The Pope and the New Apocalypse: The Holy War Against Family Planning

More a booklet than a book, this book purports to demonstrate that the US population policy is directly tied to the Vatican. It fails. Mostly a tired rehashing of conspiracy theories, with or without evidence to support them, and referring people to other documents, including other books written by this author, there is little offered up to hang your hat on. In fact, it looks like that hat might need to be a tinfoil hat. The author makes some good points, tying the Reagan administration to the Vatican, and is able to make his argument credible in places, but then moves too far to the conspiracy dynamic, taking it all the way back to Abraham Lincoln and the conspiracy of Catholics to murder Lincoln, with the tinge of suggestion it might have been at the behest of the Vatican. The author does a very poor job of demonstrating the thesis that the back of the book promises, that population growth is the most serious problem facing us, and that other problems will not be solved until we deal with that. He asserts that, but does not back it up, which is a major flaw. He gives long lists of Catholics involved in the Reagan administration, and acts of Reagan that gave the Vatican a bit more clout in the US, but fails to show that this was actually a move to tie the US to Catholic policies. He also mentions that the Catholics have managed to recruit the Protestants, formerly not that interested in this issue, into their fight against family planning. Again, asserts without much evidence. I can believe this, as it is evident in the world around me, but in a work that purports to be scholarly, there needs to be some grounding. Overall, a very disappointing book. ( )