Bill Donohue addresses the Archdiocese of Newark selling out Brooklyn Bishop Emeritus Nicholas DiMarzio. To watch, click here.

Bill Donohue

Brooklyn Bishop Emeritus Nicholas DiMarzio has been sold out by the Archdiocese of Newark. The archdiocese has agreed to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to two men who accused the bishop of abuse, even though a two-year Vatican investigation cleared him of all wrongdoing; he also passed a lie detector test.

The Newark archdiocese, led by Cardinal Joseph Tobin, said they agreed to a settlement to “avoid the costs of litigation and help bring resolution to painful matters for everyone involved.” They failed—by selling out  DiMarzio they added to his painful situation. “I did not authorize these settlements because I did not abuse anyone,” the bishop said.

It was in November 2019 that attorney Mitchell Garabedian, whose hatred of the Catholic Church is well known—he calls the Church “evil”—made a big public splash when he said he was going to file suit against DiMarzio for abusing Mark Matzek. The following year, another alleged victim of the bishop, also represented by Garabedian, Samier Tadros, went public with his allegation. Yet no lawsuits were filed until 2021.

If this sounds fishy, it is because it is.

Bishop DiMarzio categorically denies both accusations and his lawyer, Joseph Hayden, said in 2020, “We have uncovered conclusive evidence of Bishop DiMarzio’s innocence.” As I said at the time, “No lawyer, aside from those like Garabedian, would put his name on the line with such an unequivocal statement unless he knew his case was a slam dunk.” In 2021, the Vatican concluded, after an exhaustive probe, that the charges against him did not have “the semblance of proof.”

Here’s where it gets really fishy.

Why would anyone wait a half century to bring a lawsuit? That’s right—the two males alleged they were abused in the 1970s and early 1980s when DiMarzio was a priest in Jersey City. How is it possible that the parents of these boys never knew about it—Tadros says the abuse started when he was 6 years old and happened “repeatedly”—especially given its alleged serial nature?

The Associated Press broke the Tadros story. What makes this interesting is that Garabedian chose Michael Rezendes of AP to go public. The two men are from Boston, and know each other well. Rezendes was a reporter who worked on the “Spotlight” team of the Boston Globe that found wrongdoing in the Boston archdiocese, and Garabedian’s role in it was featured in the movie by the same name; he was played by Stanley Tucci.

Rezendes showed his true colors by citing, as authoritative, the National Catholic Reporter. He called it “an independent Catholic newspaper.” In fact, the only thing independent about it is its independence from the teachings of the Catholic Church. Worse, its attack on the Church’s teachings on sexuality helped to foment the sexual abuse crisis that Rezendes covered.

Rezendes then offers a quote from BishopAccountability, a website known for leaving the names of accused priests found innocent on its list of accused priests. It has also smeared Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and has never accepted my challenge to provide evidence that he was hiding dozens of molesting priests.

Bishop DiMarzio was singled out because he fought unjust legislation that was targeted at the Catholic Church, bills that allowed the public schools to get off scot-free. New York State Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, who represented a district in the Brooklyn diocese, was the one who pushed for a suspension of the statute of limitations for sexual abuse crimes, permitting a free ride to the public sector.

In 2016, this former office holder accused DiMarzio of offering her a $5,000 bribe. But it was all a lie. She admitted she was wrong about the date of their meeting—by three years—and wrong about the venue. She was also wrong about her accusation, which was undercut by witnesses at the meeting.

Bishop DiMarzio is a good man who has given his life to the Catholic Church. He is innocent of these scurrilous charges, and now he is being sold out by the Archdiocese of Newark.

Bill Donohue

There was a time, not long ago, when Republicans and Democrats had more in common with each other than they had with third-parties, either on the right or the left. No more. This chart shows how far Democrats have moved left, making them almost indistinguishable from hard-core left-wing parties.

Bill Donohue

This is a shortened version of an article that appears in the July/August edition of Catalyst, our journal that is available to members.

Every now and then along comes a book on the Catholic Church that causes quite a stir. This is certainly true of Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church. Written by former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, it has been hailed by most left-wing critics of the Church as must-read.

The book is strewn with inaccuracies, some of which are minor (he gets Vatican departments confused), others of which are very serious (e.g., his rendering of historical events).

