Catholic Chief Calls for Probe Into FBI Memo, ‘Sample of Anti-Catholic Bigotry’ That Represents ‘The New Inquisition’

Brian Burch, the president of Catholic Vote, is demanding that Congress examine the latest FBI memo urging brokers to probe the alleged nexus between racially-motivated violent extremists and “radical-traditional Catholics,” citing the Southern Poverty Legislation Heart.

Burch warned towards a “sample of anti-Catholic bigotry” on the Division of Justice that represents “the brand new Inquisition” towards Roman Catholics. He informed The Every day Sign in a cellphone interview Tuesday that he’s involved with a number of members of Congress, urging an investigation.

“We’d like to grasp what’s occurring right here. How far up does this go?” he requested. “American Catholics and albeit, fair-minded Individuals deserve solutions about whether or not or not the Division of Justice has breeched a historic norm whereby Catholics and those that consider what Catholics consider are not given the protections of equal justice underneath the legislation.”

“It’s a really harmful slippery slope we’re on, the place holding to unpopular political speech that poses no violent risk turns into grounds for felony motion by the federal authorities,” Burch warned.

RELATED: WHISTLEBLOWER DOCS: FBI Cites Southern Poverty Legislation Heart in Report on ‘Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology’

The FBI issued a uncommon public retraction final week after an FBI whistleblower printed the memo. The doc, “Curiosity of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Virtually Definitely Presents New Mitigation Alternatives,” characterizes radical-traditional Catholics or “RTCs” by “the rejection of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a legitimate church council; disdain for a lot of the popes elected since Vatican II, significantly Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”

The memo means that the FBI ought to monitor these Catholics by means of “the event of sources with entry,” together with in “locations of worship,” and it cites a listing of “hate teams” printed by the SPLC.

The FBI introduced that it could retract the doc, telling The Every day Sign that the memo “doesn’t meet the exacting requirements of the FBI.”

“The Southern Poverty Legislation Heart is not any impartial partisan goal supply of research with regards to extremism or hate teams,” Burch defined. “The sample of abuse and misrepresentation by the Southern Poverty Legislation Heart has been well-documented in ‘Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Legislation Heart,’ a guide that needs to be extra broadly learn to grasp the hazard they pose.”

As I clarify in my guide “Making Hate Pay,” the SPLC took this system it used to bankrupt organizations related to the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it towards conservative teams, partially to scare donors into ponying up money and partially to silence ideological opponents.

After the SPLC fired its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, a former staffer claimed that the SPLC’s accusations of “hate” are a “cynical fundraising rip-off” geared toward “bilking northern liberals.” Critics throughout the political spectrum have voiced opposition and alarm on the group’s hate group smears.

In 2012, a terrorist focused the Household Analysis Council’s headquarters within the nation’s capital, getting into the foyer with a semiautomatic pistol after which capturing and wounding a guard. The person informed the FBI that he discovered the conservative group on the SPLC’s “hate map” and supposed to kill everybody within the constructing. That man pleaded responsible to committing an act of terror and acquired a 25-year jail sentence. The SPLC condemned the assault, however has saved the Household Analysis Council on its hate map ever since.

RELATED: The Every day Sign Calls for Paperwork on FBI Focusing on ‘Radical Conventional Catholics’

“The actually worrisome factor right here is that it’s more and more troublesome to tell apart the Southern Poverty Legislation Heart from the Division of Justice,” Burch mentioned. He referred to as the SPLC a “discredited political extremist group that seeks to unfairly paint their opponents as unworthy of First Modification safety,” warning that it’s now “inciting authorities legislation enforcement businesses to implement its political agenda.” (Whereas the SPLC claims that it doesn’t oppose its opponents’ free speech rights, SPLC spokesman Mark Potok mentioned in 2009, “Our goal in life is to destroy these teams,” to “so mortally embarrass these teams that they are going to be destroyed.”)

But the Justice Division’s “sample of anti-Catholic bigotry” extends far past one memo, the Catholic Vote president argued.

“It’s not merely a leaked FBI memo, it’s a sample contained in the Division of Justice that fails to prosecute crimes of vandalism, desecration, and home terrorism, mixed with their searching down peaceable pro-life protesters, together with initiating raids of their properties and their households,” he mentioned. “A jury unanimously acquitted an harmless man who was pursued by an aggressive pro-abortion Division of Justice that claims to be neutral.”

Burch was referring to 2 trackers Catholic Vote maintains, reporting that there have been 81 assaults on being pregnant facilities and 127 assaults on Catholic church buildings for the reason that leak of the Supreme Courtroom’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade in early Could. Whereas the FBI first introduced an investigation into these assaults final month, it has prosecuted pro-life Individuals who protest abortion services, similar to Mark Houck. The FBI raided Houck’s home to arrest him final September, however a jury discovered him not responsible of all costs final month.

But Burch added that the memo “reveals one thing deeply regarding concerning the interior workings of the Division of Justice and the FBI. They repeatedly cite the discredited Southern Poverty Legislation Heart, together with an article from The Atlantic that in contrast the rosary to an AR-15.”

“These are the damaging musings of hard-left-wing ideologues with no understanding of the Catholic religion in any way,” he warned. “They go after the Catholic Church for what we consider however the way in which by which they’re behaving is the brand new Inquisition the place they deem these they disagree with heretics and name for his or her elimination from public life.”

Burch praised Virginia Lawyer Common Jason Miyares, a Republican, for demanding solutions from the FBI relating to the memo. He additionally praised Bishop Barry Knestout of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, who referred to as on all members of Congress from Virginia to “publicly condemn this risk to non secular liberty.”

The Catholic Vote president famous that the Republican-majority Home of Representatives “is already investigating the weaponization of the FBI,” including that “the particular threats towards Catholics deserved simply as a lot scrutiny” as different examples of the Biden administration utilizing the Justice Division to threaten political opponents.

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