Pope Benedict visits the USA

The US government and media really went over the top in support of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the US. I'm sickened and disgusted by the vulgar spectacles of marching bands and ridiculous singers on TV and the sycophantic toadying from President Bush and many others.
It is understandable that the Pope's visit means a lot to Catholics especially among the Latin community but why should this be treated as such an important event by the media and by politicians?

The US and United Nations should not recognize the Vatican as a country and the Pope as a head of state. The Catholic Church is an anachronism. It is a patriarchal, authoritarian and self perpetuating apparatus of ignorance, oppression and manipulation through fear and misplaced guilt. It has been and continues to be responsible through its hypocrisy, dishonesty and opposition to scientific and social progress a negative and destructive force in the world. Catholics are brainwashed from birth into believing ludicrous myths, accepting destructive dogmas and trying to live by inflexible ethical laws based rigid acceptance of scriptural interpretation by Catholic theology.

The Catholic Churches insistence that it's followers not use condoms has contributed greatly to the spread of aids, overpopulation and consequently poverty and starvation in the third world. Its opposition to abortion has also led to millions of unwanted babies being born into dysfunctional, abusive or poverty stricken homes.
In it's attempts to cover up numerous child abuse incidents involving Catholic priests the church has spent millions of Dollars hiring lawyers to discredit and humiliate the victims.
The church does have deep pockets though! It obtains it's vast wealth from collection plate donations given by well meaning congregations some of whom can ill afford it. Though some of this wealth is no doubt used for many worthy causes there is also a great deal spent on unnecessary luxuries and extravagance such as the ridiculous Pope-mobile or the Pope's personal shoe maker to name just a couple of examples.
It seems only too obvious just how unhealthy and unnatural a life of enforced celibacy really is and what abusive behavior sexual repression and frustration can lead to. Why does the Catholic church still cling to this unnecessary and damaging requirement for it's priests? Why are women still treated as inferior by the church and continue to be discriminated against and not permitted to become priests when so many examples of the abysmal standards of behavior from it's male members have come into the public knowledge? Of course their attitude to women pales into insignificance compared to their medieval and unrealistic condemnation of gays to a life of repression and guilt. I suspect many Catholic priests actually are gay anyway, which makes it all the worse.

So to sum up, it seems pretty pathetic how much fuss and bother was made over this visit. It was a shameful spectacle of hypocrisy and pandering to an institution that receives far more respect than it deserves!