How are you going to fix the Catholic Church? Or any church for that matter?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

16. Same as any effort to change any large organization: grass roots organization from the ground up.

It's got to start with the laity at the parish levels. If your parish has a parish council, use it to the congregation's best interests. If your parish does not yet have a parish council, start one.

Once you have parish councils in place, hold parish "town halls" to get a sense of what the ordinary Catholic congregant wants in terms of change. To all points where there is a reasonable sense of consenus, develop a list of grievances and proposed reforms.

Have different parish councils within a diocese coordinate so that all greivances and proposed reforms be presented to the diocese around the same time. Once they are presented, keep at the diocesian hierarchy until their is a substantive response from them and a stated plan to address all concerns and proposed reforms.

From that point on, grievances that are most common amongst the various dioceses should in turn be presented to the next level of authority--the US Council of Bishops, and beyond that, the Holy See.

One possible ally to the Catholic laity that one might not initially suspect: local parish priests. Many are far more progressive than one might infer, and unlike the hiearchy they aren't so caught up in internal politics that they would be willing to brush certain issues aside. A very specific example might be the issue of ordination of married clergy and women. Parish priests are often quite overworked, especially in the day and age where there is a shortage of priests but not necessarily of congregants. Any effort to bring more priests into the fold may in fact be welcome by some, simply as a matter of practicality.