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“Ever since the Reformation, the case of legislation confining Catholics had been constructed primarily to protect a nervously Protestant against what was assumed to be a fifth column in its midst... Ministers believedm with some justice, that Catholics retained an attachment to their exiled co-religionists, the princes of the House of Stuart. After the Battle of Culloden had confirmed Jacobitism's insignificance, however, government attitudes towards Catholicism began perceptibly and logically to relax.”

“The Reformed Church was identified with the old all-white government of South Africa and its apartheid policy. The Roman Catholic Church was closely identified with the Franco and Salazar dictatorships in Spain and Portugal. . . . More recently, . . . the Serbian Orthodox Church has come to be identified with the policies of Serbia (Yugoslavia).”

“With the help of pressure groups, government now has crossed over into the final frontier of bigotry, what writer and Catholic theologian Michael Novak calls 'Christophobia .' Traditional Christians and Jews are the new counterculture - aliens in a land their forefathers' beliefs and values established and built.”

“Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?”

“To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils and to assert the independence of my country- these were my objectives. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter - these were my means.”

“I have a great respect for the flag, (but) if the government passed a law saying that I had to pledge allegiance to the flag, I don't think I would do it. I've always felt that I lived in a country...where if I wanted to worship God as a Baptist, I could do so. If I were an atheist, I could be one. If I wanted to be a Catholic but was born a Jew, there's no condemnation...from a government authority.”

“It seems that the problem with government as an institution is uniformly bad, worldwide. It may be the ONLY thing that binds all nations together - the incompetence of all of their governments...The unions are the mafia, which is the CIA, which is the Catholic Church, which is the government, which is what's the difference? It's corrupt! It's the same guys pulling these strings, you know? One day he pulls the string and this lamp comes out, the next say he pulls the string and there's a missile coming out.”

“I don't believe less in American government because of a bad politician. I don't believe less in the Catholic Church because of a criminal priest but I wish we were doing more - and had done more in the past especially - to do something about these things. It doesn't harm my faith but it gets me just mad that these things have existed.”

“What we argue in the piece is that the headscarf has become a political symbol for an ideology of Islam that is exported to the world by the theocracies of the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just like the Catholic Church in the 17th century did religious propaganda to challenge the Protestant Reformation, these ideologies are trying to define the way Muslims express Islam in the world.”

“Prior to and during [John] Locke's time, it was difficult to determine where religion or church left off and government or state began. The powers of both were often combined. As a result, churches frequently used the force of the state to promote and enforce their interests and doctrines. This caused horrendous atrocities against Jews and heretics, as well as the European religious wars between Catholics and Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that resulted in the deaths of millions of people.”

“I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate.”

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote - where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference - and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”

“In all countries, in all centuries, the primary reason for government to set up schools is to undermine the politically weak by convincing their children that the leaders are good and their policies are wise. The core is religious intolerance. The sides simply change between the Atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarians, etc., depending whether you are talking about the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, America, etc. A common second reason is to prepare the boys to go to war and the girls to cheer them on.”

“Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?”

“The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe.”

“The Catholic Church must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T., and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the United States Government.”

“If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men.”

“The Catholic community, with many others, has long worked for this new commitment on global health and debt relief (President George W. Bushs proposed $15 billion Global AIDS initiative). I hope that Congress will now appropriate the money needed to make this legislation a reality, and that the U.S. government will press for strengthening the debt relief program along the lines proposed by this legislation.”

“I protect my right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to believe as a Jew, a Protestant, or non-believer, or as anything else you choose. We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might some day force theirs on us. This freedom is the fundamental strength of our unique experiment in government. In the complex interplay of forces and considerations that go into the making of our laws and policies, its preservation must be a pervasive and dominant concern.”