On July 21, when Bill Maher interviewed Billy Joel, the singer said that when he first sang, “Only the Good Die Young”—which had a snappy line about Catholic girls, he got some blowback. Maher responded, “I  mean, I guess it—look I’ve had many letters from William Donohue, the head of the Catholic League. He literally challenged me to a fight. Really? Like two 60-something year-old men in the parking lot with our short sleeves rolled up. Really? But that’s how the Catholic Church feels about me.”

The gist of what he said is right, but not the particulars. Donohue never wrote to him, but a number of years ago he did joke with Megan Kelly that he would like to put on the Everlast [boxing gloves] and meet Maher in Madison Square Garden.

Maher never got over it. He complained to Larry King about Bill’s invitation but Larry simply said, “Bill takes his religion very seriously.”

Donohue advised Maher to bring a stool.

Georgetown University, which identifies as Catholic, has a Muslim problem. There is nothing new about this, but now that it is front and center, it can no longer be ignored.

On July 15, Robert Groves, the interim president of Georgetown, testified before the House Committee on Education and Workplace. He told the panel that one of his tenured professors, Jonathan Brown, a convert to Islam, is no longer chairman of the university’s department of Arabic and Islamic studies.

Iran is the primary source of terrorism in the Middle East, and a potential nuclear threat to Israel and the U.S. It was due to the escalating attacks on Israel that the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in June. Brown, who holds an endowed chair at Georgetown, responded by saying Iran should attack U.S. military bases in the Middle East. “I am not an expert, but I assume Iran could still get a bomb easily. I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops.”

The Georgetown president told federal lawmakers that “Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown. The tweet was removed. We issued a statement condemning the tweet. Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department. He’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case.”

Brown’s hatred of the Jewish state was made plain after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. In an unprovoked barrage, the Iranian-backed terrorists killed 1,200 men, women and children, leaving 3,000 injured. Brown, the son-in-law of convicted terrorist supporter Sami Al-Arian, defended Hamas. More than that, he said “Israel has been engaged in a genocidal project for decades.”

This is vintage Brown. He is such an extremist that he claims Israel has a Nazi-like history. “Israel will go down in history as a country whose main claims to fame are genocide, racial fanaticism on the level of the Third Reich and religious fanaticism that makes ISIS look mellow.”

Similarly, Brown wonders why so many Jews have “embraced genocide as a core tenet.” Indeed, he contends that this is “an inalienable part of their faith.” Just as obscene, he portrays the Israeli army as evil, saying it is “objectively the most effective child-killing machine in modern history.”

It should not come as a surprise that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is standing by their man, even after Brown’s admission that he hopes Iran strikes U.S. military installations. In 2014, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) designated CAIR a terrorist organization. And on July 15, Rep. Elise Stefanik said that CAIR was a co-conspirator in a terrorist-financing case and has ties to Hamas.

In a letter  to Groves, CAIR pleaded its case for Brown, arguing that the investigation should be called off and he should be fully reinstated.

Bill Donohue wrote to Groves as well, but his my recommendations were very different from the one CAIR made.

Brown may be the most conspicuous anti-Jewish professor at Georgetown, but he is hardly alone. Mobashra Tazamal also teaches there and his specialty is “Islamophobia.” He is known for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. Nothing phobic about that—it’s simply a malicious lie.

To understand why Georgetown has a Muslim problem, all we need do is follow the money.

In 1977, Libya bought an endowed chair for $750,000. This was done under the auspices of Muammar Gaddafi, the brutal dictator and ally of the Soviet Union.  In 2005, Saudi Arabia gave $20 million to establish a Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. It is known for banning Christianity and oppressing women, two issues that are a flagrant violation of the mission of this Jesuit-run institution. But this is chicken feed compared to what Qatar has given.

Qatar has greased Georgetown to the tune of over $1 billion. These include funds to operate Georgetown’s Qatar campus. This has real-life consequences: everything from research to faculty hiring and curriculum development reflect the priorities of the Qatari regime.

Didn’t anyone at Georgetown complain about this arrangement? Yes, the Georgetown Voice did, but it is a student newspaper. The administration and faculty simply ignored their plea to close the Doha campus. Money talks.

At the D.C. campus, Brown was a beneficiary of Qatar generosity. The regime funded a post he occupied, the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service. But the real damage done by the Qatar-Georgetown nexus is not Brown’s chairmanship—it is the damage done by those who graduate from the university’s School of Foreign Service.

