“How many informants do you have in Catholic churches across America?” a Missouri senator, Josh Hawley–R asks out of curiosity. 

Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General, responds, “I don’t know.” 

The world is familiar with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s forty-year decline into Soviet-style espionage against the American people, especially because it has always been more profitable to conduct surveillance at pro-life churches, arrest Christians for not wearing masks, send SWAT battalions to terrorize Catholic parents, and issue censorship directives for Twitter staff (before Elon Musk’s acquisition of the business), instead of tackling the pressing matters of crime and corruption.

Following the case of Marie and Mark Houck, who were approached by a special weapons assault team in September of 2022 that arrested Mark and took him away, the Department of Justice has owned up to the fact of FBI espionage in the Catholic Church. 

The Houck’s were persecuted by the Department of Justice for months before acquittal. Their crime was a fabricated violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, and Mark Houck was accused of being an extremist who tried to prevent customers from using a Planned Parenthood abortion center.

The Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation have not outlined any charges against the Planned Parenthood supporter who approached Houck’s sixth-grader child to threaten him. Houck family members were counseling civilians in public with a pro-life message, when the Planned Parenthood supporter, a 72-year-old man hauled invectives and snide remarks at Houck’s young son.

True Crime Is Left Alone but Innocent Civilians are Spied Upon

The Catholic Church has in recent years been severely split. Many church leaders are pro-choice supporters, but the majority of laity and local Catholic clergy maintain the more traditional stance of opposition to elective (convenience) abortions.

Merrick B. Garland is the United States Attorney General and heads the Department of Justice and by extension the sprawling Federal Bureau of Investigation. Of late, he has admitted that FBI surveillance in Catholic parishes have been undertaken, and that they were unnecessary, unethical, and probably illegal. Catholic rights advocate and Midwesterner Brian Burch was among the first on the story and commented at length in his capacity as a widely celebrated pro-lifer and President of the CatholicVote Civic Action organization.

“They’ve had their agents scouting out our Catholic churches,” wrote Burch, who is 2018 Legatus winner for his defense of Catholic faith and values, “It took months of consistent pressure from Catholic leaders and members of Congress to get them to finally admit this, and it’s much worse than anyone (had initially) thought.”

Brian Burch operates CatholicVote Civic Action in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, and the group has become popular nationwide among politically active Catholic laity. Burch is married with nine children and was honored by Legatus five years ago with the Legatus Defender of the Faith Award. Legatus is an association of CEOs and company presidents who profess the Catholic faith. Burch wants “to inspire every Catholic in America to live out the truths of (the) faith in public life,” and notes that “fifty percent of Catholics in Congress are pro-abortion.”

Burch states that the FBI has been surrendering its own documents as evidence of the espionage and surveillance that took place in Catholic churches. “Specifically, the FBI worked with at least one undercover agent to use Catholic churches as new avenues for tripwire and source development, including at mainline Catholic parishes and among local diocesan leadership. The Bureau also aimed to sensitize Catholic churchgoers to the warning signs of radicalization and (strove to) enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires. That’s all according to internal FBI documents obtained by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”

The Department of Justice has been deploying a federal agency to spy on a religious denomination while simultaneously tolerating public violence against its churches. Atheistic civilians are given free rein to destroy Catholic statues, and the government joins in and tries to liberalize the Catholic faith from the ground up, with FBI agents and informants put to work in parishes and dioceses.

A Newly Confident DOJ Investigates Everything

The Department of Justice has endured criticism but is rarely hauled up for review. The impunity with which the DOJ and FBI undertake their tasks is perhaps an indication of what the Deep State actually feels like for innocent people such as Marie and Mark Houck. But a hugely emboldened Department of Justice investigates everything – from religion (Catholic pro-lifers) to entertainment (TikTok’s popularity), and lots more in between, but it appears incidences of corruption, government neglect, and mob violence and street crime are never addressed. 

“CatholicVote is pressing our elected officials in Congress to hold the FBI accountable for this outrageous and unconstitutional behavior,” writes Burch, who believes there is no reason why Catholics – or any American – should tolerate FBI surveillance “for another minute.”

“What the FBI has been doing is disgusting – using the power of federal law enforcement to infiltrate Catholic churches under the guise of combating threats to democracy. It doesn’t take a genius to see how dangerous this is, and how easily it will quickly be abused. The First Amendment has been turned on its head.

“When a whistleblower first revealed an FBI memo about monitoring so-called extremist Catholics, Cardinal Timothy Dolan (New York) rightly declared that the FBI was engaging in religious profiling against America’s Catholics.” 

The FBI is also extending racial profiling endeavors internationally, with investigations into TikTok, spearheaded by a Biden Administration that dragged Singaporean Chinese Shou Zi Chew to America for extensive grilling by U.S. legislators. As chief executive officer of the globally acclaimed mobile app TikTok, Chew was chewed up by the committees of the U.S. government for allegedly perceptible links to China, which were difficult to refute primarily because of Shou Zi’s genetic Chineseness.

Shou Zi Chew had been raised in Asia on Mandarin and English curricula and is an alumnus of the Chinese High School Singapore and Harvard University. (Katy Christian Magazine author Victor Yong Jen Ong was also credentialed at both schools.) Despite the diligence and hard work of many Chinese Orientals, much of it counts for next to nothing because Chinese people are popularly regarded as enemies of the State in America today.

Religious and Racial Prejudices are Wrong but DC Doesn’t Care

Catholics have had a long history of trying to win public favor in America, hampered in huge part by the Italian and Irish origins of many of the faith’s adherents in the contemporary history of the American republic. Irish Catholics have had it tough also because of their perceived incompatibility with the conventional Protestantism that had established America since the nation’s founding. 

The United Kingdom’s war and proxy war in relation to the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Irish province only served to perpetuate a barely veiled discomfort between traditional Anglo-Protestants and Irish Catholics in North American society. Catholics have had to gain acceptance in the life of America with much tact, resolve, and innovation.

Unfortunately, it appears the Federal Bureau of Investigation has missed the entire history lesson. Catholic grassroots values, such as love for womb life and a reverence for marriage and the family are now seen as radical ideas. CatholicVote President Brian Burch notes that Catholic believers have been closely watched simply for holding to these values. But he is concerned over how the FBI continues to withhold plenty of information, with many documents being presented in a redacted form. 

Ohio congressman Jim Jordan–R wants the FBI to release every incriminating detail of their illegal surveillance of Catholic churches. “The FBI sought to enlist Catholic houses of worship as potential sources to monitor and report on their parishioners,” Jordan complained, in his letter this month to FBI Director Christopher Wray. 

Despite efforts, it is likely Jordan, Burch, and the American people will not get an honest and impartial FBI anytime soon. Religious and racial profiling is a deeply engaging experience and the height of fun for D.C. elites, and a way to use up spare time. The egregious wastage of time as an irreplaceable commodity does wonders for candor, though, and makes men extremely silly to look at. 

From CatholicVote Civic Action:

When Attorney General Merrick Garland testified last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he agreed that these (anti-Catholic) efforts were unjustified and likely unconstitutional.

Senator Josh Hawley–R from Missouri asked the Attorney General, “How many informants do you have in Catholic churches across America?”

Garland’s answer?

“I don’t know.”