The Southern Poverty Law Center has published its annual “The Year in Hate” in which it profiles the activities of hate and extremist groups in the United States. Distressing, though in retrospect perhaps not terribly surprising, is the inclusion of 17 “Radical Traditional Catholic” groups on the list. These groups all came to the attention of the SPLC for their anti-semitism. Beyond this, a quick tour of their websites shows some other (perhaps obvious) similarities. They are linked by a reactionary traditionalism: some are sedevacantisi, and all hold the mainstream church in disdain. Given their conservatism, it is somewhat surprising (to me) that they are suspicious of capitalism. Many are proponents of distributism and the “third way” of Belloc and Chesterton. Many are also into conspiracy theories. All of these strands come together in their fear of an international Jewish banking conspiracy, linked to the Masons, that has undermined the Church. One very amusing feature is that not only are some of them creationists, a few of them are actually geocentrists. Their slogan is “Galileo was wrong, the Church was right.”
I don’t think we need make too big a deal about these groups, which seem to be a small, sad fringe of the Church. But we do need to acknowledge their existence and work to isolate them (or at least their ideas). “Why consider the speck in your brother’s eye, when you ignore the beam in your own?”
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