Bill Donohue

No one knows exactly how many queers (the preferred word by the Associated Press for homosexuals) are pro-Hamas, but it is indisputable that some have joined the side of the terrorists. “Queers for Palestine” is only one such group.

Valley Families for Palestine recently held a Queer Storytime for Palestine event at the Northampton Center for the Arts in Massachusetts. It was intended for preschool through upper elementary students. Lil Miss Hot Mess read stories to the children, shouting, “Free Palestine.”

The ironies abound. Lil Miss Hot Mess is a Jew who hates Jews. People like that are routinely murdered by Hamas. And they even kill their own. Mahmoud Ishtiwi, a Hamas commander, was tortured and killed by his fellow terrorists in 2016 after he allegedly had sex with another guy. In 2022, Ahmad Abu Marhia, a 25-year-old Palestinian, had his head chopped off because he was a queer.

It would be a mistake to think that Lil Miss Hot Mess is a total freak, though one can be forgiven for thinking that way. No, there is a link between political and sexual revolution that has deep intellectual roots. I discuss this in my upcoming book Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis; it will be published June 18.

Wilhelm Reich, the 20th century Austrian intellectual, was the most sexually crazed member of the Frankfurt School, and that was quite a feat. This was a school of thought that took hold in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and later moved to New York City, laying anchor at Columbia University. It is a blend of Marx and Freud.

Reich is known as the “Father of the Sexual Revolution.” He worked hard to convince Catholic children to abandon their religion and put their faith in Communism. He insisted that there could be no political revolution without first witnessing a sexual revolution.

In the 1960s, radical feminist Shulamith Firestone was also influenced by Freud—they both vigorously opposed the incest taboo. Like Reich, she posited a direct link between a sexual revolution and a political revolution. In fact, she blamed the failure of the Russian Revolution on the failure to “eliminate the family and sexual repression.”

More recently, another radical feminist, Judith Butler, has argued that we need to get rid of the incest taboo because incest is not necessarily a traumatic act; what is traumatic is the stigmatization itself. She is another intellectual—she likes to be called “they”—who ties sexual revolution to political revolution. She actively promotes transgenderism and anarchy.

The urban terrorist group, Antifa, puts into action what the intellectuals are promoting. Mostly known for destroying Portland and Seattle during the “Summer of Love” in 2020, the masked thugs want to overthrow the government, but that is not enough: they have taken up the cause of transgenderism and abortion.

There is now a subset of Antifa called Trantifa, militant activists who confront parents who object to drag queen shows. They have a particular hatred of girls and women who resist their agenda.

What they want is what Reich, Firestone and Butler want—the destruction of the family and the overthrow of the political order. And they are prepared to use violence to further their cause.

This explains why some queers have joined the Hamas crusade. In their mind, there can be no true liberation until they are free from sexual and political norms. And for that, they blame our Judeo-Christian heritage. This explains why queers for Hamas has chimed in, irrational though they are on many fronts.

Bill Donohue

As encyclopedia.com explains, “Willingness to die for a religious or political cause has long been recognized as a key measure of an activist’s commitment.” Accordingly, the Pro-Hamas protesters should be prepared to die. Instead, they object to being arrested.

Student protesters and outside agitators like to hold signs that read, “Final Solution.” They display swastikas. They shout, “We Are Hamas.” They proclaim, “Intifada Revolution.”

But real men and women don’t engage in revolutionary protests and then  demand amnesty. They don’t demand that their arrest record be expunged. They don’t hide under blankets when speaking to the press. They don’t object if their picture is taken. They don’t mind it if they are outed on social media. They don’t insist on being given “chicken nuggets and applesauce” when they barricade themselves inside school buildings. And they sure don’t wear masks and keffiyehs hiding their face.

The pro-Hamas protesters have much in common with the Ku Klux Klan. Both hate Jews and both wear masks while demonstrating. While some Klansmen wore masks in the 19th century, it wasn’t until the turn of the century that they became commonplace. In response, states like New York passed laws banning protesters like the KKK from wearing them. This law is still on the books, but the cops are not allowed to enforce it, much to the applause of the Jew haters.

