Two Treatises A pair of recent books attack the Vatican and its current policies form the core of radical traditionalist teachings. Read More Catholics and Conspiracies 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. Read More Radical Powerhouse The Society of St. Pius X, which has chapels and schools across the United States, remains a font of anti-Semitic propaganda. Read More

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.

Like father, like son.

Mel Gibson has his own traditionalist house of worship near Los Angeles -- a church, funded entirely by him, that is not recognized by the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese. It is unclear what is said in the hallowed halls of the Holy Family Chapel, since, unlike virtually all other Catholic churches, it is closed to the public. What is known is that Gibson is reported to have blamed Jews for forcing him to cut a scene, in which Jews and their descendants are held responsible for the murder of Christ, from his 2004 film, "The Passion of the Christ." Sounding a bit like he did that July night in Malibu, Gibson told The New Yorker: "If I included that in there, they'd be coming after me at my house. They'd come to kill me."

Few Americans defended Mel Gibson's drunken rant about the evils of the Jews. But radical traditionalist Catholics did. A three-year investigation of this subculture by the Intelligence Report has found that these Catholic extremists, including the Gibsons, may well represent the largest population of anti-Semites in the United States. Organized into a network of more than a dozen organizations, scores of websites and several extremist churches and monasteries, radical traditionalists in the U.S. are preaching anti-Semitism to as many as 100,000 followers. A few, such as the lawyer for Terri Schiavo's family, Christopher Ferrara, are even movers and shakers in important right-wing Republican circles.