Dan Simmons — American Author born on April 04, 1948,

Dan Simmons is an American science fiction and horror writer and author of the Hugo Award-winning science fiction series, the Hyperion Cantos, and the Locus-winning Ilium/Olympos cycle... (wikipedia)

As for the depiction of the Catholic church, it's not meant to be a prediction.
Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.
It's odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn't it?
I loved almost everything about being a teacher, but I was an unusual teacher.
But it's not just a game of finding literary references.