The report does not exaggerate when it says that this school “has produced more U.S. diplomats and ambassadors than any other institute. Many alumni have been shaped by ideologically slanted curricula and faculty with close ties to foreign leaders. These graduates go on to shape policy—often in ways aligned with the worldview of their financial backers.”

In short, Georgetown’s Muslim problem is a direct result of being bought by those whose values are about as anti-American and anti-Catholic as gets.

On the previous page, we concluded that Georgetown’s astounding tolerance for anti-Semitism is not unrelated to its being greased by Qatar to the tune of over $1 billion. Yet this Jesuit school publicly proclaims a great interest in human rights and social justice. Qatar’s record on this score, however, is atrocious.

Here is what Georgetown has to say about human rights.

Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute is the “focal point of human rights at Georgetown Law.” It aims to be the “premier training academy for the next generation of human rights advocates.” Law students can also avail themselves of the university’s Human Rights Associates Program. Students are introduced to “the breadth of human rights law and practice,” allowing them to “navigate academic and career choices.”

There is a special organization, The O’Neill Institute, Center for Health and Human Rights, that “focuses on the nexus of health and national and international human rights law.” There is also an annual meeting, the Samuel Dash Human Rights Conference, that “brings together leading figures in the human rights field to discuss and debate a current human rights issue.”

A look at the Georgetown course catalog reveals 39 classes on human rights for the fall semester of 2025. In addition, there are four student organizations dedicated to human rights. Moreover, Georgetown University Press lists 57 books on the subject of human rights.

Here is what Georgetown has to say about social justice.

The Center for Social Justice Research has many goals, among them being the development of “curricular offerings that incorporate social justice issues.” The Pathways to Social Justice Curriculum is one of the vehicles that Georgetown uses to accomplish this end. The Alternative Breaks Program is designed to “foster intersectional solidarity and inspire lasting commitment to service and social justice.”

The Education and Social Justice Project is a fellowship that allows students “to conduct in-depth examinations of innovative educational initiatives.” The Center for Social Justice Faculty Fellows Program is an inter-departmental effort that seeks to highlight the work of faculty in this area.

There are 47 student organizations dedicated to social justice. Annually, there is a Social Justice Send-Off commencement event that “celebrates students who have engaged in social justice work and public/community service work.”

The list of human rights and social justice initiatives is striking. Just as striking are the human rights and social justice abuses currently being practiced by one of its most generous donors, the nation of Qatar.

The U.S. Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in 2023 has much to say about Qatar. Among the list of human rights abuses are the following:

• Arbitrary arrest
• Political prisoners
• Serious restrictions on free expression
• Substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association

The report notes that “Citizens did not regularly discuss sensitive political and religious matters in public fora, but they did so in private and carefully on social media. The law prohibited criticism of the emir.”

The government has the right to censor the media and “close outlets and confiscate assets of a publication.” Conveniently, all print media are owned by the ruling family or those closely associated with it.

The State Department’s 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom says that “Conversion to another religion from Islam is defined as apostasy and is illegal.” Also, those found guilty of offending or misinterpreting the Quran can be imprisoned for up to seven years. This includes insulting the prophets or committing blasphemy against Islam.

Catholics, and other non-Muslims, are prohibited from “displaying religious symbols, which includes banning Christian congregations from advertising religious services or placing crosses outdoors where they are visible to the public.” All religious publications are subject to censorship.

Such is the state of human rights in Qatar today.

Apparently, none of this matters to Georgetown. It talks a great game when it comes to human rights and social justice, but it is deadly silent on these abuses as practiced by one of its most prominent benefactors. How a university that professes to be Catholic—with a big emphasis on its Jesuit roots—can live with itself under these circumstances is disturbing, to say the least.

It is also disturbing to note that while Georgetown has pledged to raise $100 million for the descendants of the 272 enslaved people that the Jesuits sold in 1838, it has had no problem employing Jonathan Brown, the anti-Semitic professor who has justified slavery and rape (as long as the offenders are Muslims).

Georgetown’s Center for the Study of Slavery and its Legacies should investigate this phenomenon. It is a classic case of what psychologist Leon Festinger called “cognitive dissonance,” the uncomfortable condition that exists when experiencing two internal inconsistencies.

