Exactly.
And what is so blasted frustrating to me, as a Catholic, is that the crap you see spewed from the USCCB doesn't even sound like it comes from the same church as the one in the Vatican.
For example, could you ever imagine the USCCB saying this:
In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called "Welfare State". This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the "Social Assistance State". Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.
By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.
Or, how about this:
Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.[20] The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need.
And it is particularly frustrating when you realize that not all the US bishops even think the same way as the US. For example, in regards to Obamacare, one bishop commented:
the Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care. Unlike a prudential concern like national defense, for which government monopolization is objectively good – it both limits violence overall and prevents the obvious abuses to which private armies are susceptible – health care should not be subject to federal monopolization. Preserving patient choice (through a flourishing private sector) is the only way to prevent a health care monopoly from denying care arbitrarily, as we learned from HMOs in the recent past. While a government monopoly would not be motivated by profit, it would be motivated by such bureaucratic standards as quotas and defined “best procedures,” which are equally beyond the influence of most citizens.
(And he's not the only one)
And on this subject of illegal immigration, apparently the USCCB doesn't bother to consider the words of this current, "progressive", pope:
… Pope Benedict XVI sketched the parameters of such policies, stating that they “should set out from close collaboration between the migrants’ countries of origin and their countries of destination; they should be accompanied by adequate international norms able to coordinate different legislative systems with a view to safeguarding the needs and rights of individual migrants and their families, and at the same time, those of the host countries” (Caritas in Veritate, 62)…
…It must also be emphasized that such cooperation begins with the efforts of each country to create better economic and social conditions at home, so that emigration will not be the only option left for those who seek peace, justice, security and full respect of their human dignity. The creation of opportunities for employment in the local economies will also avoid the separation of families and ensure that individuals and groups enjoy conditions of stability and serenity.…
Excerpts from Message for World Day of Migrants 2014
The USCCB is an out of control, radical leftist group that needs to be disbanded, the building demolished, and the ground salted afterwards.
Well I suspect that breaking ranks on the health care issue is rooted in abortion/birth control segments of that law. My question is why should the government directly provide anything? I always thought "thou shall not steal" was one of the fundamental building blocks of religion, but apparently when your money is taken at gunpoint by a government and then given to some cockroach in human form to buy their vote it isn't stealing. You and I taking things that don't belong to us is stealing and condemned by the church. Governments taking things that don't belong to them is social justice and condoned by the church.
I see the same "social" issues taught by bishops in every country. Maybe the problem is higher than the USCCB.