Since there's no Jesus, or sins, and the Catholic church is just a big pedophile ring, who cares??
All the "stories" are false, whether or not they believe them.

I was raised Catholic. Catholics have sacraments that Protestants don't recognize going back to Martin Luther and the Reformation. This was that Last Rites, Anointing of the Sick, or Extreme Unction (Final Anointing). Sacraments have no validity without the Atonement of Christ. The Anointing of the Sick is generally accompanied by celebration of the sacraments of Penance and sometimes Viaticum (Eucharist administered to the dying). Penance is also a sacrament alternatively known as Reconciliation or Confession which is also dependent upon the Atonement of Christ and the repentance of the individual. The priest was not forgiving sins, though he may have expressed himself clumsily, but was administering a sacramental rite of the forgiveness of sins, acting in persona Christi Capitis, which again, means nothing without the Atonement. So, it is not that the Catholics don't understand their own story, (at least those who bother to learn it) but that this priest was assuming that his audience did.

No. Catholics take their dogma seriously but they just brush over the contradictions. I was catholic educated all through school. I believed in the stories they teach also until I got to be a senior in high school and had to take a course in apologetics......hahahaha. Religion does so much harm. Glad I left. I cannot imagine living by all those stupid rules again. Talk about control! ....and religious people pay for it! No bigger joke than that.

No, the Catholic church has inserted themselves as God's representatives so priests decide if you get there or not (based on your adherence to the church's needs) I have a friend that is a hospice nurse. Many times her Catholic patients are left horrified and frantic during the last days of life because they believe they will be going to hell because the local priest refuses to give them last rites because they were married twice and didn't pay the church enough money to have the first wedding not happen. . . .

It is not an emphasis of Catholic theology. Protestantism generally holds that each believer is their own priest, no 3rd party required to mediate communication between god and man. This is colloquially termed "the priesthood of the believer". In both camps, Jesus died for the forgiveness of sins, but to Catholics and some others, that grace must flow through particular individuals.

It has actually been a trend throughout church history for the agency of the clergy class to be diluted in favor of the laity. At least in overt terms. There is still a ton of ways in which the clergy has more subtle privilege and leverage over the sheeple though.

I think when Catholics emphasize some claimed special virtue in their clergy they exacerbate the embarrassing problem that the clergy are regularly exposed as ordinary flawed humans. So I think it's in the long-term interest of Christianity's survival to deemphasize that and get them off of their pedestals a bit.

I think part the creed says that you are not absolved of your sins unless you confess your sins, are contrite, penitent and ask for forgiveness.
The role of the priest is to act as a conduit for divine forgiveness.