What's odd then is why so many lay here rail against the clerics all the time here...why are so many articles about the Vatican the bishops, the USCCB, the sisters... if the Church "has so little influence" on the ordinary life of the lay.

I agree with you that it does have little to do.

I just can't explain the almost fetishistic focus on Rome, the diocese, priests. 

The Catholic world needs to be this other world, not a now grouchy pope in Rome.