Intelligence Report, Winter 2006, Issue Number: 124
Radical Traditionalist Catholics Spew Anti-Semitic Hate, Commit Violence Against Jews
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Two Treatises
by Heidi Beirich
A pair of recent books attack the Vatican and its current policies form the core of radical traditionalist teachings.
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Catholics and Conspiracies
by Heidi Beirich
The Roman Catholic Church has always been an attractive target for conspiracy theorists, due in large part to its elaborate and sometimes mysterious-seeming rituals, its associations with secret societies like the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians, and even its sometimes defensive reaction to scandals like the revelations of recent years about child-molesting priests.
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Radical Powerhouse
by Heidi Beirich
The Society of St. Pius X, which has chapels and schools across the United States, remains a font of anti-Semitic propaganda.
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By Heidi Beirich, Intelligence Project Director
"******* Jews!"
So began Mel Gibson's now infamous anti-Semitic rant to Los Angeles sheriff's deputies who pulled him over on suspicion of drunken driving last July. "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," the world-famous movie actor continued, before asking his arresting officer: "Are you a Jew?"
After his tirade made international news, Gibson promptly disappeared into an addiction clinic. He left behind a statement, released through a spokesman, begging the Jewish community for forgiveness and suggesting that booze was to blame. He was, he wrote, "in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display." But their origin is easy enough to pinpoint -- the extremist Catholic beliefs Gibson learned at the knees of his anti-Semitic father.
Gibson's dad, Hutton Gibson, is an important player in the shadowy world of radical traditionalist Catholicism, also known as "integrism" or Catholic separatism. This religious subculture's teachings have little in common with the modern Roman Catholic Church and its universalistic theology. Hutton Gibson, for one, is a well-known Holocaust denier who believes the Second Vatican Council reforms of the 1960s, which made the church vastly more tolerant of other faiths, were the result of "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews." He is particularly incensed by the council's historic declaration, "Nostra Aetate," which condemned "all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews." In Gibson's world, the Second Vatican Council's liberalizing reforms are rejected and anti-Semitic teachings and conspiracy theories are heartily embraced.
Radical Traditionalist Catholics Spew Anti-Semitic Hate, Commit Violence Against Jews | Southern Poverty Law Center