Masks have nothing to do with protecting against Covid (they don’t even do that well). In 2011, well before Covid, Occupy Wall Street thugs wore them and less than a decade later Antifa terrorists did the same. Now it has gotten so crazy that at a tent site at the University of Michigan, the pro-Hamas crazies are being given masks upon entry. So brave.

Marx wanted a revolution and advocated violence—he said it was necessary to overthrow capitalism. But since the working class today is uniformly anti-Marxist (they love Trump), the cause of totalitarianism falls to Black Lives Matter, Antifa and Pro-Hamas crusaders. Unlike what Marx envisioned, they want to promote violence without being subjected to it. This is not manly.

One reason why this is not a manly exercise has to do with the overwhelming number of women who have joined these causes. What we are witnessing is the feminization of revolutionaries; the men have been castrated by their cowardly female counterparts. That’s why they love masks.

Real revolutionaries know they have to have some skin in the game. Indeed, they have to commit to dying for their cause. But today’s brand of revolutionaries can’t be taken seriously: they are more worried about having an arrest record and how it may hurt their career than in making the ultimate sacrifice. And they sure don’t want to give up their Apple phones and computers, even though Israel has been making them since 1985.

They want “revolution lite.” Only brats think that way.

Bill Donohue

In 1952, Congress designated the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer; this year it falls on May 2. Predictably, every president since has said something positive about religion on this day. To judge their sincerity, however, we need to look at the policies they initiated that touch on religious liberty.

The National Day of Prayer was meant to be a day when Americans “may turn to God in prayer and meditation.” When Trump gave his Proclamation marking this day on May 4, 2017, he mentioned God four times. When Biden first addressed this day on May 6, 2021, he never mentioned God.

This may seem like small pickings, but in fact it is suggestive of the religious liberty policies that each man issued. For example, we compared Trump’s religious liberty initiatives to the ones promoted by Biden. To read the entire report on this issue, click here.

In his four years as president, Trump addressed religious liberty issues 117 times. From the beginning of his presidency in January 2021 to May 1, 2024, Biden addressed these matters 31 times.

Quantitative data are important, and on this score, Trump wins easily: 117-31. But qualitative analysis is also important: the content of the religious issues that they addressed matters greatly.

The Biden administration’s idea of religious liberty centers heavily on  discrimination. Within this area of concern, much attention is given to instances of religious discrimination against minority religions. For example, Muslims, Sikhs, Tribal Nations, Buddhists, and Hindus are  given more attention than offenses against pro-life Christians and attacks on Christian-run crisis pregnancy centers.

In many cases, religious liberty is not even a key element in the Biden administration’s outreach to religious groups: transportation, mental health, nutritious food, drug abuse, suicide prevention, greeting refugee newcomers, “climate smart agriculture,” internet service—these and related matters—occupy the centerpiece of their concern.

One of the more striking aspects of the religious liberty issues pursued by the Biden team is their promulgation of new regulations aimed at curtailing the religious liberty protections afforded by the Trump administration. For instance, with regard to federally funded social services, Trump sought to make it easier for faith-based providers to compete for federal grants. Biden is making it harder.

In 2021, the Biden team said that the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships would not “favor religious over secular organizations.” That was a polite way of saying that secular social service organizations would continue to be awarded preferential treatment, thus undercutting the raison d’etre of faith-based programs.

Since that time, Biden regulations have sought to ensure that faith-based programs will not be used for “explicitly religious purposes.” This beckons the state to police these initiatives, looking to see how “religious” they are, thus creating major First Amendment problems.

The  Biden administration also allows a beneficiary to raise religious objections if he feels uncomfortable with the operations of the program. This allows people of one faith who are seeking assistance from a provider of another faith to checkmate the provider’s religious prerogatives. In other words, the mere presence of a religious symbol in a faith-based facility is sufficient grounds to nix it.

