Never bet on the church to defend your rights should be a long acquired wisdom by now.
They also have a lot of shelters for homeless and others in need of help in my country without any missionary ambitions (today at least, historically it was for missionary purposes). They help out where the state fails and it fails a lot.
Still the institution of the roman catholic church and christians are not synonymous to me. And any form of criticism is certainly directed at the churches power structures, not at their priests. I think the current pope is quite nice, but I disagree with him here.