Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular never recovered from the advent of the printing press. That instrument broke the clergy's monopoly on language and thought. The publication of religious texts in the readers' native language effectively stripped the exclusivity of discourse from learned clerical few.
In any event, the message heard from many a pulpit and in many a sermon today is that of spiritual slavery and submission to the dictates of the state. Religious institutions had no special immunity from the Gramscian 'long march through the institutions'.