"You don't believe what you read in the papers about anything else; why do you believe it about the pope?" That's where I'd start.

The dynamically orthodox orders of religious women will continue to grow, and the dying orders, which long ago opted for the lightest of Catholic Lite, will continue to die.

The Guardian,[is] one of the most consistently anti-Catholic newspapers in the world.

These [conservative] people, if they're Americans, look back on the last 35 years of our ecclesial experience and take heart from that. The dramatic reform of seminaries continues. The priests and bishops who take their pastoral model from John Paul II will continue to do so, perhaps learning a lesson or two from Francis along the way - and they'll be the overwhelming majority of the Church's ordained ministers ten, twenty, thirty years from now.

The impact remains to be seen; I don't think we can measure the enduring impact of John Paul II, for example, for another hundred, perhaps two hundred, years.

Vital parishes built on the Bible and the sacraments, committed to evangelizing their neighborhoods, will continue to flourish. The poor will be served, the sick healed, and the dying comforted. None of that is going to change, and I'd wager that it's going to get better.

When media "narratives" about [Pope] Francis get set in concrete, and act as filters bending or distorting (or ignoring) aspects of his vision and his teaching that don't fit the established story line, the Church has a problem.