“The Vatican had always portrayed the so-called doctrine of priestly celibacy as eternal and irreversible, but it was neither. It is not demanded in the Gospels, nor was it as a way of life followed by the twelve apostles.” The second sentence is accurate but the first is not.

Leaving aside the snide reference to “the so-called” doctrine, priestly celibacy is not a doctrine of the Catholic Church. It is a discipline, one  that was not invoked in the early Church and can be reversed today. Not to know the difference between a doctrine and a discipline would be astounding for a college student studying theology, never mind an author who professes to be an expert.

Shenon’s grasp of Church history is appalling. He speaks about “the imprisonment of Galileo in the seventeenth century because he rejected the church’s view that the sun rotated around the earth.” The fact is Galileo was never imprisoned. He spent his time under “house arrest” in an apartment in a Vatican palace, with a servant. More important, his work was initially praised by the Catholic Church: Pope Urban VIII bestowed on him many gifts and medals.

Galileo did not get into trouble because of his ideas; after all, his ideas were taken from Copernicus, a priest who was never punished (on the contrary, Copernicus’s theory found a receptive audience with Pope Clement VII). What got him into trouble was presenting his unverified claims as fact—that was the heresy.

Shenon writes that during the Inquisition, “people accused of heresy were regularly burned at the stake” on Vatican orders. Wrong again. It was the secular authorities—not the Church’s authorities—that burned heretics. In fact, the Church saw heretics as lost sheep who needed to be brought back into the fold.

The Church’s response to the Holocaust is also badly misrepresented by Shenon. The old canard about Pope Pius XII being “silent”—it has been thoroughly debunked—surfaces again. Not only did the New York Times commend Pius in two editorials for not being silent at that time, the Vatican archives underscore his heroics.

What Shenon says about Mother Teresa is despicable. He says that “Her private correspondence, made public after her death in 1997, showed she was tormented by uncertainty about the existence of heaven—and even of God. She felt no presence of God whatsoever in her life.”

To be sure, Mother Teresa confessed to having “dark nights,” times when she no longer felt the presence of Jesus in her life. When this story broke in 2007, I wrote to Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, her advocate for sainthood, about this issue.

He agreed with my comment, made on TV to Mother Teresa critic Christopher Hitchens, that “there is a profound difference between ‘feeling’ and ‘believing.’” He added, “Though Mother Teresa did not feel Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist, her firm belief in the Real Presence cannot be questioned….” He offered many examples, taken from her letters and behavior, to buttress this point.

On the issue of sexuality, Shenon is just as delinquent. He accuses Pope Paul VI and Pope Benedict XVI of being opposed to “sexual freedom.” What Paul was railing against was the sexual exploitation of women by men—that would make him a feminist in some circles. Even more remarkable is Shenon’s bewilderment with Benedict for opposing sex-reassignment surgery. If this has to be explained, the man is clueless.

Shenon refuses to blame homosexual priests for most of the molestation, falsely claiming they were pedophiles. He even labels Father Marcial Maciel Degollado a pedophile. This is astonishing. There is no wiggle room for him on this. Maciel was a drug-addicted predator who fathered several children, raped at least sixty postpubescent boys, and had sex with at least twenty seminarians.

In the beginning of his book, Shenon correctly notes that the enemies of Pope Benedict XVI called him, “God’s Rottweiler.” In 2012, the New York Times called me “The Rottweiler’s Rottweiler.” I wear that nickname as a badge of honor. I will always defend him from those who seek to malign him.

The Catholic Church has a long history of accomplishments. It also has its dirty laundry. When assessing any institution, it is important to get the facts straight. What Philip Shenon has done is a disgrace. He seeks to discredit the Church, but his sloppy—even horrendous—scholarship renders him an unserious critic.

Bill Donohue

Calvin Klein ads that sexually exploit minors, and promote “kiddie porn,” do not bother the Left, but American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ad does. This tells us volumes about the way radicals think.

In 1980, Brooke Shields was featured in a Calvin Klein jean ad, saying, “You want to know what comes in between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” While some media outlets refused to air the spots, those who fancy themselves as open-minded were unmoved. It did not matter that Shields was only 15—the deep thinkers are champions of libertinism.

In 1995, Calvin Klein was back exploiting adolescents, featuring young boys and girls in sexually suggestive poses and various stages of undress. There was a picture of a boy in jockey-type underwear (with black fingernail polish) and a girl on a ladder with her underwear exposed. One of the girls was wearing a cross. After the Catholic League, along with Jewish leaders, raised a stink, the ads were withdrawn within ten days. Again, the Left was nonplussed.

