...The [ St. Joseph Forum] conference [in 2005], attended by more than 250 people, was awash with extremists. A favorite of the crowd was Father Stephen Somerville, who Mel Gibson employed as his spiritual adviser during the filming of "The Passion of the Christ." Somerville was suspended in 2004 by the Vatican for schismatic behavior and is a popular speaker at radical traditionalist Catholic conferences. At the forum, he raged at "a corrupt subculture or network of homosexuals" ruining the priesthood.

But the most extreme comments of the weekend came from Brother Anthony Mary..."The perpetual enemy of Christ is the Jewish nation," Brother Mary roared, explaining that the aim of the Jews is to "destroy all Christian nations."

...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.