Vatican's Delay of U.S. Bishops Proposals Explained

AP reports today that the surprising Vatican directive to U.S. bishops last November precluding them from discussing proposed standards of conduct for bishops (see prior posting) stemmed from the fact that the Vatican had received a draft of the proposals only 4 days before the U.S. bishops' conference began. According to AP's report on a letter from Vatican Cardinal Marc Oulett:

While [Conference of Bishops President Cardinal Daniel] DiNardo blamed the Vatican, the letter from Ouellet suggests that the Vatican thought DiNardo had tried to pull a fast one by intentionally withholding legally problematic texts until the last minute.