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I did not agree with the pope on Iraq. He was a hypocrite on Iraq since we helped him with poland.

The Church's Just War Doctrine lays the responsibility for the decision to go to war on the shoulders of government leaders. (They'll have more information than religious leaders and the general public).

Nevertheless, that doctrine lays out strict conditions that must be met.

The pope is thus left in the position of working/arguing/cajoling all parties towards the biblical goal of peace and praying that the conditions for a just war are met.

I don't think he is ever in a position to "bless" a decision to go to war. That isn't his role.

You also have the problem of the media not, uh, "understanding" the larger context of the pope's messages, and thereby communicating it inaccurately.

See for example:

War in the Gulf. What the Pope Really Said
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/879895/posts

If the pope ever supported women priests or gays---I am out.

RE: Women priests

In 1994 Pope John Paul II formally declared that the Church does not have the power to ordain women. He stated, "Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force. Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Luke 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful" (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 4).

And in 1995 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (NOTE: these are the heavy-hitters, the conservative guardians of the truth), in conjunction with the pope, ruled that this teaching "requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium 25:2)" (Response of Oct. 25, 1995).

This is something that is never going to change.

RE: Homosexuality

Modern arguments in favor of homosexuality (genetics, commonality, homophobia) have been insufficient to overcome the evidence that homosexual behavior is against divine and natural law, as the Bible and the Church, as well as the wider circle of Jewish and Christian (not to mention Muslim) writers, have always held.

The Catholic Church thus teaches: "Basing itself on sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2357).

However, the Church also acknowledges that "[homosexuality’s] psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. . . . The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s cross the difficulties that they may encounter from their condition.

"Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection" (CCC 2357– 2359).

Paul comfortingly reminds us, "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it" (1 Cor. 10:13).

I.e., hate the sin, but love the sinner.