By Deacon Mike Manno
(The Wanderer) – 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.)
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