Pope Francis has been credibly accused by Church dissidents of being a "dictator pope," a title which reportedly gets his goat, but well, he's living up to it with his latest move with the U.S. bishops.

According to the Daily Caller:

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) planned to adopt new protocols to hold bishops accountable concerning sex abuse, but the Vatican halted their efforts Monday.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the USCCB, announced Monday that the Vatican had instructed U.S. bishops to postpone their vote on adopting a new code of conduct for bishops, which would hold them accountable for committing or failing to report abuse, until a February meeting of bishops’ conference presidents from around the world in Rome. The Vatican also instructed them to delay their vote on establishing a lay commission to oversee investigations of reported clergy sexual abuse. 

“At the insistence of the Holy See, we will not be voting on the two action items,” DiNardo told the bishops, according to The Washington Post.

The bishops, who are a namby pamby bunch on traditional church morals and only get excited when the topic turns to 'justice' for illegal immigrants to break U.S. law by not having to live in their Catholic democracies back home, are trying to vote on mealy mouthed items such as a 'code of conduct for bishops' (You'd think they wouldn't have to be told if they got to the bishop level, but o.k.), and probably more important, the release of all documents surrounding the Cardinal Theodore McCarrick scandal. McCarrick of course is the one who bedded seminarians and then got involved with pederasty, engaging in all manner of abuse until the law caught up with him and he got safe haven in the Vatican. The latter is probably what's got the Vatican bothered, because, well, the Pope has been credibly accused by a former Vatican diplomat of covering up the McCarrick scandal and using McCarrick as his bishop-picker in some sort of lavender-mafia deal, and such documents might well show it.

As you may imagine, this isn't going over well with many Catholics and Catholic-watchers:

True to form, "dictator Pope": Vatican cancels US bishops’ vote on sex abuse reform measures https://t.co/WiA5tDrqVB via @cnalive

— Fr. Kevin M. Cusick (Blue Check Mark here) (@MCITLFrAphorism) November 12, 2018

The Vatican just made a big mistake in asking US bishops to delay their votes on clergy abuse protocols. The optics are terrible, and it sends a message, intended or not, that Rome doesn't recognize the urgency of the moment. #USCCB18

— John Gehring (@gehringdc) November 12, 2018

The Vatican delays vote to help with massive sexual abuse problem. How sick! Apparently pedolphilia is big business for the Catholic Church. Call it out for what it is. He ain’t a Pope, he’s a pimp.

— Pastor Greg Locke (@pastorlocke) November 12, 2018

The Vatican intervention into the @USCCB conference makes the bishops look impotent and turns their anti-abuse meeting into a pantomime sham.

My column in Tuesday's NYPost. https://t.co/saWpCzlQfb

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) November 13, 2018

Because what we have here is a weak, feeble effort by U.S. bishops to clean up after the tremendous Church scandal involving abuses of children, and make the Church much better, and now the Vatican telling them - at the last minute no less - to not vote on it. Which of course makes the bishops look very weak, something they aren't supposed to be, given church hierarchy teachings. The other thing the Church has always supported has been allowing governance matters to take place at the lowest possible level of hierarchy, and well, this is a negation of that.

It's also an ironic negation, given that the Pope has effectively allowed China to pick the Church's bishops, while laying a hard hand down on U.S. bishops trying to do their jobs and enact tough new reforms.

What it looks like, and this is just speculation, is maybe McCarrick influencing the Pope to get these bishops out of the picture and replace them with other bishops of perhaps McCarrick's choosing. Could it be that bad? It's certainly a way to get bishops to vote the way the Vatican wants them to vote so that everything will be swept under the rug. If there is some better explanation, I am all ears. But as one of the commentators has said, the optics here are very bad.