“It’s interesting to ponder great saints who were bishops, and their different personalities, and try to imagine what they would do in today’s situation!”
It sure is!! Lotsa them Saints had much, much higher standards that I can even imagine trying to hold myself or anybody else to. I’m not saying I have a better idear of what needs to happen than Bishops do, I’m saying it seems to me, with my meager faculties, that public discipline can be a very potent aspect of teaching that mostly doesn’t get used in a day and age when it would seem to be very effective.
Freegards
You’re right, because the effectiveness has been demonstrated clearly in those rare dioceses with strong bishops who do use their authority for public discipline. Men like Burke and Bruskewitz. We see that the parishes in these places have high Mass attendance, high attendance at adoration and other devotions, and that there are more vocations to the priesthood, and active pro-life efforts. I’ve also heard that in individual parishes the priests have fewer liturgical abuses.
So maybe it’s not merely that the public figures are called to account, but that somehow that clear demonstration of the faith reassures and strengthens the average Catholic layperson. The bishop’s actions in one case become a means of both teaching and sanctifying the many, without needing to do anything different in how he governs them, because the truth becomes evident to all.