Don’t look at these last minute statements of bishops against the decision of Notre Dame as merely "jumping on the bandwagon" or getting in "under the wire".
There is something to timing.
It is good to have some bishops continuing to fire up to the last moment.
They keep the light on the issue.
Timing is very important to some situations.
You also have the situation where some bishops are reluctant to butt in, especially when ND’s local bishop has already spoken. But then, some dumerazel starts making silly statements on his local editorial page about what Catholics believe, and all of a sudden, it’s a problem in that diocese. Or you get some guy on CNN claiming that only a few US bishops are against this, so a few more bishops decide to jump in.
It’s really pretty amusing, actually. A lot of newspeople and mistaken Catholics are practically dragging their bishops into this, or torquing them off enough to make even the most timid souls speak up and grow spines.
The way they are doing it is perfect it keeps the momentum going and the pressure on while if they all issued a joint statement it would be news for a day and then gone, is it intentional? I hope so as it would be as sure sign that they are starting to get how to really be effective in today’s world.
In my world, it’s akin to sequencing your fire support assets to keep pressure on the enemy, keeping his head down while you move toward the objective, echeloning your assets by using the biggest weapons early to get their attention and do the most damage early. As you get closer, you use weapons with progressively less drastic but more precise, more localized effect until you get to the objective where you close with, and destroy the enemy with maneuver forces. I doubt that there’s a planned response to this, but perhaps the plan is from “on high.”