FBI’s Target In War Against Religion: The Latin Mass

By DEACON MIKE MANNO

Through the years we have often reported on efforts by government officials to tap-down the influence of religion in the public square. We can go to the Obama administration to see the beginning of the efforts to “fundamentally change America.” This ranges from declaring that the United States is no longer “just a Christian nation” to undermining the tenets of our faith. See www.catholicleague.org/obamas-catholic-problem-2.
The pandemic became just the most recent excuse for the Progressive Left to continue its assault on Christianity: forcible closings of churches, occupancy rules enforced, arrest and jailing of ministers who refused to buckle under the anti-God policies of the intelligentsia that populates the controlling faction in the Democratic Party.
But now, thanks to an FBI whistleblower, Kyle Seraphin, we can see clearly just how far the current administration is willing to take its war against conservative Christians and especially Catholics. Kyle was a guest on my Faith On Trial program and he explained how he views what is happening.
As a devout Catholic and active FBI agent there were two warning signs that pushed Kyle into the role of whistleblower. The first was the government’s vaccine mandate. He, like many conservative pro-lifers, refused on religious grounds to take the jab; that coupled with the government’s denial of nearly all applications for a religious exemption heightened his concern that the mandate and exemption denials were being used to identify and separate, and ultimately punish those folks who held contrarian beliefs and would stand on their faith to refuse unlawful orders.
The second matter was the FBI’s investigation of parents who were objecting to the direction of their children’s schools. When the first information about these investigations was being mentioned — and usually denied by officials — he found out through FBI sources that there were over a dozen such investigations against parents in progress.
Turning to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and its attendees, he characterized the report as drawing a circle around what its author saw as “fringe Catholics,” which opened the door for the FBI to look into those the report described as “racially motivated violent extremists” (RMVE), or simply, white supremacists, and their common cause with “radical traditional Catholics” (RTC), borrowing that term from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a formerly legitimate civil rights organization which has been turned into a radical hate group.
That led to identifying supporters of the Latin Mass as potential comrades-in-arms by these violent extremists groups since they perceived them as ideological brothers since they have mutual beliefs on issues as abortion, the vax mandate, the anti-LBGT agenda, and illegal immigration, etc., in an attempt to make common cause with them. In other words, since the two groups shared several political-religious views, the report suggested that the TLM followers were ripe for the pickings by violent radical groups for some type of partial take-over.
Thus the FBI should be allowed to infiltrate the TLM movement to catch these radical white supremacists fiends.
But according to Kyle this is an overreaction. There are not that many violent white supremacists out there and most are either not violent or pose no real threat to those who don’t support their ugly agenda. But the FBI needs the lurking image of white supremacists, not because they are a major threat, but because the FBI says they are and they need to keep up the charade to prove that it does exist.
While the FBI has done a good job taking down several violent groups, the claims of potential violence are exaggerated. “The demand for white supremacy in the country vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy. It’s just not a thing you can easily find,” he said. “And attaching this to Christians and Catholics is nonsensical. These are antithetical positions, you cannot be a white supremacist and a Christian of any variety, and certainly not a Catholic. The people we see attending a Latin Mass are not the people we worry about.”
The report then provides a basis for the bureau as “source mitigation,” meaning authorizing FBI infiltration of TLM attendees to investigate the inter-action between the RMVEs and the Latin attending suspected RTCs, he said.
Reviewing the report, whistleblowers were concerned about several things. The primary one was the sourcing of the report, which leaned heavily from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Atlantic magazine, and Salon.com, all of which he described as left-leaning sources and inappropriate as bases for an investigation such as this. He also noted that the author of the report showed his bias by using such terms as “abortion rights” rather than just the word abortion, and the use of the term “pregnant persons,” both of which display a leftward bias.
To understand where much of this is coming from, he noted that the Department of Homeland Security claims that the real threats to our security are anti-government, anti-authority, violent extremists, which is a required threat in all FBI offices. “Overall the government’s position is very left leaning and antithetical to Christian beliefs,” he said.
Many, he suggests, are being investigated for things that are not crimes but simply wrong thoughts, by the federal “thought police,” who are targeting conservatives, Catholics and others who simply cannot accept the prevailing view of government officials. And since this is the current government ideology, many bureaucrats simply follow along in order to keep their jobs, and outside the government, many others follow for fear of legal retribution.
The FBI report and Kyle’s comments can be found at Uncoverdc.com where you can also find links to his podcasts.
Following Kyle we turned to another action by the Biden administration against Catholics, Christians, and other conservatives. Hans von Spakovsky from the Heritage Foundation warned us of some tinkering the administration is trying to make in the rules governing federal hiring.
When the federal government reviews applicants for employment it does a “suitability and fitness review, in other words, do you have the character to be a federal employee,” he said. Currently the suitability factor is whether or not the applicant has engaged in “activities with the purpose of overthrowing the U. S. government.”
Under the new rules, the administration wants to add three new criteria which would disqualify one for employment:
“Acts of force, violence, intimidation, or coercion with the purpose of denying others the free exercise of their rights under the U.S. Constitution or any state constitution;
“Attempting to indoctrinate others or to incite them to action in furtherance of illegal acts, and
“Active membership or leadership in a group with knowledge of its unlawful aims, or participation in such a group with specific intent to further its unlawful aims.”
“The vague, nebulous language of the proposed changes in existing government hiring regulations could be exploited and allow biased government managers to put up a virtual ‘Conservatives Need Not Apply’ sign when it comes to the federal civil service, leaving rejected applicants with little recourse,” he wrote.
Violators of these rules could easily include pro-life protesters, sidewalk counselors, or anyone found to express incorrect views, he said.
It doesn’t take a legal expert to see how the liberals in government could play with this rule. Under the law, before it can be adopted the agency must solicit comments. The comment period ends April 3. Comments can be made online at 88 FR 6192.
Of course, he notes, the agency can adopt the rule anyway, but a decision to do so against the comments is more easily challenged in court if adopted and he noted several examples of cases that did just that. The dangers of this proposal are almost obvious and if you have a chance you might want to follow that link and register your opposition to the proposal. It doesn’t have to be long.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to this episode of his program at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/ it is episode 351.)