Now we have a young good-looking star, Sydney Sweeney, pushing American Eagle jeans. She is an adult, and she is not photographed in a sexually provocative manner. Nor is she playing fast and loose with a religious symbol. But she still managed to set off a firestorm of criticism.

A video of the ad says, “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.” She is shown crossing  out “genes,” inserting “jeans.” She opines, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color.”

She hit the Left’s hot button. Their idea of freedom allows for “kiddie porn,” but not any hint of what nature ordains. The very word “genes” was enough to ignite charges of eugenics. Moreover, her critics took note that she is a blue-eyed blond white woman, as if that is a bad thing. A female woke professor from London, Dr. Sarah Cefai, commented that the ad “obviously winks at the obsession with eugenics that’s so prevalent among the modern right.” She names no one.

It is the Left, not the right, that has long had an obsession with eugenics. During the Progressive Era, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Richard T. Ely was one of its most prominent leaders. “Negroes,” the left-leaning progressive said, “are for the most part grownup children, and should be treated as such.”

Not long after, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, operationalized his ideas. She believed that the best way to get rid of poverty was to get rid of the poor, especially blacks. This was the motivation behind her birth control agenda. Her friends in Marxist circles defended the white supremacist.

The Left likes to blame eugenics on conservatives, citing Hitler as their right-wing leader. But his party, known as the Nazis, was called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (not exactly a right-wing name), and it had nothing to do with conservative thinking. Conservatives believe in minimal government; those on the Left, socialists and communists, believe in maximum government control.

The Left hates the word “genes” because it reminds us of the role nature plays in directing human behavior. That bothers them. Their quest for social engineering is predicated on the idea that by manipulating the environment, we can determine behavioral outcomes. Nature gets in the way of their grand totalitarian design.

American Eagle’s sales and stock are soaring, thanks to the humorless woke mob. Congratulations to Sydney Sweeney for braving the storm, and to American Eagle for doubling down.

Let American Eagle know of your support: linemedia@ae.com

Bill Donohue

Young Muslim radicals running for mayor in big cities are the talk of the town in left-wing circles, and within the Democratic Party. Left-wing activists are thrilled by the news, but Democrats are split: some hope the two extremists win, but more moderate Democrats are afraid this will turn off most Americans, making it hard to win elections in the future.

New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is ahead in the polls in the New York City mayoral race, and Minnesota State Senator Omar Fateh is the one to beat in the race for mayor of Minneapolis. Both call themselves democratic socialists, and both are highly critical of the human rights record of the United States. Yet neither says a word about the human rights record of their African ancestors.

Mamdani

Mamdani was born in Uganda to Indian parents. He refuses to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which is understood as a call for an uprising against the supporters of Israel. He says, “That’s not language that I use.” But his supporters do, and he will not call them out for doing so. He says he believes in “universal human rights,” though his record does not show it.

In March 2025, Mamdani responded to the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student and Palestinian activist who was arrested by ICE officers on March 8. He said Khalil’s arrest “is a blatant assault on the First Amendment and a sign of advancing authoritarianism under Trump.”

In 2021, Mamdani said that his answer to the homeless is to jettison the practice of “people access housing by purchasing it on the market and toward a future where we guarantee high quality housing to all as a human right.”

In a 2020 tweet marking Pride Month, Mamdani criticized the so-called human rights struggles faced by those in the LGBT community. He said that “it’s more important than ever to reckon with how our queer family – especially our Black & trans family – still don’t enjoy basic human rights, and how they suffer from police violence at epidemic proportions.”

Mamdani likes to flag his ties to Uganda, but does not want to call attention to its human rights record. Instead, he basks in luxury.

He recently jetted off to his family’s opulent compound in the tony Ugandan neighborhood of Buziga Hill for his wedding. The three-day event saw the family estate turn into a party house among the lavish homes owned by billionaires and the upper crust of society in Uganda. Homes in the neighborhood easily fetch one million dollars. For his wedding, Mamdani had special forces commandos providing security to keep the riffraff out of the invitation-only soiree.

Fateh

Fateh is the son of Somali immigrants, and the first item on his platform states,   “with Donald Trump back in the Oval Office, the progress towards equity and justice that our communities have worked so hard to create is in jeopardy.”

