The Religion News Service noted that His Holiness the Pope is somewhat upset with the Catholic Church in the United States:

The new Americanism heresy

Once again, American bishops are at odds with the Vatican.

By Mark Silk | Wednesday, September 20, 2023

(RNS) — In a private meeting with fellow Jesuits in Lisbon, Portugal, last month, Pope Francis didn’t turn the other cheek in response to a question about hostility to his leadership on the part of many American Catholics, including some bishops.

“You have seen that in the United States the situation is not easy,” he said. “There is a very strong reactionary attitude. It is organized and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally.”

While some conservative Catholics professed to be dismayed by the pope’s remark, no one disputed that America is a hotbed of anti-Francis criticism. Or that American bishops are leading the charge.

OK, just to what about Pope Francis and his leadership do the American bishops object? We have seen Archbishop Salvatore of San Francisco speak out about the importance of being pro-life, and that Catholic politicians like Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who promote pre-natal infanticide should not present themselves to receive the Eucharist. Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, has been strong and adamant concerning the inadmissibility of same-sex ‘marriage’:

Because marriage was divinely instituted by God as between one man and one woman, there is simply no right given to humanity to depart from this foundational truth of marriage. I will reemphasize this point: marriage can only be between one man and one woman.

The Diocese was subjected to an ‘Apostolic Visitation’ ordered by Rome to check on what? We were never told, and now there have been leaked reports from the Vatican that the Pope will request the Bishop’s resignation. Bishop Strickland stated directly that he has received no communication from the Vatican along such lines.

But then there’s this, from the Jesuit’s America magazine:

Catholic priests have held a ceremony blessing same-sex couples in defiance of a German archbishop

Kirsten Grieshaber – Associated Press | Wednesday, September 20, 2023

BERLIN (AP) — Several Catholic priests held a ceremony blessing same-sex couples outside Cologne Cathedral on Wednesday night in a protest against the city’s archbishop, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.

Their protest was triggered by Cologne church officials’ criticism of a priest from Mettmann, a town near Duesseldorf, who in March had held a “blessing ceremony for lovers” — including same-sex couples.

Officials from the Cologne archdiocese, which Mettmann belongs to, had reprimanded the priest afterward and stressed that the Vatican doesn’t allow blessings of same-sex couples, German news agency dpa reported.

The blessing of same-sex couples on Wednesday was the latest sign of rebellion of believers in Germany’s most populous diocese with about 1.8 million members.

Several hundred people showed up for the outdoor blessing service for same-sex and also heterosexual couples. Waving rainbow flags, they sang the Beatles hit “All You Need Is Love,” dpa reported. A total of about 30 couples were blessed.

The push by priests in Germany to legitimize homosexual unions, and even marriage, has been building for a long time; this isn’t something which just happened out of the clear blue sky. Yet the Pope is concerned about the American Church?

Well, I, too, am concerned about the American Church, not due to Bishop Strickland’s defense of the Deposit of faith, but because we have priests and even some bishops openly supporting homosexuality and even transgenderism.

There follows, in the first article cited, a medium length section noting how Catholics in the United States have been at odds with the Vatican before, but this time, it’s different:

The readiness of the new Americanists to reject papal teaching on the death penalty, the Latin Mass and the possibility of divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Communion is of a piece with the old Americanists’ refusal to toe Rome’s line on church-state separation and religious pluralism.

How can that paragraph have been written without mentioning that biggest rejection of papal teaching, which is on pre-natal infanticide? We have a (purportedly) Catholic President who not only supports abortion ‘rights,’ but has gone full ‘woke’ and supporting an expansion of abortion, including public payments for abortion, beyond even what Presidents Clinton and Obama, both Protestants, did. We had a Speaker of the House, another purported Catholic, who was as hard-left in her support for abortion as anyone. For our Catholic and Democratic political leaders, it has been much more important for them to be Democrats than Catholics. And we have far, far, far too many — and even one is too many — parishioners in the pews who support legalized abortion to one degree or another.

In a word, American Catholic exceptionalism is once again sticking in the Vatican’s craw. But back in the day, no American bishop criticized “Testem Benevolentiae,” and none was relieved of his position. This time around, at least one is pushing his luck. Hard.

This time, it is the American Catholics who are resisting ‘innovation’ in the Deposit of Faith. The only places in which Catholicism is seeing growth in the United States is in the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin Mass, and in the more conservative parishes. Rather than an American appreciation for some of the arguments of Protestants, we’re seeing a Catholic population who are more Catholic!