Religion must adapt or die, so it will try to adapt.

Just more signs of the times. Towards the end religion is expected to get more and more secular so as to be ready for the one world religion that will come durring the tribulation period. One might also cite churches bowing to pressure to accept gay marrage. Satan is thought to have a pro homosexual agenda.

I'm not Catholic, I'm not even Christian. The Catholic Church does have a tradition of strict logic and careful thought within it. That might be limited by dogma in some cases but it exists just the same. Say or think what you like, the church has some exceedingly intelligent and very well educated people in it. These people are thoroughly aware of the weight of irrefutable physical evidence. This cannot be said for the Protestant sects which go on about the end times and a young Earth. Anyone who reads up on the careers of creationist leaders will find a few genuine science degrees, some doctorates and a whole slew of "degrees" in science or theology granted by non-accredited institutions ranging from completely fraudulent to some of dubious quality but which at least seem to have required some course work. Not all Protestants are like this of course. Despite the idiot assertions of some people, the church never claimed the world was flat. It was known for hundreds of years before the time of Jesus that it was round. When the prosecution of Galileo was going on, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine who headed the prosecution wrote that the idea that the Earth spun on it's axis and went round the Sun made "excellent good sense". However Galileo had no solid evidence and his model of the solar system was mathematically inferior to the Earth-centred one which had been refined for hundreds of years. So the church rejected it on the evidence that they had, plus dogma. On top of that, Galileo had insulted the Pope, who had been a friend of his. Insulting Popes, the Roman Catholic Church, the British Black Watch regiment or the US Marines is something that no wise person does. It was not until the 1700s that the actual proof of a heliocentric solar system came, maybe 30 years after Newton's theory put theories of the solar system on a solid basis. Within a few years of this the church ceased to oppose the heliocentric model because the evidence said it was true. I don't know of the Roman Catholic Church's history regarding evolution, but I do know that one of the bases of the modern synthesis was the genetic work done by Grigor Mendel, a Roman Catholic monk and much expanded later by others. The evidence says that evolution is a fact and the Darwin theory was substantially correct. No doubt the church accepts it on that grounds. The Vatican has it's own astronomers (not many) and its own observatory. Some of their astronomers use observatories in other countries, big telescopes with good optics. They are very aware that the Universe has billions of galaxies and each galaxy has hundreds of thousands to maybe hundreds of millions of stars. It has also become pretty obvious in the past dozen years that planets are pretty common too. My feeling is that if they accept that their god, or nature, or whatever set up the Universe so that life could appear on Earth, then there is no particular reason why it should not have been done on other planets. If this god is supposed to be omnipotent, what is to stop it / him / her from putting life on dozens or billions of other planets? Omnipotent is omnipotent, after all.

These are hard economic times. The pope's life style isnt cheap. This is how religion works, especially in the Catholic faith. You see, during the catholic service, at just the right time, right before followers are allowed to recieve communion, followers are guilted into donating money. Volunteers move about the rows of the church with collection plates. If you havent already done the math, the amount of money the church collects is directly proportional to the amout of people seated within the church. The amount of people inside the church is increased by the Vatican making compromises on certain key issues. It is all about money. Do you think the preist would even show up to the service if the Vatican banned collection plates?