• “Syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer had it right when she said the Pope's policies are no longer merely the business of Catholics, since they can now lead to the death of us all.”

• “In this [population] battle, the Vatican has no qualms about destroying American institutions, including democracy itself.”

• “Restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press, in particular, would meet known preferences of popes going back to the 1830s.”

• “Intimidation, such as has been described in this chapter, by Catholic institutions over the past hundred years, has resulted in a population woefully ignorant of the threat to American democracy and security posed by the Church.”

• “If we are going to succeed with population growth control, Vatican influence must be neutralized.”

• “If they [the Church] rally sufficient numbers, then the civil war that President Grant predicted [1869-1877] may be inevitable for the very reason that he made his prediction.”

From: Stephen Mumford's, The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy (1996)

—Joseph Esposito

Joseph Esposito writes from Springfield, Virginia.