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

"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.

[Pope Francis] is 78 years old and knows that his will be a short pontificate.

The "encounter" with the people on the peripheries is intended to draw them into the circle of common care and concern - that call to encounter is, to use a favorite world of John Paul II's, a call to solidarity. And that means, it seems to me, aggressive Catholic efforts to empower the poor - and a profound Catholic challenge to all those cultural forces that are eroding stable families, which are the elementary schools where we learn to take responsibility for our lives, which is the highest exercise of freedom.

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.

Freedom that lacks moral truth becomes its own worst enemy.

History is driven, over the long haul, by culture - by what men and women honor, cherish, and worship; by what societies deem to be true and good, and by the expressions they give to those convictions in language, literature, and the arts; by what individuals and societies are willing to stake their lives on.