This week’s gathering of America’s Catholic bishops in Baltimore had been billed as the most important such meeting since the 2002 assembly that came in the wake of the abuse revelations in Boston. In Baltimore, the bishops were supposed to close a loophole left open by their response to Boston’s horrors 16 years ago: namely, accountability for the bishops themselves. But it was all over before it even began.

In a stunning, last-minute move, the Vatican put the kibosh on the deliberations. The Roman intervention makes the bishops look impotent and turns Baltimore into a pantomime sham. And it all but guarantees that the US episcopate will continue to hemorrhage credibility among Catholics outraged by the predations of Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick, the disgraced former archbishop of Washington.

On Monday morning, a visibly agitated Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced to his brethren that “I need to open up our time together with an important announcement. At the insistence of the Holy See, we will not be voting on the two action items in our documentation on the abuse crisis.” No one could have missed the pained emphasis DiNardo put on the words “at the insistence of the Holy See.”

The two action items in question were, first, a code of conduct for bishops and, second, a special commission to review abuse complaints made against them. The problem of priestly abuse, as church leaders rightly point out, has largely been addressed. But the bishops are a different question. As McCarrick showed, with a little cleverness and the ability to charm liberal reporters, a perverted cleric could go from strength to strength, even winning a coveted red hat.

“Everyone knew” about McCarrick, but no bishops spoke up. When others did, they were ignored, as occurred with Father Boniface Ramsey, a former teacher at Seton Hall’s Immaculate Conception Seminary. Ramsey, as early as 2000, alerted church higher-ups about McCarrick’s misconduct with seminarians. His complaints went nowhere. Confronted with McCarrick’s black record, prelates who should have known issued embarrassing, implausible denials.

The bishops, then, failed to police themselves. Hence, the Baltimore proposals. The still-confidential documents, copies of which I’ve reviewed, commit the bishops to live virtuously: “We must not engage in physical, psychological, personal, or sexual harassment of any person.”

That should be obvious to any successor of the apostles who has studied his Bible and Catechism. But if it takes a document like this to keep the bishops in line, so be it.

The proposals would also create a Special Commission for the Review of Complaints Against Bishops. The commission would conduct an initial inquiry into allegations before passing them on to the Holy See envoy, who would then relay them to the pope. Notably, the commission would be an independent nonprofit, and eight of nine members would be lay Catholics. “Bishops will each voluntarily agree to cooperate fully” with the commission.

So why would Rome force the American bishops to stand down?

The official justification is that the US should wait for next year’s global gathering of the heads of all bishops’ conferences before taking action. But there is no reason the Americans couldn’t take the lead in creating a protocol for episcopal accountability that could then serve as a template for other bishops’ conferences. If Rome had objections to the document, it could have asked for revisions before the bishops showed up to vote.

The resistance to American initiative is especially bizarre, because the Vatican spent the last month promoting decentralization and “synodality” — an idea that gives the various bishops greater say in governing church affairs.

Cardinal DiNardo made this point at a news conference in Baltimore. Asked about Rome’s possible motivations, he admitted that he was puzzled, adding: “It doesn’t seem very synodical to me.”

A charitable interpretation is that all that talk about synodality is just that — democratic rhetoric meant to soften what is by design a hierarchical body. A more cynical interpretation might be that Pope Francis is simply punishing an American church that he views as overly conservative and traditionalist. Some of his most persistent critics, when it comes to doctrinal matters, are American prelates.

Either way, one thing is clear: The American bishops’ horrible summer is extending into a long winter of discontent.

Sohrab Ahmari is senior writer at Commentary and author of the forthcoming memoir of Catholic conversion, “From Fire, by Water.”