On the one-year anniversary of an FBI field office’s controversial and since-withdrawn memo on Catholicism, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson invited Catholics to D.C. to celebrate a traditional Latin Mass, also called a Mass according to the Extraordinary Form of the Liturgy, in the U.S. Capitol. The event was originally scheduled to take place in the Speaker’s private dining room, but was moved to a larger venue to accommodate the many guests.
As background, the FBI memo at issue was issued by the FBI field office in Richmond, Virginia, on Jan. 23, 2023. Titled “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” the memo outlined reasons for increasing surveillance of “traditionalist” Catholic communities to investigate them for extremism.
Describing the “radical traditionalist Catholics,” the memo said they “are 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 Francis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology. Radical-traditionalist Catholics compose a small minority of overall Roman Catholic adherents and are separate and distinct from “traditionalist Catholics” who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings and traditions, but without the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric. Vatican II took place from 19621965 and essentially shaped the modern Roman Rite Catholic Church. It was intended to help the church respond to global cultural changes in the aftermath of World War II and resulted in significant reforms to the liturgy, attitudes toward non-Christian religions, roles and responsibilities of the laity, views on religious freedom, etc.”
The House Committee on the Judiciary and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the government investigated the FBI and memo and found, “While the FBI claims it ‘does not categorize investigations as domestic terrorism based on the religious beliefs—to include Catholicism—of the subject involved,’ an FBI-wide memorandum originating from the FBI’s Richmond Field Office did just that.”
So, on Tuesday, January 23, 2024, the one-year anniversary of the memo’s publication, Catholics were invited to the Capitol for the Mass. Speaking to The Pillar, a Catholic publication, Ryan Ellis, a lead organizer of the event and board member of the Arlington Latin Mass Society, said that it was organized to show that the GOP majority stands with faithful Christians and against their persecution.
He said, “The idea came about as we were coming up to the one year anniversary of the FBI memo. It occurred to me that there’s a great way to show that the House majority is behind the traditional Catholics that were being maligned by the FBI.”
Continuing, he added that the Mass in the Capitol was a very rare occurrence, making the message all the stronger and the event all the more powerful for its attendees, saying, “And what better way to show that than to have a traditional Latin Mass in the Capitol, which as best we can tell has either never happened before, at least going back to the Civil War.”
Speaker Johnson, speaking to The Pillar about the memo, said, “The idea is alarming that the FBI, the most powerful law enforcement agency in the federal government, would engage in a program to recruit Catholic parishioners to spy on people next to them in the pews because of their viewpoint is just frightening. It violates, undermines, these essential fundamental freedoms that we have as American people, and it looks very much like what we used to refer to as “viewpoint discrimination” in the courts, where the government takes adverse action against people because of their religious beliefs. And that’s exactly what this looks and sounds like, and that’s why I believe it got so much attention.”
Watch Wray get picked apart by the House over the memo here:
Featured image credit: By Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – Mike Johnson, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=139920652
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