In essence, Biden’s idea of faith-based programs is to gut their religious component, in effect secularizing them the way Obama did.

No one seriously believes that Trump is a man of deep faith. But his policies on religious liberty are a model of excellence. Biden, on the other hand, tries hard to convince the public that he is a “devout Catholic” yet his religious liberty rulings are unimpressive, and in some cases are subversive of this First Amendment right.

Four months after Biden assumed office in January 2021, his executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships met with leaders of six secular organizations, most of which had expressed virulent anti-Catholic statements for many years. Freedom From Religion Foundation, the American Humanist Association, American Atheists, Center for Inquiry, Ex-Muslims of North America and the Secular Coalition for America.

All of them are militantly secular and most are quite open about their contempt for religious liberty.

It would be one thing if White House staffers in domestic policy invited these representatives to discuss their concerns. But when an office of the administration that is expressly charged with promoting religious liberty extends the invitation, it would be like the Department of Education inviting the Flat Earth Society to engage them in conversation.

National Prayer Day may mean something special to President Biden, personally. But like all presidents, he has to be judged on the basis of his actions, not his intentions. On this score, his record on religious liberty is an abject failure.

Bill Donohue

Democrats in many parts of the country have endorsed the legalization of marijuana, and the Biden administration is pushing hard to deemphasize its negative effects. Ironically, the Biden team is hell bent on banning menthol cigarettes. From a public health perspective, none of this makes any sense.

The Department of Health and Human Services wants marijuana use to be treated as a Schedule III drug, which would put it in the same class as Tylenol with codeine; currently pot is treated as Schedule I, meaning it is treated as a serious drug.

What gives? Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, the NAACP and the ACLU don’t want a ban on menthol cigarettes. Why? To these activists, every issue, no matter how trivial, is seen through a racial lens.  Sharpton said it best. “A menthol ban would severely target and harm African American smokers, who overwhelmingly prefer menthol cigarettes.”

Sharpton did not address the health effects of smoking cigarettes or marijuana—his mind is exclusively fixated on the racial dimension. So is the Biden administration. Interestingly, it goes the other way, maintaining that because menthol use is popular with blacks, that smacks of racism. The one thing they agree on is that racism is everywhere.

But given the pushback—this is an election year—it looks like the Biden campaign to ban the menthol brand is going up in smoke.

In 2018, Sharpton came out strongly in favor of legalizing marijuana. He never addressed the health effects. It was simply a matter of racial justice. He called it a “civil rights cause,” citing statistics that show blacks being arrested for marijuana use more than whites.

What would it take for the Biden administration, and the African American elite, to conclude that marijuana legalization poses a clear and present danger to the health of those who use it? Former Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel recognized this years ago, but today there are few minority leaders taking his side.

After legalizing marijuana six years ago in California, gang activity and violent crime is on the rise. Colorado’s experiment led to a record number of marijuana-related traffic deaths and ER visits. Impaired brain function is another problem. And in city after city where legalization is the rule, both in the United States and abroad, the black market is thriving.

For years conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Jr. have been telling us that drug legalization will put an end to the black market. The data prove them wrong. When drugs are plentiful, more people will try them, including the very young, and when government-approved drugs are regarded as too restrictive—in terms of potency, quantity, availability and new substances—black market profiteers move in for the kill. Nothing will ever stop this barely underground occupation.

Moreover, when drugs are legalized, social disorder follows. Truancy, street crimes and morally destitute acts spike. We should have learned by now: Cultivating virtue and citizenship is never easy—destroying it is.

But to those who are obsessed with race, none of this matters. They are the true regressives, having learned nothing about the frailty of the human condition.

Bill Donohue

The Catholic Church is opposed to segregation, homosexuality and gender ideology. Yet many Catholic colleges and universities are holding graduation ceremonies that segregate students on the basis of their sexual identities.

