What is forgotten is that these bishops, cardinals, and even pope are men, yes, males and old males at that who are not experienced in the process of intimate interaction with females and their priorities. The current structure of the church is to defy strong laity concerns and controls over even the operations of local parishes. This might have been fine when American Catholics were largely an immigrant group lacking in education and desperate for worker positions rather than being part of general American society and even the top 2% of Americans in socio-economic terms. Currently the American Catholic Church is so out of step with the daily lives of their membership as it does not realize that the vast majority of Catholics do not attend weekly mass; practice birth control; engage in non-marital sex; do not see the Church as the final arbiter in the conduct of their lives.

When the Catholic church recognizes the equality of the laity and both genders to participate at all levels then it will be on the road to healing and having more people adhering to the faith. It is important that the Church abandon its movement of gradual retrenchment to pre-Vatican II ideas and wording. The new wording changes in the Catholic mass is a prime example of how the Church thinks that mystifying further the mass will give it greater glory and substance to the laity as opposed to awkward, stilted language after forty years of a vernacular that most of the people could understand. Now they make it impossible for young children and younger adults to even recognize their Church.

If the goal is to find out what Catholics in the pews think about an issue – the church rather than the Church – then it is completely acceptable to ask them directly rather than going through their unelected leadership.