Are you channeling St. John Paul II?  He never met a lay person he didn't regard as a second class Catholic.  Benedict XVI fell right in step with his own desires to be the chief theologian so he could punish those who disagreed with him or were better.  There is a little problem with their moves to keep the laity in the pews: a document that says differently from a Church Council, no less, which elevates the laity to a far higher purpose, jut in time for the erosion and collapse of magisterial authoritarianism.  Pope Francis knows of it, and regards it with seriousness, yet is slow to push its full expression in the face of so many resistant bishops to the sharing of influence and power.  So we lose so many active and practicing (of the faith) Catholics and have the massive reductions in vocations of all kinds as we do
Regression never works in the long run, and particularly not in the Church on a pilgrimage to meet Christ at the end of time.  Our previous two popes were very wrong.