And you admit yourself to the camp that has brought us to the point where we are about to have homo marriage as a constitutional right, but no religious right to object to being forced to service gay weddings, no right to pray in schools, no right to display the Ten Commandments, crosses, or nativity scenes on public land, no right to preach the Bible at gay parades...Are you going to join the Freedom from Religion Foundation, or are you a card-carrying member already?
Leo XIII understood clearly where The Framers stood, and it is where every sensible person stands. The days when the Bishop of Rome could dictate his will to the sovereign in matters that belong to the polity is over, and rightly so. Governments don't derive their just powers from the phony "donations" of deathbed converts, nor by divine right. He knew that day had come and feared for his phony-baloney job.
Thus, he manufactured a "heresy." This was his stock and trade, but the market wasn't anywhere near what it used to be. The American Revolution established there would be no room for the kind of monopoly Popes were used to. [It's no accident that there was only one Romanist signer of The Declaration of Independence; only two signed the Constitution.]
If Francis wants to use his influence to change the culture or the opinions of the electorate, he has as much right and moral authority -- and not one iota more -- than anyone else with a soapbox to try. So far, his opinion on matters that were supposed to be "intrinsic moral evil" have been [at best] "mistranslated" and [at worst] well to the left of mine.