPLC agents know a thing or two about domestic terrorism. Earlier this year one of its attorneys, Thomas Webb Jurgens, was charged with fourth Sunday of advent december 24, 2023 domestic terrorism after engaging in violence at a future Atlanta police training facility. Having an anti-Catholic cell group in the FBI is bad enough. It is made worse when its agents turn to anti-Catholic journalistic sources, and to antiAmerican outlets. Indeed, it makes us wonder why these FBI employees are still on the public payroll, funded, in part, by traditional Catholics.

The House -report called THE FBI’S BREACH OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: THE WEAPONIZATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST CATHOLIC AMERICANS It can be accessed here: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evosubsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-mediadocument/2023-12-04-the-fbis-breach-of-religious-freedomthe-weaponization-of-law-enforcement-against-catholicamericans.pdf The commentary of the Catholic League can be found here: www.catholicleague.org