New DOJ report alleges FBI ‘took minimal corrective action’ after ‘radical traditionalist’ memo
WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The FBI “took minimal corrective action” after a controversial leaked memo discussed “radical traditionalist” Catholics, the Department of Justice said Aug. 28. A report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Weaponization Working Group stated the FBI personnel responsible for the 2023 document, sometimes referred to as the “ Richmond Memo ,” have been terminated from their roles. Those firings were previously reported in June. However, a 2024 review by the Department of Justice’s watchdog found “no evidence” of religious bias by those responsible for the memo’s creation. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation is entrusted with the solemn responsibility of protecting the First Amendment rights of all Americans,” the Aug. 28 report stated. “History will rightly judge the Richmond Catholic Memo as a grave failure of the FBI Richmond Field Office to uphold that responsibility.” DOJ casts effort as part of investigation of ‘weaponization’ of government In Aug. 28 statements released by the Department of Justice, Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel pointed to the broader Weaponization Working Group, an effort by the Trump administration to target what it has characterized as the weaponization of government. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate a weaponized bureaucracy that chills First Amendment activity,” Blanche said. “The individuals who developed the Richmond Domain Perspective are no longer with the Department, and our Working Group’s efforts to investigate weaponization under the previous Administration will continue.” “Weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI,” Patel said. “Even while those who developed the unacceptable Richmond Catholic memo under the previous administration have been held accountable, releasing information to the public about what occurred under the prior regime is an important part of the process. I want to thank the Weaponization Working Group for their partnership as well as Attorney General Todd Blanche for his leadership addressing these abuses and making sure they never happen again.” The Department of Justice seal is seen July 30, 2018, in the Great Hall at the Main Justice Building in Washington. (OSV News photo/CNS file, Tyler Orsburn) Richmond Memo controversy and retraction The Richmond memo was a controversial leaked and retracted FBI document that discussed “radical traditionalist” Catholics as those who may pose threats of racially or ethnically motivated violence. That document drew a distinction between “radical traditionalist” Catholics as “separate and distinct” from “traditionalist Catholics,” who it described as Catholics who “simply prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings.” The same FBI memo noted that “conversely, deep-seated anti-Catholicism remains a characteristic of many far-right white nationalists.” Some of the groups named in the memo are not canonically recognized by the Catholic Church, including the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary located in Richmond, New Hampshire. However, that memo was sharply criticized as anti-Catholic and promptly retracted by the FBI, which said the memo did not meet its standards. Christopher Wray, the FBI director at the time the Richmond memo was written, was first nominated to that role by Trump in 2017. During congressional testimony in 2023, Wray described himself as “aghast” at the Richmond memo’s contents. History leading up to the Richmond Memo Documents previously released in 2025 during a congressional investigation of the Richmond memo alleged that an FBI investigation that led to the lawful arrest of “career criminal Xavier Louis Lopez” for the possession of unlawful weapons also resulted in “the targeting of his priest and an entire Catholic sect to which Lopez happened to adhere.” However, those documents from the congressional investigation of the memo suggested that agents were unfamiliar with the Society of St. Pius X, sometimes called SSPX, which has since incurred excommunication from the Catholic Church. On July 1, 2026, SSPX illicitly consecrated four new bishops without authorization from the Holy See, despite a warning from Pope Leo XIV, leading the Vatican to declare the group in formal schism with the Catholic Church. The subject of the FBI investigation appeared to have an interest in SSPX, documents released in the congressional investigation suggested, and agents were seeking to understand the group and its relationship to the Catholic Church, not that the SSPX itself was under investigation. Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon . The post New DOJ report alleges FBI ‘took minimal corrective action’ after ‘radical traditionalist’ memo first appeared on OSV News .
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The Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group said the FBI’s 2023 Richmond field-office memo linking “radical-traditionalist” Catholics with violent extremism represented a serious failure to uphold professional standards and First Amendment responsibilities. The memo was withdrawn after it leaked, while the DOJ report criticized the FBI’s handling of the document and subsequent corrective measures.
The investigation began in 2020 after an individual who had moved from New York to Virginia posted allegedly violent and racially motivated material online. The person was later imprisoned on vandalism and weapons charges and subsequently attended a chapel operated by the Society of St. Pius X.
FBI agents investigated the chapel and an associated priest, later expanding their inquiry to another priest linked to the SSPX Resistance, which the FBI alleged had neo-Nazi sympathies.
Beginning in late 2022, the Richmond field office developed a “domain perspective” examining what it described as a possible intersection between “radical-traditional Catholics” and domestic violent extremists. The report said investigators identified only two additional cases and found no evidence connecting Catholics or groups outside full communion with the Catholic Church to domestic extremism.
The memo broadly described “radical-traditionalist” Catholics as people associated with conservative family roles, isolationism, opposition to religious neutrality, and a desire for a totalitarian Catholic state. It distinguished this alleged “radical” category from traditional Catholics who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II practices but do not support extremist beliefs or violence.
The DOJ working group characterized the memo’s treatment of the group as a “sweeping generalization.” An FBI counterterrorism agent reportedly said the bureau had found no significant connection between violent extremists and “radical-traditionalist” Catholics.
The report said an internal review found no constitutional concerns with the analysis, but the memo drew substantial criticism within the FBI after it was leaked on Feb. 8, 2023. A planned senior-level executive report on the investigation was never completed.
