In January of last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued an 11-page memo outlining details of an investigation into what it called “radical traditionalist Catholic,” or RTC, elements within U.S. society.
Then the memo leaked. Republicans in Congress used the leak to accuse the Biden administration of persecuting Catholics and conservatives solely because of their beliefs.
The memo was quickly “withdrawn from FBI systems,” said an April 18 statement from the FBI. But a redacted copy of the document continues to linger online within the Justice Department, under whose jurisdiction the FBI falls.
So what does it say?
The FBI’s office in Richmond, Virginia, conducted the assessment. The memo’s executive summary said the presence of “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” – known in FBI parlance as RMVE – “in radical-traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation.”
It added, “FBI Richmond makes this assessment with high confidence based on FBI investigations, local law enforcement agency reporting, and liaison reporting, with varying degrees of corroboration and access.”
The memo said, “According to an FBI Richmond contact with direct access reporting for the first time, prior to RMVE actor [redacted]’s [redacted] 2022 arrest he had been attending the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX)-affiliated [redacted] Virginia, for approximately seven months and was participating in catechism classes as part of the process to become baptized. Prior to attending [redacted] stated he wanted to find a church that was ‘anti-Zionist’ and ‘anti-progressive’ because ‘that’s where God lives.’”
Hellbound and Down 