In 2023, when the Minnesota State Senate debated legislation that would give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants, Fateh came to the defense of the illegals. He noted that the real threats to national security “look like the members [white Republicans] that sit in the front rows.”

In 2021, Fateh was part of a group of Minnesota lawmakers, led by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), calling for the Department of Justice to investigate how local law enforcement prepared for the trial of Derek Chauvin, the policeman charged with the death of George Floyd. Fateh and his colleagues accused the police of using “extreme and unnecessary force,” even going as far as deploying “‘less-lethal’ munitions and chemical weapons indiscriminately.” According to the letter, this amounts to the police failing to “uphold civil and human rights.”

Fateh likes to brag about Somalia being “his home,” yet he has nothing to say about its human rights record.

In 2020, he gave a speech in which he referred to Somalia as his home several times. “I understand that our Somali communities are all connected to each other, here in Minnesota and back home, and I ask for your support. There’s always been a link between our community here as well as back home and I’m running to bridge that gap and unite all of us and represent all of us because when we succeed here, we succeed everywhere.”

Human Rights in Uganda and Somalia

Freedom House is a well-respected organization that details the state of human rights in every nation in the world. It studies political participation, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and the like. It awards a score for “Political Rights” and “Civil Liberties,” and an overall score.

The composite score for Uganda was 34 out of 100. For Somalia, it was 8. That is why they were both deemed “Not Free.” The United States had a composite score of 84 and was deemed “Free.”

How can it be that Mamdani and Fateh are so condemnatory of human rights in the United States, which is a free country, yet keep their mouths shut about egregious human rights abuses in their ancestral homes? Maybe they should trade places with the Ugandan and the Somali people. That would be a win-win.

Michael P. McDonald

On July 24, Notre-Dame des Champs in Paris suffered two consecutive fires: the first caused by an electrical malfunction; the second was confirmed as arson which burned wood panels and toppled a statue of St. Joseph. No arrests have been publicly reported. The iconic church remains closed while an investigation is ongoing and structural repairs are planned. While we are not yet sure who is responsible for the arson, we know that Islamists—radical Muslims—have committed the lion’s share of these attacks.

In the last half century, the Muslim population in France has grown rapidly. Today, it is estimated that over six million Muslims live in France. Roughly ten percent of the French population adheres to Islam. This is the largest Muslim population in Western Europe in terms of size and percentage of the national population.

This rapid population growth has led to conflict between the native-born French population and the Muslim immigrants. This is most evident in the Islamist violence against French Catholics.

The Observatory of Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe tracks hostility against Christians across the continent. It reports frequently note of the open hostility that European Catholics face from Islamists and secularists. Looking at the Observatory’s data on France reveals that extent to which the French Catholics are under siege in their own nation.

In the Observatory’s combined report for 2019 and 2020, there were 270 hate crimes committed against Christians. Of these, 29 were arson, 56 were desecration, 56 were theft, 19 were threats/violence, 24 were vandalism of a Christian cemetery, 14 were vandalism of a chapel, 9 were vandalism of another church building, and 128 were vandalism of a church.

In 2021, the Observatory notes that there were 857 hate crimes committed against Christians. These crimes make up more than half of all religiously motivated hate crimes in France that year.

In 2022, the Observatory documents that there were 106 hate crimes against Christians recorded in France, including 16 cases of arson against Christians.

2023 is the last year that the Observatory has a full report. According to the French Ministry of the Interior, there were between 900 and 1,000 hate crimes against Christians. While the vast majority of these hate crimes targeted Christian sites, 84 Christians were victims of attacks against their persons.  Likewise, criminal arson attacks in France continued to be a problem, with 8 confirmed cases in 2023.

Although there are no hard data on 2024 and 2025, anecdotal evidence suggest that the trend of Islamists committing violence on French Catholics is only getting worse.

While statistics are a useful measure of the extent of a problem, frequently they obscure the tragedy and suffering experienced on a human level. Below is a selective list of some of the more egregious attacks on Christians to provide a more detailed description of the plight of French Catholics.

January 14, 2020: A 25-year-old man was arrested for defacing Saint-Barthélemy church in Launaguet (near Toulouse) with inscriptions from the Quran.

