Yeah. And to an extent, to co-opt the critiques of the Cathars, not unlike the 16th-17th century Counter-Reformation. Though there's an argument to be made that the Dominicans (and related groups) were genuine reform movements that were in turn co-opted by the central ecclesiarchy.
The Dominicans and other mendicant orders emerged in part from a movement against the established monastic orders, the Benedictines mainly but also the Cistercians, who-- by the High Middle Ages-- had become just another kind of feudal overlord. Monasteries and abbeys owned a lot of property, held serfs to work the land (ostensibly so the monks could focus on contemplative life), and the heads of monasteries and abbeys were as powerful as princes. There was a genuine wellspring of popular opposition to this, presaging a movement of popular piety in the Late Middle Ages, which sometimes included opposition to the temporal power of the Pope. In some cases, it manifested as a complete break from the Church, like with Catharism or the Waldensians; in other cases, it manifested as an attempt to reform it from the inside, like the Dominicans and Franciscans.
But because the latter orders of friars stayed within the Church hierarchy, and relied on Papal support to get off the ground, they were captured by the same hierarchy that they ostensibly opposed. It was great public relations for the Pope, they could look like they were on the side of the popular movement against monastic indulgence, while not having to actually do much about it and lose the support of powerful monastic institutions, and instead could turn these zealous preachers against the groups that really threatened their power. The more centralized Papal inquisition that we think of only emerged with the appropriation of the mendicant orders in the 1220s, but even with that big step, the Pope never had full control over tackling heresy, and struggled with local bishops fighting jealously to keep their power. Even their big goal, a crusade against the Cathars, relied heavily on the French military as a blunt instrument.
And to extent, some of that comes down to technology. The slow nature of communication in that time period made even the most centralized actions pretty decentralized by today's standards, just as a matter of necessity.
