The emergence of a secret police.

A corrupt and out of control federal agency.

Your Tatler happened to watch a superb performance from 2018 of Puccini’s Tosca last night, via the Metropolitan Opera’s Met on Demand. In the first act, the villainous Roman chief of police Baron Scarpio has no qualms staking out the escaped prisoner Angelotti and his accomplice-in-hiding, the hero-painter Cavaradossi, in a chapel devoted to the Madonna in a church in Rome (the real-life Basilica di Sant’Andrea della Val, behavior some might regard as profane at the least and bordering on blasphemous.

I was reminded of that scene reading the report above from the House Judiciary Committee concerning FBI agents, similarly having no qualms, planting themselves in Catholic churches, their purpose being, as laid out in in an internal document in heavy bureacratese titled:

Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.

In English, what are the “new mitigation possibilities?” That would be the targeting of traditional Catholics who engage in such dissident activities as attending or participating in the Traditional Latin Mass. They are designated by the FBI, as reported by House Judiciary Committee, “RTCs,” Radical Traditional Catholics,” whom they claim are:

typically categorized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council; disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II, particularly Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology. Radical-traditionalist Catholics compose a small minority of overall Roman Catholic adherents and are separate and distinct from ‘traditionalist Catholics’ who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings and traditions, without the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.

Laying aside for the nonce the Bureau’s having no damn business investigating differences within the Catholic Church, it also does not delineate “good” TLM-ers from “bad” ones, but it is a certainty the bad ones to which they refer are members of the SSPX, the Society of St Pious X, a breakaway traditionalist organisation whose sacraments are nonetheless recognized by the Holy See.

It is no secret traditional Catholics are conservative, by definition of the word. What the FBI and the Biden administration, which no doubt is behind these investigations, find offensive is Catholics simply exercising their First Amendment rights of speech and religion, even if others find them distasteful or objectionable. The Bureau has abandoned its original charter, in which its principles are enumerated, in part, thus:

(1) conduct investigations consistent with the constitutional and legal rights of U.S. citizens; (2) conduct such investigations and collect such intelligence as is necessary for the security of the United States; (3) not conduct an investigation solely on the basis of the lawful exercise of constitutional or statutory rights, including the expression of a religious or political view or the right to peacefully assemble and petition the Government [emphasis added]; (4) conduct investigations with only such intrusion as is necessary for authorized purposes.

The FBI has morphed into a tool of the far left to persecute dissenters from their progressive, “social justice” agenda. It is far beyond reform and must be abolished. If it is replaced, which I am not sure is necessary, it should be by a vastly smaller organization, strictly limited by the terms of the original FBI charter.