St. John’s University in Queens, New York has long had a reputation of being a solid Catholic institution. When we learned that it was holding a Lavender Graduation this year (for the second consecutive time), we sought to learn how common this is on Catholic campuses. For the uninitiated, Lavender Graduation ceremonies exclusively honor homosexual students and those who mistakenly believe they belong to the opposite sex.

What we found would surprise many Catholics.

We randomly chose 40 Catholic colleges and universities, from various geographic regions, to see if they have a separate graduation ceremony for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. We found that 20 did  and 20 did not. To read the list click here.

In 2006, St. Mary’s College of California was the first to have a Lavender Graduation. Three years later Georgetown and the University of San Diego followed suit.

Segregated graduation ceremonies at non-Catholic colleges and universities are nothing new: Harvard has long segregated on the basis of race (a win for the KKK) and Columbia intentionally divides students by holding a wide variety of segregated graduations. The commitment these Ivies have to separating students on the basis of ascribed and achieved statuses is outstanding.

But for Catholic institutions of higher learning to promote segregation—on the basis of sexual identity no less—is astounding: they are not only in  open defiance of Catholic moral theology, they are working to undermine the work of Pope Francis. Consequently, these schools are virtually indistinguishable from secular colleges and universities. In short, these are rogue Catholic entities.

I once asked a well-known Jesuit priest if he could tell me the difference between Georgetown University and George Washington University. He knew what I meant. He just stared at me.

If students can’t come together on graduation day, there is no reason to continue the fiction that colleges are a community. They are not. Welcome to the New Apartheid (with a sexual twist).

Bill Donohue

President Biden showed his bigoted side on April 23 when he spoke in Tampa, Florida about the glory of abortion. It wasn’t abortion, per se, that got him going—it was those whom he identified as pro-life that set him off.

To be specific, he railed against Donald Trump’s pro-life stance, saying the former president made “a political deal” with “the evangelical base of the Republican Party to look past his moral and character flaws.”

Fifty percent of all the money raised by the Democrats comes from Jews. Yet no one is going to say that Biden made a “political deal” with “the Jewish base of the Democratic Party to look past his cognitive flaws.”

Biden refuses to condemn the anti-Jewish rhetoric stemming from Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan. Yet no one is going to say that he made a “political deal” with “the Muslim base of the Democratic Party to look past his cognitive flaws.”

Notice that Biden’s comment in Tampa wasn’t about Protestants in general. He focused exclusively on evangelicals, and that is because to take a swipe at all Protestants would be to slam the mainline denominations; they are mostly in the pro-abortion camp. He chose a subset of Protestants who are known for their pro-life convictions.

Biden intentionally red-flagged evangelicals, knowing it would appeal to his bigoted base (survey data also show that Democrats do not think highly of Catholics, either). This was a classic example of religious baiting, and it should be condemned by everyone.

As the election year progresses, look for Biden to continue with this demagogic strategy. The “devout Catholic” has no problem manipulating religion to serve his militantly secular agenda.

The following letter by Bill Donohue is in response to the Inspector General’s report on the FBI  probe of Catholics:

April 24, 2024

Hon. Jim Jordan
Chairman
House Committee on the Judiciary
2056 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-3504

Dear Chairman Jordan:

After issuing a news release on April 19, the day after news stories broke on the FBI’s internal probe of Analysts involved in the investigation of Catholics, I had a chance to read Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on this issue. While he satisfied some of our concerns, serious issues remain.

Horowitz begins by noting that the Richmond Field Office examined “a purported link between Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVEs) and ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholic (RTC)’ ideology.” He then cites the conclusion reached by the FBI Inspection Division.

While there was no evidence of malice, it was determined that the probe of Catholics “lacked sufficient evidence” to establish a relationship between the aforementioned extremists and RTC ideology. The report also concluded that the FBI Analysts “incorrectly conflated the subjects’ religious views with their RMVE activities….”

This begs the question: Why did the Analysts think there was a relationship in the first place? It is one thing to concede that there are racial and ethnic extremists in every religious and secular organization; it is quite another to assume a nexus between a mainstream religious organization and violence, especially when the grounds for making such an assumption are spurious.

