What I meant was that Catholics need to wean themselves off their early indoctrination that God can't work meaningfully in their lives unless He goes through a priest.  God does not need a mediator.  People may need a community leader for religious celebrations, but that is a different concept.  In real life, we move past the need for parents, especially as we take on that role ourselves.  There is no such rite of passage for laity in Catholicism.  It's a big stumbling block for maturing in one's faith or relationship with God.  It puts one's faith in a box that is somehow separate and different from real life experience.  Some priests are fabulous at moving Catholics through this mental block, but other priests rely on it and reinforce it to shore up their own lack of internal authority.  I suspect this is one reason why Francis will not act on clerical abuse in any meaningful way.  It means destroying to some extent, the laity's reliance on the priest as God's mediator.