The House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have released a comprehensive report unmasking the FBI’s controversial tactics in investigating certain segments of the Catholic community.
Central to this inquiry were the interviews conducted with a priest and a choir director, shedding light on the FBI’s approach to scrutinizing religious groups. The report highlights a concerning pattern where the FBI, using undercover agents, sought to infiltrate and monitor Catholic entities. This overreach is not limited to the Richmond office; FBI field offices in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Portland also contributed to this profiling effort.
“The FBI abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists,” the report says.
The report emphasizes throughout the FBI’s reliance on biased sources and questionable tactics. The cited sources, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and The Atlantic, were recognized by the authors of the FBI memorandum as politically biased, yet were still used to support their claims.
This probe proposed to develop sources within Catholic clergy and leadership, a move that raises significant concerns about religious freedom and the sanctity of religious institutions. The report highlights the FBI’s failure to properly define what constitutes a ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic,’ a fundamental flaw in their investigation.
In response to this controversy, the FBI leadership has revoked the memo and halted the investigation. However, the implications of this report are profound, spotlighting a potential breach of the constitutionally protected right to religious freedom.
Pray for an end to religious persecution!
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Editorial credit: Kristi Blokhin / Shutterstock.com
