The structure of the Catholic Church is frequently misunderstood, and many people, particularly non-Catholics, think it is a place where the Pope nods his head and minions run off to do his bidding. For better or for worse, this has never been how things have worked; if you look as far back as the Middle Ages, and in fact, even look back at the early Church, you will see how difficult it was to exert authority over an increasingly wide-spread Church.
The bishops, successors to the Apostles, are supposed to be the direct channels for the teaching and sacramental life of the Church. But there are lots of bishops and historically many of them have simply gone their own way without Rome’s being able to do much about it until such time as things reach a crisis point and these bishops are their own undoing. The road to hell is indeed paved with the skulls of bishops.
In my opinion, however, something that added to the difficulties of managing the Church was the vast change that occurred at Vatican II. Bishops suddenly got the idea that they were virtually free agents (although on a national basis) and the establishment of the dread national councils of bishops (the USCCB, in this case) gave them the power as a bloc to resist any supervision or discipline. The bishops’ conferences or councils were not provided for in canon law, IIRC, and were only retroactively added during the revision of the code, after they had already been in operation for some time.
What these organizations did was enable the liberal power-players appointed by Paul VI not only to govern their own dioceses sometimes in opposition to Rome, but to prevent individual bishops who were less powerful (from smaller dioceses, who were often more orthodox) from doing the things that would have been right to correct any problems at a local level and to communicate with Rome. The various bishops’ committees on child abuse were less a way of solving the problem than a way of preventing Rome from having any effect and making any changes (particularly anything that would clean up the problem with gays, which is something Ratzinger did work on and which has earned him the hatred of the gay lobbies and the NY Times).
Disobedient bishops have always been a problem and they have always been very difficult to remove, in part because they are not just functionaries, the way a Protestant bishop might be, but have a function in the sacraments and the theological life of the church. Priests, for example, are essentially just the delegates of the bishop, who imparts his sacramental powers to them.
As for the Times, they hate BXVI because he has always been on their hit list. They liked JPII, partly because he was a lot more liberal than Ratzinger, and partly precisely because he was a very lax and weak administrator. Many of the truly awful things happened when Paul VI was Pope, but the 80’s (JPII) weren’t great, either. On his behalf, however, I will say that JPII did seem to have the intention of reforming things, but after the assassination attempt, he seemed to lose his direction (possibly because of his health problems as a result of his injuries) and I think it was really only the increasing influence of Ratzinger that prevented even more chaos.
Thank you for your enlightening and courteous reply.
To an outside observer, it appears the Catholic church is an organized yet disorganized institution. The church maintains strict Canon law and contains a formal leadership structure however Bishops retain extreme autonomy with little concern for redress from the Pope.
For example, I’ve been calling for the removal of Cardinals Law and Mahony yet it appears it simply isn’t possible.
It would appear that this organized/disorganized system opens the church to tremendous liability.
Perhaps the answer is to give the Pope more power or completely disorganize?