Also, the alumni need to take the lead in resolving this situation. The governing boards, the administration and the faculty have shown themselves to be morally delinquent and guilty of rank duplicity.

We’ve all dealt with scolds, highly judgmental finger-pointing people  who are quick to call us out for some alleged moral outrage. They are annoying, to put it mildly. The corrective, however, is not to become the polar opposite, which is to be non-judgmental about practically everything. The extremes, as usual, are no good.

It is not the scolds who are the big problem these days; it’s the non-judgmental types. Their smugness is sickening—they like to lord over us as the high priests of tolerance and open-mindedness. More important, there are times when to withhold judgment is not only not virtuous, it is morally offensive. To cite one example: If we can’t summon the moral courage to unequivocally denounce genocide, then we need to reset our moral compass.

Artificial intelligence tells us that “Being non-judgmental fosters understanding and improves relationships.” To be sure, this is true in some cases. But if the issue is incest, then fostering an understanding  may actually impede our ability to condemn. More to the point, it is absurd to think that being non-judgmental about mother-son sexual relationships is virtuous.

Other internet sites imply that making judgments suggests a character disorder.  “Why do you feel the need to judge? It’s time for some introspection. You need to be honest with yourself and unwrap why you feel the need to judge other people.”

So when parents tell their children it’s time to retire their phone, or turn off the TV, and start doing their homework, they need to look in the mirror and ask themselves why they feel the need to judge? The truth is parents who are not judgmental about such things are delinquent in their duties. And by the way, is not the decision not to judge a judgment call?

In some Catholic quarters, it is fashionable to cite Pope Francis as a beacon of non-judgmentalism. After all, they say, it was he who famously said about homosexuality, “Who am I to judge?”

Wrong. He never said that about homosexuality. Homosexuality is  conduct, a behavior proscribed by the Bible and the Catholic Catechism, and the pope never said it wasn’t sinful. But being a homosexual is morally neutral—it is no more sinful than being a heterosexual.

Pope Francis was referring to the status of someone who is a homosexual, and in this particular case it was about a priest who had been accused, but not found guilty, of a sexual offense. To his credit, the pope chose his words very carefully. What he said before, and after, those five words, “Who am I to judge?”, matters greatly.

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge him?” (My italics.) The qualifiers, and the object of his remark, provide a very different picture than the one falsely promoted by “non-judgmental” savants.

When non-judgmentalism becomes a crusade, it carries the seeds of moral relativism, one of the most destructive, indeed lethal, ideas in history.

In his classic book, Modern Times, Paul Johnson, the great English Catholic historian, argued that the astounding violence and cultural corruption that marked the twentieth century was a function of moral relativism, the notion that there are no moral absolutes, just opinions. It was after World War I, he said, that moral relativism triumphed. Notions of right and wrong were no longer seen as a cultural expression, grounded in our Judeo-Christian heritage. No, they were merely a matter of whim.

Hitler said, “There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense.” He made good on his ethics. He killed with abandon, never flinching from his convictions. In this regard, he was following the wisdom of Nietzsche, who opined, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” Once truth and facts are seen as mere opinions, it allows some to think that putting Jews into ovens is the right thing to do. After all, “Who are we to judge”?

The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is a contemporary example of this view. It spends most of its time trying to belittle, if not deny, the Holocaust. It maintains that this is not an accurate account, but anyone who has read its work knows better. “The IHR does not ‘deny’ the Holocaust. Indeed, the IHR as such has no ‘position’ on any specific event or chapter of history, except to promote greater awareness and understanding, and to encourage more objective investigation.”

Why lie? Why the need to put the word deny in quotes, as if it were debatable? Similarly, any organization that takes no position on the Holocaust means it would not object if another Hitler emerged with his Final Solution plans.

The intentional killing of millions of innocent people is morally abhorrent. If that is being judgmental, so be it. There are times when being non-judgmental makes sense, but as a universal rule it is morally debased. Even deadly.

Former Sen. Joe Manchin said he left the Democratic Party last year because he couldn’t “stomach” what he said was “the socialist trend” in the Party. “It’s not the Democratic Party that I knew or that I was a part of for many, many years.”

The West Virginia senator specifically mentioned Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani—all socialists—as a reason why he is so negative.

He warned that “if the national Democratic Party doesn’t get back to more of a center or center left, there won’t be a party they’re going to recognize at all.”