It is as revealing as it is disturbing to note that the probe of Catholics  was based on one person, namely, Defendant A. That he is clearly a violent, bigoted thug—he hates everyone from Jews to cops—is uncontested. But where are the others? There isn’t even a Defendant B.

More disturbing is the admission that Defendant A does not attend a Catholic church. The report admits that he attended a church “with an international religious society that advocates traditional Catholic theology and liturgy but it is not considered by the Vatican to be in full communion with the Catholic Church (my italics).”

Later in the report we learn that “there was no evidence that Defendant A was being radicalized” at the church he attended, and that “he had been on the radar ‘as an unstable, dangerous individual’ before ‘any association with any Catholic related entity whatsoever.’” That being the case, why was it necessary to investigate his fellow churchgoers? Since when does the FBI conduct an investigation of a world religion on the basis of one miscreant whom they admit was not radicalized by it?

To make matters worse, the report says that when those who attended church with Defendant A were questioned about him, they confessed that he “displayed ‘unusual’ and ‘concerning’ behavior.” In fact, the report does not note a single person who attended church with him who found him persuasive—they knew he was odd. Thus does this admission undercut the rationale for a further probe of Catholics.

We know from previous disclosures that “mainline Catholic parishes” were targeted by the FBI. Yet we now know that the Analysts couldn’t even identify radicals within this breakaway Catholic entity, never mind rank-and-file Catholic men and women.

The judgment of both Analysts was more than flawed—it was totally irresponsible. Even more mind-boggling is what the FBI HQ Analyst had to say.

Analyst 1 voiced the opinion that the probe had a “national application.” Analyst 2 admitted that she was “going to take a look at other RMVE actors that are rad-trads” (radical traditionalists). To top things off, the FBI HQ Analyst said she was “really interested in this resurgence of interest in the [C]atholic [C]hurch from our [DVEs]. The latter refers to Domestic Violence Extremists.

What occasioned this “resurgence of interest” in the Catholic Church? Was it something that someone did? Or does this reflect the ideological predilections of the Analyst? Notice she wasn’t referring to a “resurgence of interest” in breakaway Catholic entities. She was referring to the Roman Catholic Church.

There are many issues left outstanding. Moreover, if we are to believe that what happened was nothing of a serious nature, why was it necessary for the FBI to delete files? That suggests a cover up.

Thank you for your continued interest in this matter. When the Catholic Church is subjected to scrutiny by the FBI because of the beliefs and behavior of one maladjusted individual—who does not attend a Catholic church—it cries out for a much more detailed response than what the Horowitz report affords.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

cc: FBI Director Christopher Wray

Bill Donohue

No administration in American history has tried harder to promote thought control than the Biden administration. Orwellian at its finest, the goal is to induce the public to accept its highly politicized vocabulary as a means of controlling its thought patterns.

To read the entire report click here. Here are some examples.

Gender Identity

Just hours into his presidential term, Mr. Biden’s White House website allowed users to choose their pronouns, a change that drew swift praise from advocates. As part of the website revamp that occurs during presidential transitions, the White House changed its contact form. The form now allows individuals to select from the following list: she/her, he/him, they/them, other, or prefer not to share.

Illegal Immigration

Suggested terminology swaps reportedly include using “noncitizen” or “undocumented noncitizen” instead of “alien” or “illegal alien,” and referring to the “integration” of immigrants into society instead of “assimilation,” which has been criticized as racist.

Health

• “Convict/ex-convict” becomes “People who were formerly incarcerated”
• “Crazy” is replaced by “People with a pre-existing mental disorder”
• “Homosexuals” should be called “Queer”
• “Transgenders/transgendered/transsexual” is replaced by “LGBTQ (or LGBTQIA or LGBTQ+ or LGBTQIA2)”

Aviation

Recommendations included replacing “airman” with “aircrew,” “manned aviation” with “traditional aviation” and “cockpit” with “flight deck.”

