I'm Looking at You,Bishop Cupich

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Up on the Rock of Cashel in Ireland, there is the ruin of a bishop’s stronghold. Someone once said to me there: “They always take care of themselves.” They were the bishops. At the time of the apostles, bishops were poor and lived risky lives. Yet with the Edict of Milan (313), bishops became state officials as well, controlling lands and towns and provinces. They gained civil dignities and stipends. They were barons and lords.
Nothing in the way they were originally constituted said that they ought to behave in this way. They went along with the culture instead of witnessing to it.  Not all bishops do this, but enough do to make their rate of consumption and longing for class a problem for the Church’s presence in the world.
Bishop’s residences can be a huge problem. Again, some live in modest houses, but for the rest, the houses are a massive counter-witness to the official work of the Church. The Church is a witnessing body. It is a series of corporations for legal purposes. More importantly, the Church is fundamentally a witness of Jesus Christ in the world. Which does not entail having lots of money or a higher social status.
Theologically, the problem is that the bishop is bound by the material parameters of Jesus Christ’s own life. It is simply not possible to witness credibly to Jesus Christ while living a life significantly richer than Jesus Christ – unless the message of the Church is a mere commodity. Living the life of Christ is personal in the sense that it engages the whole person, body and soul. Every aspect of the individual’s existence is supposed to manifest Christ. This applies to priests, too, but that is a subject for another time.
Armani suits or expensive hobbies demonstrate the individual bishop’s reliance on material things rather than his reliance on the Spirit. It could also suggest one’s imagined superiority over the people around or one’s fitting in with the upper class.