FBI leadership ordered the memo deleted, although the working group said work on it continued for more than a month after that order.
Later in 2023, the FBI’s inspection division concluded that the memo’s authors had demonstrated poor professional judgment and failed to follow bureau standards. It ordered those involved to be admonished and receive additional training.
The working group said the personnel involved were later removed from their positions. It nonetheless described the memo as a “grave failure” by the Richmond field office and said the episode would be judged as a failure to protect First Amendment rights.
FBI Director Kash Patel called the memo’s contents “unacceptable” and said releasing information about conduct during the Biden administration was part of ongoing investigations into alleged government weaponization.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward described the memo as an abuse of power that targeted conservative and religious beliefs. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department would not tolerate bureaucratic conduct that chilled First Amendment activity and said the department’s broader weaponization investigations would continue.
The memo has remained the subject of criticism from religious-liberty advocates and lawmakers. Judicial Watch has pursued the release of unredacted records related to the investigation, while Sen. Josh Hawley previously urged the government to preserve federal records connected to the matter.
The DOJ report did not address Hawley’s earlier claims that records may have been destroyed. The article also reported that the FBI had withdrawn the memo shortly after its disclosure, saying it did not meet the bureau’s standards.
Examine Church teachings on religious liberty versus state surveillance
Church teaching holds that religious liberty is rooted in human dignity and conscience, while state surveillance is morally legitimate only within strict limits ordered to the common good. Surveillance becomes unjust when it treats citizens as objects of suspicion, suppresses religious practice, or subjects conscience and religious communities to political control.
The Church rejects the idea that religion is merely a private preference tolerated by the state. Human beings have a moral obligation to seek religious truth and to live according to it once known. Because worship involves free acts directed toward God, “no merely human power” may command or prohibit the inner act of faith. Yet religion also has an inherently social character: believers must be able to worship, associate, teach, communicate, and organize in community.
Religious liberty therefore includes:
This applies not only to individuals but also to religious communities. The Church must be free to choose ministers, appoint ecclesiastical officials, form clergy and religious, publish religious materials, and proclaim her teaching in public.
Catholic teaching does not deny the state’s legitimate competence. Civil authority may protect public order, security, and the common good. Religious practice, however, transcends the merely temporal order; therefore the state must not claim general authority to direct or restrict religious activity. It exceeds its proper power when it attempts to control religious life rather than address a genuine threat to public order.
This is consistent with a properly understood secularity. The state may be institutionally secular without demanding that religion disappear from public life. Pope John Paul II warned that secularity must not become secularism—that is, an ideology seeking to erase religious convictions and symbols from society. Religious practice may be limited only when it genuinely threatens the security or legitimate authority of the state.
The provided sources do not condemn every form of state surveillance. They allow the principle that public authority may act for legitimate public purposes, provided it respects human dignity, freedom, law, and accountability.
Accordingly, surveillance could be morally defensible when it is:
The 2025 Vatican document Antiqua et Nova states that surveillance intended to exploit people, restrict their freedom, or benefit a few at the expense of many is unjustifiable. It requires regulators to monitor overreach and insists that those responsible never exceed their authority.
Religious surveillance can threaten more than privacy. It may interfere with the person’s relationship with God, freedom of conscience, association, and access to pastoral care. Religious liberty includes the ability to communicate with religious authorities, receive religious assistance, form communities, and practice faith without coercion.
The Church’s concern is therefore not limited to whether the state directly bans worship. A government might formally permit worship while using surveillance to intimidate believers, map religious associations, monitor clergy, identify dissenters, or discourage public witness. Such practices can produce a “chilling effect,” causing people to refrain from lawful religious activity because they fear being watched.
The moral significance of conscience is central. Conscience is not simply personal preference; it is the person’s judgment before God concerning moral truth. Its inviolability places a limit on every external authority. The destruction or domination of conscience is described as a condition for totalitarian obedience, whereas respect for conscience protects people from political tyranny.
The Church explicitly connects privacy with human dignity. Antiqua et Nova identifies safeguarding privacy as a fundamental right necessary for genuinely human life and links it to reputation, bodily and mental integrity, and freedom from undue intrusion.
Modern data analysis intensifies the problem because small amounts of information can be used to infer patterns in a person’s behavior and thinking. Constant observation risks turning ordinary life into a spectacle and weakening the personal space needed for authentic relationships, reflection, and religious commitment.
Where surveillance systems or state policies require Catholics to cooperate with acts contrary to moral truth, the issue becomes one of conscientious objection. The International Theological Commission states that civil laws cannot oblige conscience to contradict the natural law and that the state must recognize conscientious objection.
This does not mean that every personal objection automatically nullifies civil law. Catholic teaching also requires respect for the rights of others and the common good. But it does mean that the state cannot claim unlimited power over moral and religious conviction.
The Catholic position can be summarized as follows:
The state may surveil to protect the common good, but it may never make surveillance an instrument for mastering conscience, suppressing religious communities, or manipulating citizens.
Religious liberty requires more than freedom from formal persecution. It requires genuine freedom for individuals and communities to worship, teach, organize, communicate, and act publicly. Surveillance is compatible with that liberty only when it remains lawful, necessary, proportionate, accountable, and directed toward protecting persons rather than controlling them.