Any realist would have differences of opinion with The Church on a number of issues.

I as a Catholic, don't always agree with the positions of the church, as they tend to be from a very idealistic perspective, and I personally tend to take a more pragmatic approach to things, but one must recognize that The Church MUST take positions based on a much deeper and more idealistic level than most of us humans are accustomed to... If The Church doesn't fight of the idealistic, then who will fill that void?

Communism has tried and failed.
Big Goverment has tried and failed.
Environmentalism has tried and failed.
The United Nations and TOWG movements will try and fail.
Science by its very nature won't try and thus will fail.

All claim to be set-up to bring about the ideal, but they all fail misserably because they are missing a higher authority which their most ardent supporters deny exists while at the same time seeking to replace it with some other self-contrived higher authority.

The positions taken by The Church are taken only after a great amount of thought and prayer on what should be and/or is the Ideal: And, the ideal world will always come into conflict with the "grey areas" encountered in a "real world" that is so easily distracted by materialistic desires.

As a perfect example, it is a shame that the Pope never recieved the Nobel Peace prize: He always took the side of peace over war. Life over death. This is Idealism of the truest form that apparently means nothing to the Nobel commitee because they don't like the churches stand on trivial material issues like a rubber covered penis.

And let us not forget that the Pope was seen as Anti-Communist.

They give thier prize to scum like Yassir Arafat but not a saintly old man who without even a second thought, forgave Communist financed would-be assassin.

The Nobel prize was set up to stand for idealism, but it has failed because it too, has been distracted and distorted by the material world.

I wish I had the courage and conviction of John Paul II.

God Bless him and may his influence continue to guide The Church.