We all know that about 2/3 of American bishops engaged in covering up sexual abuse. The vast majority of bishops tolerate gross liturgical abuses, and brush off complaints from laity.
The vast majority of bishops during the past forty years have treated pro-abortion Catholic politicians like honorable Catholics in good standing, even refusing to remove them from liturgical ministries (i.e., as lectors and EMCs), etc., and up to this moment, refuse to obey Canon 915. Complaints from laity are brushed off. Noted pro-abortion Catholics have been appointed to the bishops' National Review Board and countless other national and diocesan bodies.
From about 1975 to 1993, with only two or three exceptions, bishops either condemned or ignored the existence of the pro-life Rescue Movement. No bishop ever answered the question: Is it gravely sinful to remove an obstacle that is preventing an abortion? (The answer [affirmative] is not really in doubt--but it resides in unread tomes of moral theology. The bishops--unanimously--refused to answer the question while American cops were removing tens of thousands of rescuers from the doorways of abortion clinics, making themselves [the cops] into formal accomplices to homicide. The Rescue Movement died when the U.S. Congress voted [without any objection from the bishops] to crush it with draconian penalties in the FACE Act.)
All of these episodes in our history reflect these patterns of thinking and behavior on the part of (the vast majority of) bishops:
1) The existence of the moral law, civil law, or ecclesiastical law counts for nothing. Only damaging publicity or threat of civil or criminal action motivates a response.
2) The suffering and/or death of born and unborn children is not a concern. Only pressure from publicity and/or powerful people counts.
3) The complaints of laity do not count. They may be ignored, or, in the case of the persistent, lied to, threatened, or bribed.
This is a picture of corruption, of surrender to strictly worldly (not to say godless) standards of behavior, of the absence of paternal charity toward actual children or "little ones" in general.
