"When the position of the Church is that the hierarchy is always right, and that it's the job of the laity to listen, the hierarchy will not be prepared for any actual dialogue."

Very true. An Episcopal priest once told me he thought that each denomination within Christianity had its own heresy. Within Anglicanism, he thought the heresy was deism. For Roman Catholicism he said, "they have replaced a sound doctrine of the Holy Spirit with the office of the papacy." I tend to think there's some truth in that. You'd never know that each of us is a conduit of the Holy Spirit from the day of our baptisms. The way you hear it is mostly that the Holy Spirit speaks to the Pope, who then speaks only to his bishops, who then speak to us lowly peons. A sound doctrine of the Holy Spirit would allow us Catholic to challenge the episcopate for the simple reason that they aren't the only ones to whom the Holy Spirit speaks.