General Accountability Office

Leaked internal memos obtained by DailyMail.com show the Government Accountability Office (GAO) forbids employees from using male and female terms.

State Department

Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a memo instructing State Department employees to refrain from using what he deemed to be “problematic” language.  He  instructs staffers not to “pressure someone to state their pronouns.” Instead, he offers a list of commonly used pronouns including “she/her, he/him, they/them, and ze/zir” explaining that people use a variety of pronouns.

Additionally, Blinken identified other common terms that State Department employees should avoid using. Rather than saying “mother/father,” staffers should say “parent” instead. Likewise, “son/daughter” should be replaced with “child.” Meanwhile, “spouse” or “partner” should be used in place of “husband/wife.”

Just for a moment, imagine if those who died as recently as at the end of the last century were informed of this madness. What would they say? Our cultural descent is happening very quickly, and those leading the charge are mostly well-educated white people who have declared war on truth, nature, and nature’s God.

Contact the White House Press Secretary: Karine.Jean-Pierre@who.eop.gov

Bill Donohue

It was the day after Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election. I was smiling (I had run Reagan’s campaign in the North Hills of Pittsburgh), but most of the other professors at La Roche College (now a university) were sulking, and many appeared depressed. However, their mood was not uncharacteristic of the way they were most of the time: There are a lot of unhappy campers in the professoriate, especially in the liberal arts.

Nothing has changed.

In a new study by psychologists in Finland assessing the state of mind of radical social justice devotees, it was found that those who bought into progressive ideas are profoundly unhappy. Published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, the researchers started with a sample of 851 persons, mostly students and professors at the University of Turku, and then expanded it to 5,030 adults. They distinguished between those who hold to a traditional liberal perspective and those who identify with a  radical one. They focused on the latter.

The researchers devised a Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale (CSJAS) that measured seven aspects of what they deemed as representative of “woke” politics. Most of the items dealt with race, though one tapped transgenderism (the idea that the sexes are interchangeable). For example, “University reading lists should include fewer white or European authors” was deemed reflective of the “woke” view.

Social justice attitudes, the study’s authors said, “perceive people foremost as members of identity groups and as being, witting or unwitting, perpetrators or victims of oppression based on the groups’ perceived power differentials; and advocate regulating how or how much people speak and how they act if there is a perceived power differential between speakers, and intervening in action or speech deemed oppressive.”

The conclusions were riveting.

Regarding the initial small sample, it was determined that high CSJAS scores were “linked to anxiety, depression, and a lack of happiness.” On the larger sample, “this lower mental well-being was mostly associated with being on the political left and not specifically with having a high CSJAS score.” Women were more likely than men to have high CSJAS scores, which explains why their happiness quotient was smaller.

The researchers noted that their findings were consistent with that of other studies on this subject. They are right about that.

“Liberals, especially liberal women, are significantly less likely to be happy with their lives and satisfied with their ‘mental health,’ compared to their conservative peers aged 18-55.” According to University of Virginia sociologist W. Brad Wilcox, this was “the big takeaway from the 2022 American Family Survey, a striking new poll from YouGov and the Deseret News.”

In 2023, Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist at Columbia University, examined data from many studies on this subject and concluded that conservatives are indeed happier than liberals. He said this finding “is consistent across countries and extends back in time.”

The question remains: Why are those on the left so miserable?

For starters, consider this. Imagine waking up each day thinking the world is made up of oppressors, racists, sexists, homophobes and their victims. Is that likely to put a smile on your dial?

It’s actually worse than this. Left-wing professors, which is to say most of them in the social sciences and humanities, love to bask in their negativity. Smug as can be, they love thinking that those who don’t share their views are ignorant buffoons; they, of course, are the only really bright ones. Their darkness is their defining characteristic.

But why do these malcontents think this way?