October 29, 2020: Three people were killed when a radical Islamist wielding a knife attacked the Notre-Dame Basilica in Nice, France. One of the elderly victims was “virtually beheaded,” according to the authorities.

December 8, 2021: During a Marian procession for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in Nanterre, 10 radical Islamists attacked approximately 30 Catholics. As the Muslims threw water and a torch at the procession, some of the radicals were heard shouting, “I swear on the Quran, I will cut your throats!”

July 24, 2022: A Muslim man disrupted Mass at the church of Saint-Germain in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

November 15, 2023: Unidentified vandals broke into the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in the city of Rouen and caused severe damage to the church. They destroyed the altar, smashed a statue, did severe damage to the sanctuary and stole sacred vessels from the church.

March 11, 2024: Vandals defaced more than 50 graves, the church door, and a World War I memorial in Clermont d’Excideuil with Islamist and Arabic slogans such as “Submit to Islam,” “Isa will break the cross,” and “France is already Allah’s.”

July 15, 2024: Muslim vandals broke into the Notre-Dame-du-Travail Church in Paris. They burnt papers and a plunged a knife into the throat of a statue of the Virgin Mary. In addition anti-Christian and pro-Islam messages were written throughout the church. Some of the messages compared the Catholic Church to Satan and a “whore of religion.” Another said, “Submit yourselves to Allah infidels.”

March 10, 2025: Notre-Dame des Flots in Brittany was vandalized twice in two weeks: candles were smashed, liturgical books were torn, pews were overturned, and vases were broken.

April 18, 2025: As Catholics were preparing to observe Good Friday, priests in two different churches were assaulted, and in one case the service was interrupted.

May 10, 2025: A Catholic priest in Avignon was surrounded, insulted, and threatened by a mob of young men shouting “Allahu Akbar” after evening Mass. The priest has condemned the incident as a brazen act of anti-Christian intimidation.

France is hardly the only country that Islamists have targeted, and their violence is not confined to Europe. Only now is there evidence that the Europeans are rethinking their overly generous immigration policies. They need to act—now.

Bill in the News (Catholic Connection): Bill discusses new revelations about the FBI spying on Catholics with Teresa Tomeo. To listen, click here. (Bill’s segment Begins at 23:59)

Bill Donohue

July 29, 2025

Religious liberty in the federal workplace has long been guaranteed in law, but too often violated in practice. Accordingly, the Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management has issued guidelines that seek to ensure that the law is followed.

Federal employees, the guidelines say, “may express their religious beliefs through prayer, personal items, group gatherings, and conversations without fear of discrimination or retaliation.”

How common is religious discrimination in the workplace? A study by Rice University released in 2022 found that two-thirds of Muslims, half of Jews and a third of evangelical Christians reported being discriminated against at work. These figures include the private, as well as the public, workplace.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees religious liberty for all Americans; a 2007 circuit court decision affirmed this right for federal employees. Subsequently, the Supreme Court has said that the free exercise of religion extends beyond the right “to harbor religious beliefs inwardly and secretly”—it includes “the ability of those who hold religious beliefs of all kinds to live out their faiths in daily life.”

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is frequently invoked by secularists to advance their causes. What is not often mentioned is that a 2015 Supreme Court decision, EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., said “Title VII does not demand mere neutrality with regard to religious practice—that they be treated no worse than other practices.” It insisted that it “gives them favored treatment.” This means, the high court said, that employees cannot be disciplined for “religious observance and practice.”

The Trump directive is aimed at federal employees who want to display a religious symbol, artwork, book, jewelry, and the like, in the workplace. It also protects those who want to engage in conversations about religion, including attempts to “persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, providing that such efforts are not harassing in nature.” That caveat is important—religious dialogue is protected, not harassment.

Already, those who have a record of opposing the free expression of religion are sounding the alarms over the Trump guidelines.

Freedom From Religion Foundation, an extremist atheist entity, is worried about “proselytizing” in the workplace. Similarly, Mikey Weinstein, the militant secularist who heads the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, is going ballistic.

Their fears are contrived and unfounded. To “proselytize” is to “induce someone to convert to one’s faith or to recruit someone to join one’s cause or group.” Are they against that?

In other words, it is speech that seeks to change the mind of others, whether it be religious or secular in nature. That’s called free speech. Can it be abused? Of course. No right is absolute. In those instances when speech becomes so aggressive and disrespectful of the rights of others—when it crosses the line into intimidation—such examples are not covered. However, religious speech that does not cross the line is not only protected, it is, as the Supreme Court notes, entitled to “favored treatment.”

