What Alice is describing is the way American Protestantism works - but the kind of American Catholicism Joe is describing has virtually the same power structure, i.e. a (fraction of the) laity running the show with no real accountability to the official hierarchy. They're effectively Baptists who go to mass. That isn't the way it works in Ireland, as I understand it - the hierarchy there does exert real power, and the laity very little.

That affects where you might want to fix blame.