Every survey over the past few decades shows that the Democratic Party is overrepresented by secularists, many of whom are anti-religion, especially anti-Christian. That is why its leaders are attracted to someone who might be able to resonate with Christians, yet appeal to their base. They think they have found one in James Talarico.

Rep. Talarico serves in the Texas legislature, and after a lengthy interview with podcast superstar Joe Rogan, he is the talk of the town in Democratic circles. “You need to run for president,” Rogan said. The 36- year-old might just do that, but now he is contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate.

Two years ago, Talarico caught the eye of Politico, the influential news website. The title of the article tells why: “James Talarico is a Deeply Religious Democrat Who Just Might Be the Next Big Thing in Texas.”

It is not every day that Politico finds someone who is “uniquely positioned to actually be the Democrat who wins statewide.” An “aspiring preacher,” he has been attending the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary; he is in the Masters of Divinity program.

All of this is music to the ears of Democrats looking for someone other than a socialist to save them. But the more we know about him, the more the music sounds discordant.

As it turns out, Talarico is a diehard secularist dressed in religious garb. In many ways, he is just like that “devout Catholic,” Joe Biden, only worse—he is a preacher man.

Talarico’s mentor is Rev. Jim Rigby. His pastor not only supports the whole panoply of gay rights, he loves ordaining gay and lesbian clergy. When Talarico was invited to give his first sermon in Rigby’s church in 2023, he chose to discuss abortion. He asked the parishioners, “Did they teach you in Sunday school that Jesus Christ himself was a radical feminist?”

In 2022, Talarico wrote to Biden asking him to issue three executive orders: 1) lease federal property to abortion clinics on federal lands or in federal offices 2) prohibit states from imposing restrictions on abortion medication through the Food and Drug Administration, and 3) hire abortion providers as federal employees. It is for reasons like this that in 2019 Texas Right to Life awarded him a score of 0%.

To an increasing number of Americans, allowing minors to undergo sex-reassignment surgery is child abuse. Allowing boys and men to compete against girls and women, and to shower together, is considered unjust. But not to Talarico—he’s all in. Indeed, he tells his fans that those who oppose genital mutilation, chemical castration and puberty blockers are “pushing us to waste time on these culture war issues.” He accuses his critics of wanting to “hurt trans kids.”

Talarico is so far gone that he actually believes there are sexes beyond male and female. He told one of his colleagues, “In fact, there are six.” He did not have a name for these creatures or share pictures of them. He should also be asked to explain why he chose six and not seven.

The “aspiring preacher” wants to ban the display of the Ten Commandments in the schools, but not “sexually explicit materials.”

When a bill to mandate the display of the Ten Commandments surfaced in the Texas legislature, Talarico, who explicitly called himself a “devout Christian,” said it was “deeply un-Christian.” He even branded it “idolatrous” and “un-American.” But some were ecstatic about what he said. Barack Obama advisor David Axelrod and California Governor Gavin Newsom were blown away, casting him as their new savior.

Talarico says he wants to help the poor, but his policies suggest he wants to keep them in their place. He strongly opposes school choice measures, calling them “welfare for the wealthy.” But it is the poor, not the wealthy, who cannot afford to place their children in a private or parochial school. No matter, he wants to consign them to failing public schools.

Perversely, Talarico is actually an advocate of “welfare for the wealthy.” He places no income limit on giving away a whole range of services. He supports medical debt forgiveness, baby bonds, subsidized marriage counseling, and what he calls “Medicaid for Y’All.”

Given his passion for radical transgenderism and abortion, it is hardly surprising to learn that he has won the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood. He’s their kind of guy. Obama and Biden both said they believed in religious liberty.

Obama declared war on the Little Sisters of the Poor and Biden’s FBI spied on Catholics. Talarcio is cut from the same cloth.

If he is regarded as a “deeply religious Democrat,” we’d hate to meet those who aren’t.

This is a longer version of an article that appeared earlier this year.

Catholic dissidents are a motley crew. They include ex-Catholics, Catholics in name only, and some who attend Mass. They are lay men and women, nuns and priests; more than a few are ex-nuns and ex-priests. What they have in common is anger: they are very angry at the Catholic Church. What do they want? They want to gut its moral theology and Protestantize it.

Practicing Catholics do not fund Catholic dissident organizations, so where do they get their cash? From elite foundations bent on undermining Catholicism. There are many of them, but the number-one contributor to these “organizations” (they are more like letterheads with an email address and a website) is the Arcus Foundation.

