The people who are behind the curve of the Catholic future are the institutional-maintenance types.

But ripped out of context, ["Who am I to judge?" phrase] has become an all-purpose filter through which everything else - including the pope's multiple reaffirmations of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI's encyclical on the morally appropriate means of family planning - gets airbrushed out of the picture.

The papacy is an impossible job. So the best thing Catholics can do for the pope is to pray for him.

The people who are behind the curve of the Catholic future are the institutional-maintenance types.

[Jesus Christ to Pope Francis] is the Lord with whom he speaks for hours every day in prayer. The Risen One who reached out, touched his life, and called him into mission.

The world needs a pastor, whether it knows it or not.

The story wafts across the Atlantic, where it's picked up with glee by Catholic progressives and horror by some Catholic conservatives - and the battle of the blogs is on, full blast. No one bothers to ask whether there's any basis in fact for the assertion that this is going to be a "global-warming encyclical."