Rule of Law and Hierarchy

Patrick asks: 

Is it surprising that, in a (Catholic) culture that increasingly denies the divinely-ordained hierarchical structure of that perfect and juridically-structured society that is the Church, the bishops would fail to act in a way that would require them to acknowledge their munus as law-bound rulers of the Church?

Whoever constitutes this "(Catholic) culture that increasingly denies the divinely-ordained hierarchical structure," it is certainly not the bishops themselves.  I think this question ignores the very predictable tendency of non-participatory, authoritarian regimes to disregard the law as it applies to their own wrong-doing.  Accordingly, it seems to me highly unlikely that the solution here would be even more blind deference to the hierarchy's "divinely ordained" status.