Brother Andre Marie of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, New Hampshire writes regarding the memo retraction,

“… To what do we owe the change? 

I believe that there has been a heightened consciousness that the Southern Poverty Law Center is, in the words of C.J. Doyle, “a lucrative bunco scheme which monetizes left wing paranoia by inciting fear of conservative Christians.”* The organization is so thoroughly discredited now that only the utterly ill informed or slavishly ideological put any stock in the veracity of its lunatic utterances. 

But what explains the sympathy for “rad trads” that came across in some of the more mainstream Catholic press, who took this as an attack against Catholics and not just a jab at some “fringe elements,” as they might have said years ago? That cannot be explained exclusively by the well-deserved infamy of the SPLC. Perhaps, thanks to the pro-tradition interventions of Pope Benedict, traditionalists have found some genuine respectability in the Church. Perhaps, further, in the pontificate of Pope Francis, traditionalists have become objects of sympathy. 

We should use whatever forward momentum this episode has generated and continue to work for the conversion of America to the Catholic Faith and the restoration of authentic Catholic catechesis, liturgy, and living…” — Read it all

— FBI Retracts Memo on “Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology,’ Says It Failed to Meet Bureau Standards

National Review: “…The memo is an ugly slander of a small but surprisingly prominent religious minority. The research for the memo was based on clickbait articles from Salon, the Atlantic, and a hysterical report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The FBI is supposed to have deliberately excluded SPLC’s “research” from its own documents, because the buck-raking, scaremongering organization is so unreliable…” More