DOJ Report: FBI Targeted Catholics Over Traditional Beliefs
“Another internal FBI review concluded the memo “almost explicitly states that RTC ideology is violent and extremist without offering any evidence.”
The FBI’s Richmond office did not just write a memo tying “radical-traditionalist Catholics” to violent extremism. Agents also built a presentation that put the Traditional Latin Mass, “conservative family values/roles,” and a “rejection of modernity” on a slide describing the “Core Ideology and Beliefs” of traditionalist Catholics, treating ordinary religious practice as a marker of potential radicalization.
Another slide went further, listing “hardline positions on abortion, LGBT matters, interreligious dialogue” among the characteristics of what the FBI called “Radical-Traditionalist Catholicism.” The presentation was included in a massive Justice Department report released by the Trump administration on the FBI’s now-infamous 2023 Richmond Catholic memo. The report was produced by a Trump administration working group reviewing Biden-era conduct, a fact critics will note, but the underlying documents, including the FBI’s own slides and internal emails, speak for themselves.
Eric Schmitz, Director of Coalitions for Speaker Johnson, who said he attends the Traditional Latin Mass himself, posted several of the slides and called them “UNREAL.”
It’s UNREAL that these slides are from an actual FBI report.
Traditional Latin Mass. Conservative family values. Opposition to abortion. “Rejection of modernity.”
As a Catholic who attends the TLM, it’s disturbing to see ordinary Catholic beliefs and practices presented in this… https://t.co/TBqVF4bzrU pic.twitter.com/NxKrcbxNuw
— Eric Schmitz (@EricSchmitz1) August 29, 2026
The 210-page report from DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group found the Richmond Field Office began with one legitimate criminal investigation: a man who had moved from New York to Virginia, posted violent and racially motivated content online, and eventually began attending a chapel run by the Society of St. Pius X. He was ultimately imprisoned on vandalism and weapons charges. From there, agents expanded their investigation to an SSPX-affiliated priest and then to a second priest connected to the SSPX Resistance, a breakaway group the FBI alleged had neo-Nazi sympathies.
That predicate became the basis for a much broader theory connecting traditionalist Catholicism with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists. The problem was finding evidence for it. Investigators eventually found only two additional cases, one involving a dead person, and nothing establishing a broader link between Catholics or non-mainstream Catholic groups and domestic extremism.
The January 2023 memo suggested the FBI develop “tripwires” and sources around traditionalist Catholic churches. It listed churches and a seminary near Richmond and proposed outreach to church leaders, including the Diocese of Richmond, to help identify signs of radicalization.
Agents also investigated two priests. According to DOJ, the FBI examined their travel and communications, pulled flight and credit card information on one priest, watched him at Boston Logan International Airport and followed him from the airport. Neither priest was ultimately linked to criminal activity or violent extremism.
Internal FBI officials were raising serious objections almost immediately after the memo leaked in February 2023. The bureau’s Counterterrorism Division said it did not find a “significant linkage” between violent extremists and the Catholic ideology described in the Richmond memo.
“Another internal review concluded the memo “almost explicitly states that RTC ideology is violent and extremist without offering any evidence” to support that claim.”
Yet the Richmond office kept working on the project even after FBI leadership ordered the memo removed.
“More than a month later, one analyst wrote that he had spent the day “tinkering with the DP,” referring to the Domain Perspective.”
And the consequences inside the Biden-era FBI were minimal. An internal review found employees lacked “professional judgment” and failed to follow FBI standards, but the personnel involved were largely admonished and ordered to undergo additional training. Several later received positive performance reviews ranging from “Consistent” to “Exemplary,” while Richmond leadership defended them.
The Trump administration says that has now changed. DOJ said the FBI personnel responsible for creating the memo have been terminated.
“The DOJ Weaponization Working Group’s report concluded bluntly: “History will rightly judge the Richmond Catholic Memo as a grave failure of the FBI Richmond Field Office to uphold” its responsibility to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights.”
The slides make it difficult to argue DOJ is exaggerating the problem. The FBI was looking at the Latin Mass, conservative family roles, abortion, and other religious and political beliefs while trying to build an extremism theory it ultimately could not substantiate.
That wasn’t an outside group’s characterization of what the FBI was doing. It was right there in the FBI’s own PowerPoint.
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Comments
As a PCA Presbyterian, this is more than a little disturbing. Who’s to say a future administration won’t harass Calvinists? For our Southern Baptist brethren, who’s to say they won’t go after those who favor Arminianism?
“You follow the Bible? Are you sure you aren’t in favor of overthrowing our republic and establishing a kingdom in its place?” Good luck explaining that it’s not an earthly kingdom to someone totally ignorant of Scripture.
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I am a Global Methodist and attend a former United Methodist Church. We stick to the Bible and let the UMC go on with the culture. The Kingdom is what is coming.
