Pope Benedict XVI to Resign in March (true)

[Anymouse]

We Catholics find it hilarious at times like these, when the secular media speculates on who will be Pope.

They always say "this is a great chance for the church to modernise" - meaning accept secular morality on homosexuality, abortion and the rest.

Then, when the new guy - inevitably - comes out and doesn't sanction sodomy or infanticide, they are up in arms about this "terribly conservative Pope".

(of course, the initial "great chance" story is simply them laying the groundwork for their inevitable "boo hiss" story).

In an ideal secular world, we would ignore the Church as irrelevant to our lives.
However, the Church insists on inserting itself into secular politics, thus it cannot be ignored.
It certainly does not stand for freedom of religion (you shall have no other gods before me).
It does not stand for liberty (you are only free to do what the Church says the Bible says).
It does not stand for equality, neither for women nor any group it finds objectionable (such as gays). How exactly for example, would a gay marriage threaten my marriage? How would an exclusive gay relationship promote STDs? Or should atheists such as myself not be permitted marriage either? Is that the next step?
It does not stand for the right to life (by opposing all forms of contraception and promoting the death of women and foetuses in its hospitals - but we have already been here)
It does not stand for the poor (it opposes contraception and insists on keeping people in grinding poverty to support families beyond their means, and yet shakes said-same families down for a tithe). Yet it continues to amass fabulous wealth beyond the means of nearly every person, nearly every company, and refuses to be open with its finances on what it does with offerings. In the USA, it gets the benefit of a non-profit organisation without having to say how it uses its money (a problem with all churches, not just the Catholic one).
It does not support stewardship of the Earth, the supposed creation of God (by opposing birth control, the Church turns its least-educated and most poverty-stricken into a plague of locusts).
It does not stand for the advancement of knowledge to better humankind or our understanding of the Universe (it only took four hundred years to "rehabilitate" Galileo - don't they use that term "rehabilitate" in places like prisons and North Korea?)
It does not support education, particularly the sciences (because those same sciences can disprove virtually every claim in the Bible, and its only response is follow the Vicar of Christ and the Bible).
Where exactly does the Church (or any church for that manner) derive the claim to morality, and the right to impose it on all? (They also do not support the claim of free will that they claim to uphold.)
I do not know which nation you are from, but that is immaterial. Most Western democracies have some forms of all of the above, to which the Church is antithetical.
It also requires fealty to the Pope, a foreign king.
The Church is anti-American for sure.