Religious-Liberty-Annual-Report

IV – Religious Liberty and the Executive Branch 27

traditionalist Catholics” as “typically characterized 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 Fran cis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.” It distinguished between RTCs and traditionalist Catholics who “prefer the tradition al Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings and tra ditions, but without the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.” The memo recommended outreach to tradition alist Catholic parishes and development of sources “with the placement and access to report on RMVEs seeking to use RTC social media sites or places of wor ship as facilitation platforms to promote violence.” Some passages of the leaked memo were redact ed. An unredacted section of the memo cited the dis credited Southern Poverty Law Center as an authority on the subject of RTCs, as well as to articles in Salon magazine and The Atlantic . The FBI quickly retracted the memo, telling a news outlet that it “does not meet the exacting stan dards of the FBI” and affirming that the FBI “will nev er conduct investigative activities or open an inves tigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.” 36 The U.S. House’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government sought in formation from the FBI on the memo. As part of its public correspondence to the FBI, the subcommittee has revealed additional details about the Richmond memo — most notably that the Los Angeles and Portland (Oregon) field offices were involved in its creation, it was distributed to FBI field offices across the country, and an internal FBI inquiry after the leak found that the evidence did not support investigative activity into Catholic parishes.

CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz

knowledges that certain aspects of the proposed rule may raise religious liberty concerns, noting the applicability of federal statutory protections for religious liberty. But these mere observations are insufficient to ensure that the religious liberty rights of faith-based service providers in the UC Program are protected. D. Possible FBI Surveillance of Traditionalist Catholic Parishes In January 2023, a website published a leaked internal memo from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s field office in Richmond, Virginia, which discussed “the in creasingly observed interest of RMVEs [racially moti vated violent extremists] in RTC [radical traditional ist Catholic] ideology.” 35 The memo described “radical