You may have made the comment on this thread. Whereever you made it,it was on the money!!!
Speaking of the USCCB, I was watching "World over Live" on Friday night (gosh, I'm remembering a time I would have been embarrassed to admit that!), anyhow, Pat Buchanan and Deal Hudson (my heroes) were on with Raymond Arroyo discussing the year 2002 in review. Deal Hudson made the statement that we need a firm bishop to lead the way and step out of the box but that is difficult because of the "collegiality" of the USCCB. He said the main thing the USCCB has done is to make the bishops rather distrustful of one another and it is hard for one guy to move ahead because the rest are not willing to let someone take the reins... they are always looking behind and beside themselves to make sure no one is getting ahead of them. What they spend most of their time on is writing silly letters and making sure they don't tick anyone off. --- paraphrasing, of course. Anyway, great show and you should see if you can watch the archive of it on the EWTN website. I think it rebroadcasts on Monday mornings at 9 or 10 Eastern time.
I guess it has worked pretty well in a way because someone like Mahony or Weakland didn't and hasn't led the way either. But apparently neither can a Bruskewitz or a George... seems like the USCCB breeds irrelevance and mediocrity.