Canon law stipulates that only the pope can appoint or depose (remove) a bishop (CIC 377, 401–402). Given the nature of the sacrament of holy orders and the spiritual identity of the bishop as father to the people of his diocese, one might expect that papal intervention in the affairs of local dioceses would be rare. A perusal of Church history bears this out. While some Catholics may desire to see the pope "clean house" and remove a number of inadequate bishops en masse, you’d be hard pressed to find historical precedent for that kind of sweeping measure.
What a lame excuse! It's never been done before so it shouldn't ever be done.
Better, I suppose, to fleece the flock of a billion and a half$ to maintain a formerly unremarkable, but now fatally self-destroying tradition!
“It’s never been done before so it shouldn’t ever be done[?]”
You’re quite right. The Good Father Johansen couldn’t make a decent a decent argument if his life depended on it.
But it’s much, much worse than you feared. If you track down his reference to “CIC 377, 401–402” you’ll find he can’t read either.
Heh. The Pope can’t write. Must be something in the water.
Actually, there's a lot of sense in that.
It's not like the Church sprang up 10 years ago or half a century ago or in 1521. It's been in business for 2,000 years and it's pretty much seen it all during that time. It's seen some extraordinary occurrences and lived through some great difficulties. That's a rich store of history and precedent to fall back on. Church history can tell us an awful lot about the way to approach problems.