'It's time for the Vatican to investigate the US bishops' conference'

It's time for the Vatican to investigate the US bishops' conference (National Catholic Reporter)

On Jan. 6, when an armed riot incited by then-President Donald Trump broke into the U.S. Capitol, threatened the safety of the country's legislators and caused the deaths of at least five people, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference, issued a 124-word statement... On Jan. 20, when the nation inaugurated Joseph Biden as the 46th president, the same Gomez issued a 1,250-word statement. After dispensing with congratulatory remarks, it promised there will be areas of "strong opposition" from the bishops toward the Biden administration. It then identified at least six issues of disagreement, expounding on them at length.

If the intention was to somehow shame the country's second Catholic president for his political positions, it is perhaps a consolation that the shaming didn't quite hit the intended target. Instead, thanks to an unprecedented public rebuke by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, Gomez was outed as bypassing normal conference procedures and not having given other prelates time to review his message to Biden.

"Ill-considered," Cupich called Gomez's statement. A fit summary for the entire misbegotten operation of the U.S. bishops' conference. It's time for Pope Francis to order an apostolic visitation to investigate what has gone wrong with an organization that began during World War I as a model of cooperation and national audacity and is now a symbol of division and national embarrassment...

Much better I think for US bishops to investigate the Vatican. Starting with a Pope who seemed to say he is not a person to make judgments (perhaps it was just a rhetorical question) but then proceeds to make judgment after judgment in areas that he seems remarkably unfamiliar (economics, history, philosophy, etc).
Obviously the root of our discontent is the universalist pressure and the absurd hope it will bring Utopia, rather than absolute power, domination, and enslavement. Wouldn't you think most Catholics would see Church history as a lesson to stay out of secular government? Can we learn anything from Islam?