OPINION Misjudgement day: FBI memo an upsetting revelation

ROSLYN RYAN Richmond Suburban News

If only I had known.

To say the news came as a shock would be an understatement. But there it was, in black and white, the truth I might never otherwise have stumbled upon: I was raised by extremists.

Well, not extremists exactly, but Catholics. And if you happen to put much faith in an internal FBI memo that was recently leaked to the public, they are one in the same. Surely you know the kind of Catholics I’m talking about, even if you yourself don’t practice the religion—the kind who go about pretending to work hard, provide for their families, serve their communities and then sneak off on Sundays to attend church services delivered in Latin and plot the demise of… well, I’m not sure.

In fact, the Catholics the FBI agents described in that now-rescinded and widely denounced memo—the “bad Catholics” who attend the Latin mass and want to take everyone back to the Dark Ages before the church became more open and inclusive—are probably not the people you will ever find on a most wanted list.

In my experience they are people who appreciate and find comfort in tradition, and who enjoy communing with others who feel the same way. I’m sure you could probably find some who wouldn’t mind a return to the old way of doing things, but if looking back nostalgically on the “good old days” makes someone a threat, the FBI is going to have an awful lot of people to investigate.

The memo reportedly even floated the idea of recruiting people to sneak into churches and ferret out the “bad” Catholics. Should those people happen to be infiltrating the specific Latin mass my dad attends, I would caution them against asking him anything about na- tional politics, or the Pacific campaign during World War II, or the VCU men’s basketball team’s recent performance at the free throw line. While doing this would offer a copious amount of information for their report, it will also give the actual extremists time to escape.

One other note to the FBI: no one is an extremist because they are a Catholic—they are extremists because they are extremists.

I’m not sure, to be honest, if the level of outrage some Catholics have expressed about this latest revelation is entirely warranted. No one has suggested, after all, that Catholics be banned from the country, or that Catholicism promotes terrorism or that American Catholics ever gathered to celebrate the horrific deaths of thousands of people in a terrorist attack (each of these things has happened to Muslim Americans in the recent past).

But the report is disappointing, if only for the fact that it so flagrantly vilifies a group of people based solely on their religious beliefs.

Those charged with upholding our laws are duty-bound to protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans.

We must demand that they do better.