He’s right that today’s bishops are basically “note takers” and “branch officers.” He’s wrong that Vatican II achieved any sort of remedy for this. The conciliar concept of episcopal authority is something that is just on paper. This interplay between papal primacy and true episcopal authority is the sort of thing that could take a century to work out all the problems. Sixty years into that century, it looks like the bishops have lost, and strong papal primacy is the way things are going. That’s not such a bad thing, when the pope is a Catholic, but, when he’s not, it’s pretty bad. There isn’t much of a living memory of how things used to go, especially since the world wars threw everything into chaos, but I would be surprised if bishops are any more independent now than at any time in the past.