What to think, what to think.
Maybe it is in other diocese that priests are scared to death of their bishops, but the opposite is true in Boston. There are so many dissident priests here that the bishop was afraid of them. Have any of the so-called Catholic Colleges and Universities signed the mandatum? That could be one criteria... if the Catholic theologians have not signed the mandatum find out if it is them or the bishop who opposes signing it. Then you know who is afraid of whom.
That said, I do not believe Adamec is one of the good guys. Nor is Grahmann. It would be interesting to see what would happen if each diocese sold off the chancery and had the bishop live in a regular rectory with a regular housekeeper, cook and no special treatment. The "job" might not be quite as appealing.
I dunno if the loudest laymen are any better than the bishops... sometimes this stuff is all about power. Again, I am drawing on my own personal experience. The move is on here by VOTF to control the parishes via connected parish councils, voting in/out bishops/priests and uh, changing some of the more "restrictive" rules. And VOTF, our current new Call to Action type group using a different moniker, was started by some of the very liberal Universalist Unitarian Catholic priests (not afraid of the bishop, obviously) who have been around long enough and have had their finger on the pulse enough for me (and others) to wonder why it is that they never reported an abusing priest - even when they were friends or roomates of those priests. Curious.
The bottom line is that, after reading quite a bit, history always repeats itself. Aside of all our modern ammenities, some things have never changed over the course of our 2,000 year old history of Christianity.
Sometimes? All the time.
The question is, is the kind of power that's been exercised by these bishops best left in their hands, or shared, more or less, with responsible laymen?
There'll be abuses in both. It just depends on what kind of abuses the faithful want to put up with.