I think there is a subtle difference between religion of a small tribe and a religion that bases morals on the Ten Commandments. Regardless whether you think that Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God or Moses pulled them from thin air, ethics and morals based on them withstood all turmoil in history and made it possible for the Western civilization to become the most thriving civilization. The proof is in the pudding – how many people migrate to the West (EU, Northern America, Australia and NZ) from the rest of the world and how many people migrate the other way? People vote with their feet and they clearly indicate in what world they want to live in.
New fancy moral standards were being dreamed up during the centuries in order to substitute “obsolete” catholic morals. Since the French revolution, there always were attempts to ditch catholic morals and bring the new, “modern” morals to life. All these experiments failed miserably. If the pope thinks that liberal Canadian laws are just other weak fancy moral standards indented to appeal to wide masses, disrupt the fabric of western society and doomed to fail long term, he might have a point. So I think the pope is pretty right to say that catholic morals are superior to pretty much any other moral standards that have been applied to practice during the history.
BTW I am saying this as a non catholic, a non Christian and even as a non conservative.
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