Arcus funds We Are Church, DignityUSA, New Ways Ministry, Catholics for Choice and the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. All reject the Church’s teachings on marriage, the family, sexuality and ordination, yet claim to be Catholic.

Jon Stryker created the Arcus Foundation in 2000 to focus on queer causes and the preservation of the great apes. We are not sure how well he has done on the latter goal, but we are certain that he has succeeded in funding anti-Catholicism. A homosexual billionaire, in 2023 he gave a total of more than $42 million in grants and operating expenses to various organizations, some of which are dissident Catholic groups.

We Are Church is an umbrella group of ex-Catholics and Catholic malcontents. It is a member of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, a pro-homosexual outfit. Its leaders have tried very hard to mobilize everyday Catholics to join their efforts to radically change the Church from top to bottom. They have failed repeatedly, but they still try to tear it apart.

New Ways Ministry was founded in 1977 by Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick. Their goal is to normalize homosexuality and to get the Church to change its teachings on sodomy. For decades this outfit has been roundly condemned by cardinals and bishops in Rome and the U.S., but in 2021 Pope Francis spoke positively of Gramick. Indeed, he warmly embraced her.

DignityUSA is another pro-homosexual entity. At one time its New York chaplain was Father Paul Shanley, the Boston child rapist who was thrown out of the priesthood after many clerics covered up for him.

Catholics for Choice is a pro-abortion and anti-Catholic letterhead. Frances Kissling, an ex-nun, succeeded in putting it on the map decades ago. The media love them, and no elite donor has been a steadier supporter of its policies more than the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation is so ideologically corrupt that Henry Ford II quit in protest in the 1970s.

Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) wants a  woman to be pope, provided it is a woman who rejects the teachings of the Church on sexuality; it will settle for women priests right now.

Other dissident groups that are funded by the establishment include the National Coalition of American Nuns—it is openly pro-abortion—the Women’s Ordination Conference and NETWORK; the latter was run for many years by Sister Simone—Nuns-on-the-Bus—Campbell (the Democratic operative thinks abortion should be legal).

Arcus and the Ford Foundation are not alone in keeping these rogue groups alive. As expected, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations are donors to these anti-Catholic causes, as are the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (Warren is a big abortion fan), the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Huber Foundation.

We know of no organized effort to effectively assault the beliefs and practices of Jews, Muslims or Protestants. Just Catholics.

So while conservatives are rightly happy that there are some needed cultural shifts going on, they would be foolish to think that the enemies of Christianity, especially Catholicism, will go quietly into the night. Termites have a way of hanging around.

Jimmy Swaggart died July 1. He was an old-time anti-Catholic bigot who made it big, and then had a major fall from grace. The Pentecostal televangelist was 90. His cousins were Mickey Gillis and Jerry Lee Lewis, two accomplished entertainers.

On August 21, 2006, we received a fax from a man who wrote, “My mother-in-law—a Pentecostal subscribes to this magazine [he sent a copy of ‘The Evangelist’], and this has to be one of the many reasons she thinks her daughter is lost because her daughter, my wife, is now Catholic. Jimmy Swaggart is spreading anti-Catholic articles to his subscribers of the magazine, ‘The Evangelist.'”

The man was right. Swaggart was an inveterate anti-Catholic bigot (he also lashed out at other Protestants and Jews).

In the 1980s, Swaggart said, “I maintain that the Catholic superstructure and organization is not really a Christian organization. Its claims are false.” He constantly bashed the pope, saying he was “the most evil man alive.” In one of his tracts, “A Letter to My Catholic Friends,” he said of his “friends” that they are “poor pitiful individuals who think they have enriched themselves spiritually by kissing the pope’s ring”; he urged them to leave the Church.

Catholics were idolaters. As proof, he said, they participate in “Mary-worship.” Their belief in Purgatory, he argued, “provided the Catholic Church with a very effective means to rake heaping piles of money into its coffers.” The Church was guilty of “greed,” the quest for “political power,” and promoting the “the cult of Peter.”

Swaggart proved to be such an influential bigot that several TV stations, including Boston and Atlanta, dropped his show in the mid-1980s. However, he was still seen in 550 outlets nationwide.

In the end, what finished him was not his anti-Catholicism. He was photographed visiting a prostitute in New Orleans. After an investigation by the Assemblies of God, he went on TV to beg for forgiveness and apologized to his wife. But his apology proved to be insincere: he was later caught with another hooker.

