I felt reasonably safe with John Paul II, but then the picture of him kissing the Koran appeared. Now Catholics have a new "conservative" pope. Allot is left to be seen how conservative he is. The "back down" on the Muslims was not a good sign. It was self evident to most of the world that he was right in his statement, but he was more interested in smoothing things over than the truth. Jesus gave the Truth until he was killed. This, "Can't we all just get along" attitude, will be the death of Christians everywhere.
Many denominations are having to choose between a denomination and the truth right now. What happens if the pope buckles to pressure from a billion Muslims over the world? What will the parishioners do?
Jesus said " I am The Way, The Truth, and The Light, No one comes to the Father but by Me". Now He was either telling the truth or telling a lie. I don't think there was any grey there. I am hearing more and more from Catholics that anyone can be "good" and go to heaven. Jesus said "There are none good, no not one." I don't see how having crusades changed anyone's heart, but the truth is still the truth. The basis for Christianity is Jesus is the only Way to heaven. Christian denominations disagree about many things, but this is absolute. If Catholics decide that Muslims are as right as Christians, then they become just another cult leading people to hell.
I think you're operating under the confused notions that (a) Catholicism is whatever the Pope decrees it to be, or that (b) a Pope's bad example is somehow binding on Catholics.
Neither proposition is true. For example, (not that there was truly any doubt) JP2 taught infallibly in Evangelium Vitae that abortion was always a grave moral evil.
There is no wiggle room in what he said, no room for compromise, and no doubt. No future Pope can cross that off the list, any more than he can decree that red is blue or that rain falls up.
As far as a Pope's bad example, the earliest known example (we'll give Peter a pass with his threefold denial because it was before Pentecost) is in Galatians 2. It was, well, a bad example, and St. Paul correctly recognized it as such.
If the Church has survived (barely, but survived) a Pope like Alexander VI, who openly kept a mistress in the Vatican and gave preferments to his illegitimate children, it can survive bishops who are wimps versus Islam. That is not to say that what they do is okay, just that it is not any kind of fatal blow like you seem to think it is.
You aren't going to like the following.
As far as the Anglicans, Lutherans, and others: Protestants went off the rails definitively in the area of sexual morality in 1930, when the Anglican Lambeth Conference decreed that artificial contraception was acceptable for married couples. That was contrary to 2000 years of established Christian teaching. Lord Runcie, the former Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, has admitted that a church which accepts artificial contraception has no consistent, logical grounds for opposing homosexual activity. Once you endorse contraception, you endorse the idea that pleasure alone is sufficient justification for sexual acts. The conclusion that there are no grounds to restrict that pleasure solely to the married, or solely to heterosexuals, follows naturally.
What is the only major Christian denomination which sticks to the position of the Protestant reformers on artificial birth control? Hint: it's not Protestant.