I’m inclined to agree that notions of rank and precedence are rarely helpful in the Church. It reminds of me of Queen Victoria having herself proclaimed Empress of India in order not to be outranked by her daughter, the Empress of Germany. Such concerns may be all well and good among the crowned heads of Europe, but they seem remote from the mission of the Church.
I’d think of it like a school (such as the school I went to, in fact) where the headmaster has only a bachelor’s degree, but many of his staff have master’s degrees and a few have PhDs. It’s not about one person outranking another; it’s about having different, but complementary, qualities in different spheres. The headmaster presumably has administrative and leadership skills that make him suited to that role, and the ordinary schoolmaster with a PhD will respect that (and probably doesn’t want to be a headmaster anyway). Meanwhile, the schoolmaster with a PhD will have certain academic expertise, and the headmaster will respect that too (again, he probably doesn’t want to be an academic). And like the bishop and the cardinal, they exist is different, albeit overlapping, spheres. While the schoolmaster with the PhD is first and foremost a staff member under the headmaster’s authority, he may also have sidelines in publishing articles or attending conferences, where his position as a lowly schoolmaster will be irrelevant. So the cardinal presumably has abilities that make a good cardinal, but maybe he isn’t particularly suited to being a diocesan bishop. I guess he respects the diocesan bishop’s authority as a diocesan bishop and the diocesan bishop respects the cardinal’s skills that make him useful to the Church in that capacity. No doubt they regard each other with brotherly love and not as rivals for power and prestige.
