Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals possess unchecked power. This means that they can do whatever they please.
Thus, W. Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield gave hundreds of thousands of diocesan dollars in gifts to cardinals and to young priests he was accused of sexually abusing. He spent millions of diocesan dollars on travel, millions on renovating his church residence, and $1000 a month on alcohol. This man, this supposed church leader, was head of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for fifteen years and Bishop of West Virginia for thirteen years — a church leader for twenty-eight years — and no one did anything to stop him until last year.
Don’t tell me he’s “just one bad apple.” The entire orchard of the Catholic hierarchy is rotten: bishops who ruin the careers of priests who serve under them without offering a single reason for doing so; bishops who punish other clergy without trial, without showing that wrongdoing exists; bishops who hold secret trials, reporting neither the evidence nor the results; bishops who hear a young seminarian say about his priest, “He ran his hands over my genitals,” then send the priest for counseling and then back into a parish, either keeping no record or hiding the record in a broom closet.
Roman Catholics: if you’ve been paying attention, if you’ve been reading, and if you do not pretend to yourself that the church is okay, you know these things. Someone has to have the power to say yes or no to all-powerful bishops. Don’t tell me it’s the pope. Obviously he’s done nothing about the problem.
A Catholic historian has shown that in medieval and early-modern times, local aristocrats and monarchs restrained bishops for their own purposes. No longer. Today’s presidents and dictators don’t give a fig about Roman Catholic bishops.
Today the church needs a “separate power” to check the bishops’ power. For the U.S. church, I propose a Senate of Priests, a group of priests elected by all U.S. priests for a specified term, to meet regularly to review and correct the work of U.S. bishops. Individually, in the church hierarchy, priests are subject to bishops. With this separation of powers, bishops are subject to priests when priests act collectively as the Senate of Priests.
Is such a separation of powers un-Catholic? No doubt. Does it seem like pie in the sky? No doubt. Is it necessary for the church? Yes, without the slightest doubt in the world. The church needs it desperately.
Ann White (Father Mark’s dear mother)
Father Mark White Blog 
I totally agree…but what can we do? Our parish, Blessed Sacrament, in Norfolk lost our beloved priest, Fr. Joe, because of Bishop Knestout. We have sent letters individually and as a group. Many have left the Church…not just our Parish because of Bishop Knestout. He is very evil, but nothing can be done.
I very much support Father Mark and his mother in this matter with our Bishop. I am praying for Father Mark that this matter will end soon in his favor. For Bishop Knestout,I pray that God will change his heart and soul very soon because he has driven Priests and parishioners alike from our beloved religion and for this, he will have to answer to God some day.
Ann Gunter
I couldn’t agree more as my own parish in Norfolk, Blessed Sacrament, has suffered and lost many to other parishes, but also, sadly, to other religions
Sadly this Bishop has created such negativity that many from my Parish have turned to other religions
His Holiness Pope Benedict XV warned us in paragraph 25 of Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum: “Nor do We merely desire that Catholics should shrink from the errors of Modernism, but also from the tendencies or what is called the spirit of Modernism. Those who are infected by that spirit develop a keen dislike for all that savors of antiquity and become eager searchers after novelties in everything: in the way in which they carry out religious functions, in the ruling of Catholic institutions, and even in private exercises of piety. Therefore it is Our will that the law of our forefathers should still be held sacred: “Let there be no innovation; keep to what has been handed down.” In matters of faith that must be inviolably adhered to as the law; it may however also serve as a guide even in matters subject to change, but even in such cases the rule would hold: “Old things, but in a new way.””