The late priests Denis Fahey and Leonard Feeney were key early thinkers of the radical traditionalist Catholic movement.

Feeney also is known for preaching against Jews on the Boston Common with his followers. Although he was finally excommunicated for disobedience in 1953, he rapidly founded his own order, Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and started a newsletter, The Point, that was suffused with anti-Semitism. Feeney's newsletter blamed Jews for controlling and biasing the press and for creating communism. One article lambasted Jews for their role in the "anti-hate" initiatives that it despised. Another, published in April 1958, was entitled "Newspapers and The New York Times: Other Jews and Minister Sulzberger" and summed up the Jewish "problem" like this: "Essential to the understanding of our chaotic times is the knowledge that the Jewish race constitutes a united anti-Christian bloc within Christian society, and is working for the overthrow of that society by every means at its disposal."

Feeney did reconcile with the church in 1974, four years before his death. But his anti-Semitic ideas remain popular in radical traditionalist Catholic circles and in the New Hampshire monastery his followers started, which still endorses his anti-Semitic ideology, to the point that a New Hampshire bishop lambasted the monastery's teachings in 2004 as "blatantly anti-Semitic" and "offensive."

The bishop isn't the only one who sees Feeney as anti-Semitic. One white supremacist has created an online archive of Feeney's writings (fatherfeeney.org) for the benefit of fellow Aryans. It is part of the so-called "World White Web."

A Dynamic Movement
Today's radical traditionalist Catholics -- the theological descendants of Feeney and Fahey -- are part of a thriving, energetic movement, even if it is one that is tiny when compared to the approximately 70 million Americans who are mainstream Catholics. The dozen or so organizations that make up this movement read each other's writings, buy each other's conference tapes, and co-publish major theological works. They put on conferences several times each year that are served by circuit-riding preachers like Brother Mary and Father Nicholas Gruner.

The movement is important for a number of reasons. It is growing, and spreading its anti-Semitic teachings, at a time when anti-Semitism and religious conflict generally are clearly resurgent around the world. Some of the most radical of the traditionalists are increasingly interacting with neo-Nazis and their fellow travelers. For example, John Sharpe, head of the anti-Semitic Legion of St. Louis, attended the 2006 conference of American Renaissance, a racist publication that specializes in race and intelligence. That same year, Father Gruner, leader of the International Fatima Rosary Crusade, attended a conference of The Barnes Review, a Holocaust denial journal. Gruner celebrated a special Mass at the Washington, D.C., conference, which was also attended by an array of long-time neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other anti-Semites.

The radical traditionalists may also be gaining influence on the larger political scene. The best example of this is Christopher Ferrara, the lawyer who in 1990 started the American Catholic Lawyers Association to defend "Catholics in religious and civil liberties cases." Ferrara writes for anti-Semitic traditionalist journals like The Remnant. He recently said Pope Benedict XVI had "abased himself by entering a synagogue." He uses Robert Sungenis, a particularly venomous anti-Semite, to staff the "Apologetics Desk" at his legal organization. But he also was the lawyer for the family of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose feeding tube was removed in 2005 after a protracted court battle. In that role, Ferrara rubbed shoulders with key Republican and Christian Right leaders who convinced Congress to pass a law to protect Schiavo that was ultimately killed by the courts.

If radical traditionalists belong to a particular sect -- and many do not -- it is most typically the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a sprawling international group that publishes reams of anti-Semitic writings on its Web site and is based, in the United States, in Kansas City, Kan. In the late 1980s, Pope John Paul II excommunicated all SSPX priests and declared the sect formally in schism, but it has continued to grow. In America, 20,000 to 30,000 people are members.

Many of these radical traditionalists embrace "sedevacantism," a word derived from the Latin that refers to a period when "the see [or seat] is vacant." While the term is the official Roman Catholic word for the period between a pope's death and the election of his successor, many radicals are sedevacantists in the sense that they believe that there has not been a real pope for years (typically, since 1958). Some have adopted conspiracy theories about rigged papal elections and even the idea that the authentic pope is secretly being held in captivity.