The genre of anti-Catholicism that Swaggart represented is no longer  predominant. His theological animus against the Catholic Church has been eclipsed by militant secularists. They are bent on privatizing, if not destroying, Catholicism. Just as mean-spirited, they are much better educated, and are therefore much more dangerous. In fact, they occupy most of the command posts in America, especially those that specialize in the dissemination of ideas (e.g., education, the media and publishing).

Swaggart is history. May his family come to terms with his legacy.

The Supreme Court ended its session by rendering three decisions that have the effect, if not the specific intent, of protecting the best interests of parents and children. Those who ascribe to traditional moral values will find much to celebrate.

The Supreme Court ruling upholding the right of South Carolina to withhold funding from Planned Parenthood in its Medicaid program was decided on technical legal grounds, but its ramifications are much broader.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the Medicaid law doesn’t include a “clear and unambiguous notice of an individually enforceable right.” This is significant but what is really important is that the Planned Parenthood game of saying it is not simply an abortion provider is over. The reason this case was brought in the first place had to do with the South Carolina governor deciding that because money is fungible, Planned Parenthood could use Medicaid funds to pay for abortions. With this decision, other states will not follow suit, the net effect being a win for those who want to curb abortion and stop back-door public funding of it.

Many religious parents, in particular, do not want to subject their children to the pro-gay and lesbian agenda, and they certainly object when schools force their children to abide by it. Their rights were affirmed by the high court decision to allow parents to direct their children to opt-out of so-called LGBT-themed books.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said, “We have long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children. And we have held that those rights are violated by government policies that substantially interfere with the religious development of children.”
Religious parents also objected to those who sought to deny age verification to access pornography. Advances in technology and the rise of the internet have meant that minors have easier access to pornographic websites than in previous years.

The Supreme Court underscored the right of parents to protect their children from pornography. Justice Clarence Thomas said, “The power to require age verification is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content.” Thus, the Texas law that requires age verification was affirmed.

The rights of parents and children are under attack, and this is especially true of the rights of religious parents and children. Those leading the attack are secular militants, the most intolerant of all Americans. The good news is that their morally debased agenda took a serious hit with these three Supreme Court rulings. Alleluia!

We have known for years about an anti-Catholic cell group in the FBI that was operative under President Biden. It spied on practicing Catholics, not just those who have been dubbed “radical-traditionalist Catholics” (RTCs). We now know, thanks to FBI Director Kash Patel, and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, how widespread it was. Indeed, the extent of this unconstitutional probe was far greater than we were led to believe by former FBI Director Christopher Wray.

On February 9, 2023, Bill Donohue expressed his initial concerns about the FBI’s investigation of RTCs. He had a hunch that this probe was a ruse, and that the Bureau was really interested in targeting practicing Catholics. He asked, “What’s next? Will it be a war on ‘Catholics who are orthodox?'” It turned out he was right. The FBI went after “mainline” Catholics, not just RTCs.

Wray has insisted all along that the Richmond field office of the FBI was the only office that was involved in this anti-Catholic witch hunt. What Grassley has now revealed proves how untrue this is.

The Richmond memo, detailing the Catholic spy operation (which was first made public by an FBI whistleblower), was distributed to over 1,000 FBI employees across the country before it was publicly disclosed. In fact, the FBI produced at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that made plain its anti-Catholic bigotry. That it relied on information from a hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, makes this unseemly caper all the more despicable.

Grassley even revealed a second FBI memo that was drafted for distribution by the Richmond field office. The Iowa Republican noted that “The draft memo repeated the unfounded link between traditional Catholicism and violent extremism, but was never published due to backlash following the Richmond Memo’s public disclosure. The existence of this second memo contradicts former FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony that the Richmond field office only produced ‘a single product.'”

The new batch of documents on the Biden FBI Catholic spy ring makes it clear that those responsible for this obscene gambit need to be held accountable. Wray said he was “aghast” when he learned that “mainline” Catholics were being targeted, and former Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was “appalled.” They need to be subpoenaed to find out why they did nothing about it.

Remember, Catholics who are “pro-life,” “pro-family” and who believe there are only two sexes were called “domestic terrorists” by Biden’s FBI.

Those responsible for this outrageous violation of the First Amendment rights of Catholics need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We need to know the whole truth.