Yet Clark is in “full communion” with Rome. Is it any wonder many Catholics do not take the appellation of “full communion” (or threat of lack thereof) seriously?
It’s hard to defend the Faith when Rome has failed to defend its faithful from wolves like Clark.
Maybe if they reassigned a few of these loose cannon/canon Bishops and Priests to some more exotic places, like Antartica, or Siberia, or some place like that, before they reach 75, they might make other wobbly clerics think a bit more carefully before going off the deep end theologically or liturgically.
You already know the response.
A question I have heard frequently among conservative Catholics is "Why doesn’t the pope do something about those bad bishops?" The question usually is prompted by frustration with a perceived lack of orthodoxy or zeal on the part of some bishop. Catholics in some places face situations in which it seems the bishop turns a blind eye to heterodoxy and dissent—or even appears to give them his blessing. Faced with such dysfunctional diocesan environments, they naturally look to Rome for relief and redress, but often are disappointed to find that help is slow in coming, if it ever comes at all.By "do something" people usually mean that they want the pope to discipline the bishop, to apply pressure on him to adhere more closely to Church teaching, or even to remove him. But most of us—while from time to time sharing such wishes or even voicing them—don’t know exactly what can be done about a bad bishop. So I’ll address a couple of common misconceptions about the bishop’s role and his relationship to the universal church, and I’ll explain how the Church sees these things, both in its teaching and tradition.