American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property


The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, or "The American TFP," is a special campaign of The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc.. It is one of a number of autonomous national TFPs which claims to form "the world's largest anticommunist and antisocialist network of Catholic inspiration."
The Southern Poverty Law Center had described it as a "virulently anti-LGBT group".

History

Founded in 1973, it is one of many "Tradition, Family and Property" groups and like-minded organizations worldwide, all of which are inspired by the work of the Brazilian intellectual, politician and activist Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. The first American group was incorporated in 1975, and established its first hermitage in 1977 in Yonkers, New York. The Yonkers location was subsequently closed, with the hermits establishing their permanent hermitage on 70 acres in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania.
The Foundation for a Christian Civilization was incorporated in 1973, drawing on earlier ties between Brazilians, who traveled to the US to develop a North American affiliate. The American TFP developed early connections with leaders of the religious and political right, including Paul Weyrich of the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation and Morton Blackwell of the College Republican National Committee and the Reagan administration. Founded to help fundraising for a Catholic counterrevolution against communism, it subsequently becoming a civil cultural organization that aims to uphold and promote the values of Christian civilization. The Foundation later merged in June 1992 with American TFP to form a single corporation identified as The Foundation for a Christian Civilization.

Organization

The American TFP is staffed by approximately 75 full-time members and employees. It claims, with its affiliated America Needs Fatima campaign, to have more than 120,000 members nationwide. The organization's national headquarters are in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, with regional offices in Chicago, Illinois; McLean, Virginia; Lafayette, Louisiana; Orange County, California; Hazleton, Pennsylvania; and Rossville, Kansas.
The organization solicits funds as a non-profit charity, not as a diocesan organization." Its annual public reports to the Internal Revenue Service indicate that between 2002 and 2014 it dispersed $1,800,000 to support the St. Louis de Montfort Academy and $1,500,000 to support related organizations in North and South America, most significantly Canada Needs Our Lady, Associação dos Fundadores and the Tradición y Acción organizations of Colombia and Peru.

Activities

TFP has continued its ties with the political right as a participating sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference, and by signing statements issued by the Heartland Institute that opposed housing finance reform legislation, and discussions of climate change in comprehensive energy legislation and in the State Department funding authorization.
TFP Student Action is the university campus outreach of the TFP. Its activities include distributing fliers and other literature on the streets of universities, sponsoring speakers on campuses, hosting student conferences, and organizing protests and petitions, especially against the provision of information about abortion and the acceptance of LGBT students at Catholic universities. Its most recent campaign is against the 96 Catholic colleges and universities that allow LGBT student groups. In April 2009, volunteers of TFP Student Action traveled to the major cities of New Hampshire and Maine to distribute literature against same-sex marriage.
The American TFP provides the staff to run Saint Louis de Montfort Academy, a boys' boarding school in Herndon, Pennsylvania, that provides students with a traditional Catholic education. It also operates Call to Chivalry summer camps, which express Oliveira's view of nobility, chivalry, and the benefits of the feudal past.
The Return to Order campaign is an offshoot of the US Foundation for a Christian Civilisation. In 2019 it organized a petition against the Good Omens miniseries as mocking God's wisdom and making Satanism appear normal, light and acceptable, but they targeted the petition at Netflix rather than Amazon Prime Video which distributes the series.

Criticism for virulence

The American TFP has been cited in several articles by the Southern Poverty Law Center for their anti-LGBTQ views. According to the SPLC the TFP is a "virulently anti-LGBT group".