The Biden administration was the most hostile to religious liberty of any presidential administration in American history. By contrast, no one has championed religious liberty more than Trump.

The guidelines for religious liberty in the federal workplace are a splendid example of what happens when the friends of religious liberty triumph over its foes.

Bill Donohue

July 28, 2025

On July 22, an Interim Staff Report on President Biden’s FBI Catholic spy ring was released by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan. Thanks to Kash Patel, the current FBI director, some of the information is new. When pieced together what we already knew, the picture that emerges is one of an FBI that went off the rails. Christopher Wray, who led the FBI under Biden, bears much of the blame.

The FBI was focused on “radical-traditionalist Catholics.” Who are these people? According to the FBI’s own internal review of this matter, “investigators found that many FBI employees could not even define the meaning of ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic’ when preparing, editing, or reviewing” the Richmond Field office memorandum that authorized the probe.

In other words, the FBI decided that these Catholics were a problem, even though they were unable to explain who they are. FBI agents were convinced that the so-called rad-trads were “linked” to “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” What made them think this way is still a mystery, but we know they found nothing. That’s because there is no record of very conservative Catholics linking up with violent thugs. Indeed, on this basis alone there was no reason to investigate them.

This didn’t stop some FBI operatives from categorizing “certain Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists.” They came to this absurd conclusion based on articles their employees read. “How Extremist Gun Culture is Trying to Co-opt the Rosary” is one of the gems they named as evidence of the nefarious agenda of “rad-trad” Catholics.

If there is one Catholic group that the FBI thought was emblematic of very conservative Catholics, it is the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). This was not a good choice—they are not in full communion with the Catholic Church. This is a break-away association of Catholics founded in 1970 who were upset with the reforms of Vatican II in the 1960s. They were once excommunicated, then reinstated, but are still one step removed from being an authentic part of the Catholic Church.

I have been saying all along that the FBI’s focus on SSPX and the “rad-trads” is a ruse. Quite frankly, this was a pretext to opening the door to a much wider investigation of practicing Catholics, most of whom tend to be more conservative than non-practicing Catholics. The evidence is conclusive.

The latest report shows that the FBI proposed a probe of ‘mainline parishes.” It says that “FBI employees believed without evidence that mainstream Catholic churches could serve as a pipeline to violent extremist behavior.” Without evidence! Also, “The FBI seems to have considered Catholic churches as a potential hot spot for radicalization and viewed investigating Catholic churches as an ‘opportunity.’” Exactly.

As an example of this mad search for wrongdoing, the FBI investigated Catholics who evinced “hostility toward abortion-rights advocates.” In other words, Catholic activists who exercised fidelity to Church teachings on abortion—they are called pro-life Catholics—were considered a domestic threat by the FBI. Similarly, those who espoused “Conservative family values/roles” were labeled “radical.”

This tells us all we need to know about the politicization of the FBI under Biden. It also tells us something else: it was not dissident Catholics the FBI was concerned about, it was the loyal sons and daughters of the Church. How strange it is to note that at least some dissident Catholics, and some FBI agents, were both seeking to subvert the Catholic Church. This may not have been coordinated, but the outcome is nonetheless disturbing.

It is not just the profile of Catholics whom the FBI was examining that was a problem—it was the scope of its investigations. It started in Richmond, then spread to Louisville, Milwaukee and Portland. Its reach even extended overseas—the FBI’s London Office was involved. This is hardly surprising given that we already knew the FBI further proposed “to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of ‘threat mitigation.’” The goal was to have a “national application” of its investigatory measures.

This was not a mistake. It was a well-planned effort to intimidate and harass practicing Catholics. The Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government determined in the last Congress that “there was no legitimate basis for the memorandum to insert federal law enforcement into Catholic houses of worship.” That says it all.

Under Biden, the FBI was looking for dirt on Catholics, especially those who are pro-life and hold to traditional moral values. This was one of the most despicable violations of the civil liberties of innocent Americans conducted by the federal government in modern times. That it took place in an administration run by a “devout Catholic” makes it all the more outrageous.

We are thankful to Rep. Jim Jordan for all the good work that he, his committee, and his staff have done.