If [Pope's Francis] media-generated popularity, fragile as that may turn out to be when the world discovers that the pope is really a Catholic, opens windows of possibility for explaining that divine mercy leads us to the truths God revealed to us (and inscribed into the world and into us), then his reanimation of the papacy will advance the "Church in permanent mission" for which he called in Evangelii Gaudium, which is the grand strategy document of his pontificate.

Freedom that lacks moral truth becomes its own worst enemy.

What I hope my liberal friends (and I have more than a few) take from this pontificate is that mercy and truth are never separable in Catholic pastoral life.

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

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.

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.

In the Vatican, if you don't get something new done quickly you may not get it done at all.