I very much liked this post and wholely agree with you about the increasingly narrow and distorted view of relationships created by a secular culture increasingly paralysed by self-fear and self-doubt. I can see why you tend to blame the church and was particularly interested by your idea that ' part of this is caused by the 'baptism' by the church of the 'risk averse' culture that is endemic in modern society.' It is true that the church is caught, especially at the moment, in a vicelike grip by media and society alike, and I think we are all flailing about looking for a way forward out of what is fast becoming an unbearable impasse.
If that sounds a bit overdramatic I would like to cite the case of Gordon McCrae - a Catholic priest caught up in a sexual scandal in the early 90's - widely believed by friends and, so far as I can tell, parishioners alike to be wholely innocent but still languishing in an American prison since, I think, 1995 or thereabouts. The church seems powerless to help him or to support his cause (or at least seems very unwilling to do so) probably because they fear that any attempt at this (particularly in America) lays the hierarchy open to yet more charges by media and public alike of 'protecting pedophiles'.
My own feeling is that the only viable way forward is for the hierarchy and Christians alike to accept that, whatever happens, there will be bad press and hostility and stick to what they believe to be right. What I fear will happen with the pope in the present child sex crisis for example, is that he will try to please an implacable public by 'coming down harder than hard' in exactly the same way that politicians do.
That may seem a bit off the point that you were trying to make but I suppose I am trying to say that it perhaps isnt so much that the 'Western church is selling us short' but that it is trying too hard to bridge the widening gap between a secularised society and its own Christian community and there will come a point, perhaps sooner than we think, when that gap will be unbridgeable. In my view, this will be a good thing, because it will free the church from trying to please everyone and stop the church cowtowing to the insatiable demand of the general public to treat anyone suspected of any 'deviant' behaviour, for example, as the lowest of the low (and by this I dont just mean pedophilia but homosexuality as well) and therefore beyond compassion. I hope you can see why I think this relates to your thoughts about 'risk-averseness'.
It is time for the church to realise that there is a growing gap between the demands of the gospel and the way in which secular society demands that it's citizens behave and to take a firmer stand. I think, in turn, that this may be exactly what a secular society would expect it to do.