How would you go about developping an influential centralized clergy structure without falling into the trope of the opressive corrupted church?

Greetings again fellow worldbuilders,

When worldbuilding a fictional religion, there are many ways to go to organize its clergy. Sometimes, there is little to no organization whatsoever, sometimes there is but it's very decentralized, ... And one popular (I assume) way to go about it is to organize through a centralized and rigid clergy structure, taking inspiration from the catholic church (which is, afaik, the most centralized clergy structure to exist irl).
However, when building such centralized structure who dabbles in the politics of one or several realms and tries to increase its influence, it's easy to fall into the trope of the "opressive, corrupted, tyrannical and decadent Church, who tries to control all the narrative and to dispose of anyone who opposes it", like many people tend to see the Catholic Church for its role through history.

So, if you have such centralized clergy structure in your world, how did you go to develop it? And if you don't have, how would you go about developping one? (even if it's incompatible with your world)
A funny worldlbuilding exercise, if you don't have such centralized clergy structure in your world, would be to take one of your fictional religion and imagine how it would be structured if it had a centralized clergy structure :)