Sorry, but you are defining ideology as “bad ideology.”
Here is #1 definition from Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary.
1. the body of doctrine or thought that guides an individual, social movement, institution, or group.
Christianity is itself an ideology.
Absolutely correct. Thus, the Pope's devotion to helping the poor is an ideology. Is he saying this is a bad thing? Or is it just holding true to biblical precets that the world doesn't like what constitutes bad "ideology"? And if so, why?
“Christianity is itself an ideology.”
I believe it is not. (Perhaps there is a ‘faith’ pun there.)
All other religions are. (Human nature desires structure, rules, etc. for security. But humans cannot follow the rules (any rules). Islam as we see it appears attractive today for these reasons.)
Ideologies do not work. That’s why Christianity is different, and why God is the True God.
Incorrect.
What our friendly neighborhood college dictionary fails to grasp is that the word "ideology" is not an ancient word from time immemorial like "wind" or "thought."
It is a new word invented in the modern era by the French philosophe Condillac, probably in the 1760s.
I believe the first written evidence of the word ideologie is from 1768 and that the first time the word "ideology" was used in English was in 1796 in a description of Condillac's philosophy.
The Oxford English dictionary, aware of the word's history, defines it as follows:
"A systematic scheme of ideas, usually relating to politics and society, or to the conduct of a class or group, and regarded as justifying actions, especially one that is held implicitly as a whole and maintained regardless of events."
Christianity, by its very nature, transcends politics and society and does not concern itself with justifying actions according to political principles - but examines actions in a moral light beyond political or social expediency.
Some would like to reduce Christianity to an ideology, to an -ism competing with other -isms like materialism or socialism.
Christianity stands outside of that box.
I would dispute that. Some of my RCIA students naively see the Bible, for instance, as if it were a manual of systematic moral philosophy. I keep pointing out to them that much of it is not exactly moral, and it's anything but systematic. It is full of weirdly mysterious things which you're stuck with (which I, a believer, am stuck with) whether they make sense to me at all, simply because they are true (defining true as: stuff that happened.)
Still less is Christ, Our Lord, an ideology. He is an infinite, divine Person who cannot be lopped off, shaped and framed into a human taxonomy system.
Ideology is antithetical to Mystery.