Posted on 07/25/2025 9:26:19 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The FBI spied extensively on a Roman Catholic priest who declined to disclose private conversations he had with a parishioner, according to a report released earlier this week from the House Judiciary Committee that has raised religious liberty concerns.
“This new information demonstrates that the FBI not only used its federal law enforcement resources to surveil certain Catholic Americans, but it also used these resources to investigate a clergy member,” the committee said, according to the July 22 report that Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, shared with the Catholic News Agency.
After he expressed reluctance to comply with a January 2023 inquiry regarding a parishioner who had been arrested, the FBI’s Richmond office probed the unnamed priest’s ordination history, examined his finances and coordinated with the FBI’s London office to track his international travel.
The priest, who serves a Catholic church in the Richmond area affiliated with the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), became a target for a “formal investigative assessment” when he cited a need to consult church leadership and legal counsel before disclosing private spiritual discussions, according to the report.
According to an internal email cited in the congressional report, the FBI agent claimed the priest “became very uncomfortable and started incoherently stuttering” about the parishioner’s alleged “desires and plans to commit violence.”
The agent also determined the individual under investigation was not subject to priest-penitent privilege because he had not “been baptized” or “completed his catechism,” though such is not consistent with a Virginia state law protecting such confidential communications regardless of baptism or catechism.
“The priest-penitent privilege rightly protects communications between a clergy member and an individual seeking spiritual guidance,” the committee report said. “It is not dependent on the individual achieving certain milestones in his or her spiritual life.”
The report went on to reveal that the FBI investigated SSPX’s broader operations, including its recruitment practices. The SSPX is a traditionalist Catholic group not in full communion with the Catholic Church.
The report also cited and provided photos from an official Richmond FBI presentation that laid out the supposed beliefs of “radical-traditionalist Catholicism,” a term used in a leaked, since-retracted 2023 Richmond FBI memo that linked certain Catholic groups to far-right ideology.
The presentation, titled “Traditionalist Catholicism Overview,” accused such Catholics of believing “mainline Catholicism is illegitimate” while holding “hardline positions on abortion, LGBTQ matters, and interreligious dialogue.”
The presentation also suggested such Catholic beliefs exhibit “apocalyptic overtones,” “rigid fundamentalism [and] integralism,” and an “undertone of antisemitism.”
The report criticized the FBI for basing its assessment on sources such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, The Atlantic and Sojourners Magazine, which the committee claimed are biased and exhibit prejudice against religious individuals with pro-life and other traditional moral views.
The committee, whose findings challenge earlier FBI statements under the Biden administration that downplayed the 2023 Richmond memo as an isolated incident from a single field office, accused the FBI under Biden of potentially violating the U.S. Constitution.
“Under the Biden-Harris administration, the FBI disrespected and potentially violated the constitutionally protected religious liberties of faithful Americans,” it said. “Throughout the committee’s oversight in the 118th Congress, the Biden-Harris administration refused to provide relevant information to the committee.”
In a statement to the Catholic News Agency, Jordan suggested lawmakers “knew the Biden-Wray FBI was targeting Catholics, but new documents obtained by the committee — thanks to the leadership of FBI Director Patel — shows that it was worse than anyone thought.”
“Contrary to [former FBI Director Christopher] Wray’s statements, the targeting of Catholics went beyond the Richmond Field Office and extended not to just offices across the country but around the world.”
Lol. Priest in persona Christi cares nothing about pro-abortion man’s law, only the eternal soul. It matters not who God created, only that He died for his sins a long time ago.
Caesar, hiding the epstien details, go jump off a bridge: but only to get wet. The priest seeks your eternal souls too. A good cold dousing might help.
If you need help sorting out your attachment to sin, talk to a priest. He will die before saving his skin.
Word of advice. Do not confess your sins to a priest. He can’t help you. Go straight to God.
“Just let cops be cops”
-Kash Patel
Verba consilii: vade retro me, Satana.
,,, yep, no middlemen required.
John 20:22-23.
But, if Jesus really gave his disciples the authority to forgive sins, there’s 2 questions:
1. Where does He give them the authority to pass on that authority?
2. Why did He have to die for our sins?
Jesus walked the Earth as Man/God so we could develop a personal relationship with Him - and to give us a direct line to God - no need to have other mortals/saints intercede - and especially no need to pray to dead mortals.
I guess the “sanctity of the confessional” has boundaries outside the confessional to them....I guess it makes sense that they never turned in their pedophile “brothers” in the priesthood....it would have been against Church canons to protect the victims.
Lots of posters here at Free Republican are fine with persecuting the Catholic Church and Catholics.
They are sick people who would fit right in with the secular leadership at the FBI in the Biden era.
Just look at their hateful comments in this thread.
LOL!!! That IS going straight to God!! You protestants really know not much, but you HATE everything about the Catholic Church that you THINK you know! Prayers for you.
John 20:23 KJV
20 And when He had so said, He shewed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.
21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:
23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
That's quoted right from the Lord Himself. This is in comparison to other verses such as Mark 2:7 and John 1:9.
Mark 2:7 KJV
Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God only?
1 John 1:9 KJV
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, the FBI disrespected and potentially violated the constitutionally protected religious liberties of faithful Americans.
With democrats in power you never have to read 1984 twice.
The only relevant point is the nature of the conversations. If they entailed the person discussing what he was gonna do, what crimes he was going to commit; then the Church’s protection does not apply. Ditto for attorney-client privilege. All organizations have agreed to this since if they don’t and something goes sideways they become a co-conspirator.
Simple question for any copper to ask: “Did he suggest/hint/etc that he was going to (not dreaming about) do anything illegal?” If response is “no”, then any spying is a violation that ought to put coppers in jail.
Does that make protecting the public more difficult? Sure. So bloody what? That is your job: protect while complying with all laws.
As a Catholic, we’re forever thankful that Martin Luther came along and created Christianity and 40,000 churches.
Here at FR, you can let your vilest emotions run free against Catholics.
While you cannot make analogous or hate-filled comments toward blacks or Jews without fear of the Zot, it is always open season to abuse Catholics.
Admin moderators at the religion forum typically couldn’t care less.
2. As a true, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.
The authority to *individually* forgive (or retain) sins was exercised by Christ before His death and resurrection - and that is the authority that was given to the Apostles. In the early Church, there was disputation regarding the forgiveness of sins after Baptism . . . which is why St. Augustine's mother delayed his baptism . . . and why he became an advocate for early baptism.
And they could cast out demons - but I see no place where the apostles were able to pass that on to others.
And none of them managed to tell a mountain to cast itself into the sea....because even they were unable to manage even a mustard seed’s worth of faith, even though they spent time with both the living and resurrected Christ.
Being mortal humans, we are incapable of even truly wanting to live always within God’s Will, much less do it - that’s what the Old Covenant was all about - and that’s why Jesus had to die for our sins...His Blood and nothing else is what washes away our sins if we go to him, confess our sinfulness, and ask Him to be our Savior.
Bttt.
5.56mm
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