Ironically, many Fundamentalist churches (where the membership "votes on doctrinal matters" in a de facto way) are still way more conservative than the Catholic Church. It's always amazed me how a "monolithic" and "theocratic" church can be so liberal while "heretical sects" can be so much more conservative.
If the pressure for liberalism were coming from "the people" then all these little "sects" would be liberal, but they're not. They may be "heretical," but they're conservative. It's the "traditional" churches that are liberal.
I wish the Catholics on this forum would acknowledge this.
I don't think any Catholic on this forum has ever heard a Fundamentalist Protestant sermon. If they had they'd never be able to listen to these wimpy bishops again without throwing up. If the bishops are "princes of the church," why don't they act like it, darn it??? Down here there are churches with lay preachers (they don't believe in ordination) who speak with more authority than these pansies.
Many of the denominations that came out of the Reformation understood the Gospel (and indeed, all of the Bible) as speaking to more than just the salvation of individual souls. IMO it's when a church holds to this larger Reformational view, where the Bible is seen as having specific application to all of society (as opposed to offering only "general principles" such as "love" or "fairness" or "justice") that churches become - and stay - "conservative" in the social realm.
It's not even that they're wimpy, but that they are out of ideas. The liberal/conservative divide in the Catholic camp is not an easy divide to negotiate. Each side holds the imprimatur to be invaluable, but they are definitely at odds with one another.
From my experience, at the Parish level, the energy is with the liberals because they're the ones conducting bible studies, where such exist, and they're the ones organizing most of the activities that allow for social interaction between members of the parish. And nearly all of this is being facilitated by women. The bishop here has created leadership roles for those deemed 'pastoral associates' and these associates are all women who preach as well.
At one of the local Orthodox Presbyterian Churches, bible study is held at the home of one of the elderly women, and a fair amount of Catholics show up. These aren't people that are thinking of leaving the Church necessarily, they are people who need to be fed in this way.
I'm not sure if this kind of disconnect will ever reach critical mass, as ritual has a tremendous holding power.
There are several aspects of this, depending on the definition of "conservative", and depending on where you apply the label to the church: its doctrine, its leaders, or its members.
This is where the Catholic Church is liberal: if you look at self-identified Catholics and how they vote, you see a 50-50 split beween the GOP and the Dems. It used to be worse, as the Catholic blue collar ethnics were solidly Democrat when the Democrat party was about labor issues and poverty relief.
That might be traced doctrinally to the Catholic doctrine of necessity of works of caritas, love, -- which all too often is mixed up with government charity programs in people's minds.
However if you look at the picture today and take into account not merely self-identification as Catholic, but also frequency of church going, you see that the more devout the Catholic people are, the more conservative they are politically, and the trend is good, too. Church-going Catholics are, for example, largely credited as the group that shifted the balance for the GOP in 2004, despite the nominal Catholicity of Kerry.
Let us turn to doctrinal matters. Here we have a very mixed picture. The Catholic doctrine is extremely conservative in terms of cultural policy: it is uncompromising on contraception, abortion, euthanasia, re-marriage, and gender specificity and complementarity. It is not particularly conservative in economic policy as it sees unfettered capitalism problematic as much as socialism. It is also opposed to death penalty, although not in the same way as it is opposed to abortion. The former is seen as in need of careful justification but permissible in some theoretical circumstances, while abortion is seen as an absolute intrinsic evil. It is very nearly silent (dogmatically speaking) on evolution, where the Catholic dogma leaves a wide berth for nontraditional opinions.
The entire doctrinal edifice of Catholicism is not subject to change, democratically or from Rome (it is subject to refinement, as, for example, the whole set of "life" issues was a refinement of doctrine in response to modern challenges). The Church simply cannot change her mind on, for example, contraception, like the Protestant communities did. So, if you definition of conservatism is resistance to change, then the Church is extremely conservative. It is quite simply a Medieval institution that will stay Medieval till Kingdom come.
Thirdly, we have in the West the laity that pretty much spans the political spectrum, and we have bishops that are a reflection of the same fairly liberal culture, caught between the conservative dogma and the relatively liberal laity. We also have the lavender mafia, which awaits its Inquisition. Like I said, it helps to identify the devout conservative undercurrent not reflected by the statistics. There are some embarassingly liberal parishes, and some rigidly conservative ones. One thing you need to bear in mind: while the doctrinal teaching pretty much defines Protestant denominations, it is participation in the sacraments that defines Catholicity. Where a Protestant denomination splits over doctrine, the Catholic Church expects her members to know the doctrine, struggle to embrace it, repent of the failures, and persevere, but it would never turn a Catholic away. Well, nearly ever: it takes a scandalous public apostacy to be publicly ex-communicated. The Catholic Church is, in other words, catholic: for everyone. So she will never become, as a body of members, far from the nation as a whole. This incidentally, explains the lack of fire and brimstone preaching, as a priest is always careful not to alienate the sinner and push him into apostacy.
Lastly, the Church sees historical time differently than, for example, a Jew does. Our history is not linear from Creation to infinity, but rather it has a center at the Cross, with prior history leading to it and present history looking back to it. This means that on the deepest level what we conserve is the Cross, and not, for example, the Judaism of the Prophets that predated it.