OK, suppose you do have enough luck to explain that, and they get it. All that means is they turn their attention from Christians to Jews, who do expect that when the messiah comes he will be a completely normal human being; that the kingdom he will establish will be very much an earthly one, a hereditary monarchy; and that all existing government on earth will submit to that kingdom. None of which is in any way the FBI’s business.
Actually premillennialists believe that Christ, the Messiah, will return in power, and that He will establish His kingdom over the Earth. Whether governments exist after that is, as far as I’m aware, not something that’s been discussed – likely not enough textual evidence and most of the debates are over the nature of the Millennium.
There’s no overthrowing of republics and establishing kingdoms in that, but given I’ve seen police say that this is Christian fundamentalism and a basis for terrorism. Pretty sure most churches don’t realise they’re guilty of ‘fomenting terrorism’ when they preach about Christ’s Return!
I’m a bit fuzzier on what postmillennialists believe but there may be some overlap. And then there’s amillennialists. Given the general level (dearth) of theological knowledge amongst law enforcement I wouldn’t have high hopes for them handling the matter well!!!
These secularists fail horribky at eschatology.. (Per exchatology, you can only faill “horribly.”)
Large swaths of Muslims, Christians, and yes, the Joooos *all* assert the eventuwl arrival of a new kingdom under a divine, mandated, or inspired head guy, superceding all this deviwnt deviation. The Big Guy made it; he (she, they, but not zer) can break.it. Or fix it. Perspectives vary..
Th believers vary in dealing with the secular world. In the meanwhile: conversion by sword into the coming theocracy; local theocracy while “you do you”,, or just ignoring the besotted til redemption gets here. Which take is as mandated as everything else. It need not make sense to any but them.
Secularists who at root don’t even believe themselves, just can’t grok how truly true believers believe.
Totally meaningless unless and until somebody (or several somebodies) is held responsible and suitably reprimanded, up to and including jail time. Until then, it’s just more CYA theatre, the sort of thing that reduces respect for and credibility of law enforcement and government. This way lies anarchy…
Too many Catholics are unaware of this situation, even to a minor degree. And too many of them are still voting for democrats.
My mother and step father are staunch Catholics. Attend Mass every week. They are Democrats. They hate Trump. I had mentioned this to them 3 years ago when the report came out about the DOJ targeting traditional Catholics. Their response was “Oh, nothing like that never happens around here in our small communities.”
Now, they are believing what the radical left is pushing. Pro abortion, DEI, LGBTQ, “trans-children”, and the list goes on and on. All because of the hatred of one man and his administration. I asked my mother, how can you practice Catholicism and have those beliefs? She has still never answered me and refuses to talk about it. 🤷♂️
That is so sad. The four last things do come, no matter how silent the pulpit is on them.
“Agents also built a presentation that put the Traditional Latin Mass, “conservative family values/roles,” and a “rejection of modernity”
In other news, Islam still hunky dory with the Swamp.
Islam and the Communists are simpatico.
Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus
Disagree.
.
Then you will burn in hell for all eternity.
I have scanned the report.
PDF page 131 lists 9 organizations that Hate Group SPLC identifies as hate groups.
For more than ten years, I have regularly read/viewed items source from four of the organizations listed.
These organizations believe that Vatican II writeups use wishy-washy language that tends to allow misinterpretation of traditional teachings that held for almost two thousand years.
For example, the organizations object to birth control, premarital sex, homosexuality, abortion, women priests.
Will the FBI target Islam over its beliefs/Sharia law? Why not?
I wish they would, but I don’t think that will ever happen. Islam is destroying our country, and a lot of people have blinders on when it comes to that. In my opinion, people are afraid to say anything negative about Islam, when in fact there are plenty of negative things that could be said about it.
There’s no substitute for truculence.
Only “in [your] opinion”?? Why, objective facts scream at one. To the left, and most of the center, there is no worse crime than being “Islamophobic”. Apologists for Islamist groups have managed to equate the (justifiable) fear of Muslim extremism with the worst kinds of historical racism, and social justice warriors eagerly jumped on the bandwagon. Illogical alliances such as “Queers for Palestine” and Feminists within “Jewish Voices for Peace” have managed to portray advocacy for shariah as a civil rights campaign. The whole thing is nuts, its only supporting logic being hatred for Western Civilization.
I don’t understand why the FBI had to target traditional Catholics. Was the Pope too busy?
Maybe they will start profiling old ladies wearing tablecloth-dresses.
Yes sir, they’re radical, Latin chanting trad-Catholics – we’re talking Bingo-addicted, no-meat-on-Fridays fanatical, sacramental cheap red wine swillers, Agent Strzok – you can’t watch these SSPX (pro-nounced “sus-pects”) too close, in my book … right up there with Mormons and the Amish, they are, these Papists!
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