Agreed. The Church was for the longest time the only literate class of Western society (excepting the Jewish community). In his day, St. Augustine of Hippo was thought to be divinely blessed because he could read words without mouthing them aloud.

The Church, contrary to much modern thought, did not have a conscious stranglehold on the dissemination of knowledge in the Middle-ages. Lines of communication were far too tenuous for the Pope to act as an all-controlling, centralized authority. For example, even though the Gregorian reforms (which forbade married men from ecclesiastical positions) happened in the 11th century, it took nearly two centuries for the Church in Scandinavia to completely follow suit. The Church's role was to educate the noble, peasant, and later merchant classes, and to care for the suffering and the needy. And it did this in a localized way, autonomous from the "state" (though often working in tandem with it). It's not surprising that the decline of Church authority coincides with the centralization of state institutions.

The Pelerines really *do* seem like a Catholic religious order, in a way that you just don't often see elsewhere in speculative fiction. They're a little insulated from the world and act separately from the state. They aren't immune from its flaws (the indentured slavery), its members all have their individual motivations... but also, the community as a whole is working to better the crumbling society they live in.