It has much to do with what Catholicism calls the sin of pride, the belief that we are self-sufficient human beings and have no need for God. The big thinkers believe they are too smart to believe in God. Too bad they aren’t smart enough to know that boys who claim to be girls should not be allowed to compete against girls in sports and shower with them. There must be a cavity in their brain when it comes to sex.

It must be said that while those on the left are the most likely to be unhappy, it has been my experience that extremists on the right are just as likely to be despondent.

I have often said that when I encounter a highly educated person, or an activist, for the first time, I know within minutes if I am dealing with an extremist. The individual could be on the right or the left—it doesn’t matter. The common denominator is humorlessness. They rarely smile and their bouts of laughter usually come at someone else’s expense.

Smiling is important. Laughter is important. They are staples of mental health. Hanging around those who are habitually unhappy—for reasons wholly due to their cast of mind and their inflated idea of who they are—is a chore. It’s also a bore.

The Finnish psychologists learned that left-wing “woke” mavens find it hard to be happy. The deeper problem is that they actually like it that way.

Bill Donohue

On Thursday, April 18, 2024, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) Michael E. Horowitz released his report on the FBI’s leaked memo targeting Catholics, and once again the loyal sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have been slapped in the face.

While the IG’s report notes that the memo “improperly conflated religious beliefs of activists with the likelihood they would engage in domestic terrorism,” it goes on to say that there was no evidence that “anyone ordered or directed” an investigation of Catholics because of their religious beliefs.

To say that no one ordered an investigation of Catholics because of their religion is about as persuasive as saying no one ordered an investigation of blacks because of their race.

Frankly, the IG’s report does little to bring this issue to a close. It is overly vague, ambiguous, and littered with contradictions. Catholics deserve a better accounting of the FBI’s and DOJ’s actions.

The IG insists that the memo grew out of the FBI’s investigation of alleged domestic terrorists. But if the intent of this investigation was to focus on right-wing nationalists, how did Catholics become the focus of the leaked FBI memo last year? Why did the FBI look into establishing sources and other contacts in the Church, instead of focusing on the stomping grounds unique to right-wing nationalists? The IG’s report has nothing to clarify these questions.

Further, the IG’s report admits that one of the authors of the leaked memo says she was “really interested in this resurgence of interest in the Catholic Church” by what the FBI claim are domestic terrorists. This statement alone contradicts the claim in the IG’s report that Catholics were just tangentially connected to the FBI’s investigation of genuine targets. From the jump, the authors clearly were “interested” in the Catholic Church.

Ultimately, the IG’s report does not put this matter to rest. Certain elements within the FBI and DOJ went rogue and have not been held accountable for their actions. For a year, they could have taken proactive steps to assure Catholics across the country that these renegades faced serious consequences; however, they have admitted they were “aghast” and even “appalled” by the leaked memo but took no substantive actions to resolve the matter.

Therefore, I call upon the Congress, a co-equal branch of government, to exercise its oversight authority to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has rightfully pointed out that the IG’s report glosses over the fact that critical files associated with the memo were deleted. This is a serious breach. These files are federal records and bureaucrats cannot just destroy them on a whim.

Additionally, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) has shown great tenacity in taking on the FBI. I would encourage him in the strongest terms possible to call for new hearings on this matter so we can hear directly from IG Horowitz to clear up the vagueness and ambiguities in his written report.

Last year, I sent several letters to Rep. Jordan with direct questions that would help allay the fears of Catholics regarding the FBI’s memo. Many of them remain unanswered. It is paramount we get the answers to these questions:

Was it someone from outside the FBI that crafted this egregious abuse of power?

Has there been a broader internal investigation of the FBI seeking to learn if other agents have also been spying on Catholics?

How common is it for FBI agents to infiltrate houses of worship—of any religion—employing “tripwire sources”?

What did they intend to do with the information once they completed their probe?

Without new hearings and concrete efforts not only to resolve the lingering questions but also to hold these rogue agents accountable, Catholics will rightly remain skeptical of the FBI and DOJ. We are not walking away from this, and I will have more to say on this in the future.