You said:
>>This ain't the dark ages anymore.
Catholics have, in the last century in this country, openly disagreed with and thumbed their nose at some of the more backward policies of the church.
The Pope, while the leader of the faith, doesn't wield the power Torquemada had during the Spanish Inquisition. Many if not most Catholics have come to embrace progressive ideals AS BEING THE EFFECTIVE AND TRUE path to righteousness, where the church continues to back the wrong horse.
<snip>
Catholic if you're pro-choice and what not. But by and large, Catholics don't want too much truck with that. Catholics, in general, don't like such fundamentalist rhetoric. They've had to actively parse the meaning of their faith because of the grotesque hypocrisies that the papacy has historically clung to tooth and nail, so rote edict and decree doesn't sit well with them. <<
Doesn't look like much of a rebellion against Papal authority from here:
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=15039World: North America
Poll: US Catholic attitudes towards their Church
A Georgetown University poll shows that Catholicism is the religion chosen by most Americans. Younger generations tend to be believers, but less observant.
Sunday, April 13, 2008By Spero News
More than eight of out of ten Catholics are satisfied with the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI, according to a poll of Catholic adults in the United States.
More than seven out of ten are equally satisfied with the leadership of the U.S. bishops, a14-point jump, from 58 to 72 percent, since 2004.
The same poll found that among those who attend Mass at least once a month, Millennial Catholics (born after 1981) pursue religious practice with fervor akin to pre-Vatican II Catholic (born before 1943).
However, 36 percent of Millennial Catholics (2.7 million individuals) attend Mass at least once a month compared to 64 percent of pre-Vatican II Catholics (5.5 million individuals.)
The results are found in “Sacraments Today: Belief and Practice among U.S. Catholics,” a report from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). The Georgetown University-based researchers polled 1,007 self-identified adult Catholics in February 2008 and compared responses from pre-Vatican, Vatican II (born between 1943 and 1960), post-Vatican II (born between 1961-1981) and Millennial Catholics.
Data on the Millennial generation show young Mass-attending Catholics more akin to pre-Vatican Catholics in regard to religious beliefs as well as practices.
<snip>
Agreement with Church teachings is, again, often relatively high among the oldest Catholics, the pre-Vatican II generation. To a lesser extent this is also true of the Millennial generation, currently in their mid-20s and younger.
Agreement with Church teaching is typically lowest among the generation of Catholics who came of age during the changes associated with Vatican II and among post-Vatican.