The Church is the people.  It is not the hierarchy only.  We don't live in the Roman empire anymore.  We don't live in the Dark Ages anymore.  We don't live in the Middle Ages or in  the age of the Western Schism anymore.  We don't live in the Age of the Renaissance, the Age of the Council of Trent, the Thirty Year's War [wars of religion in Europe], the Age of Enlightenment, or the French Revolution Period any more.  The Church changed in these periods because if it didn't---it would have gone 'belly up'.  That is why synods, councils, and ecumenical councils were held.  In 1815 after the Congress of Vienna, the Church believed in a world in which divinely appointed monarchs ruled the state and divinely appointed prelates ruled the Church.

We don't and CAN'T live in a walled-up fortress mentality of the Church[that the official church encouraged from 1815 on ].  The over-riding concepts of a patriarchal church are evil and give lie to what the church claims to teach and believe.