MORE ABOUT THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CRISIS.
We talk here about "Crisis", a word whose Chinese character is a combination of the words for "Danger" and for "Opportunity".
And so it is now.
But what is not helpful, except to provide relevant facts, is the Hatchet-Job offered in the Oct. 28, 2018 publication of National Review, the most conservative of conservative organs -  founded by William Buckley:
"The Unheroic Pope: The Case Against Francis", by Michael Brendan Dougherty. And in case you would rather just read the Cliff's Note version:
"He has elevated immoral men in order to change the Catholic faith".
HOGWASH!  But I digress. Let us dissect his offering.
After the hyperbolic subtitle, the author accurately describes the Church that Pope Francis inherited: dysfunction at the Vatican that had resulted in a very rare Papal resignation. This first Jesuit Pope was chosen as "a man who had a common touch and would stop the Church from becoming a museum of dead dogmas..."  and a man who "had shown the energy to reform the dysfunctional curia."
And more: "The Francis pontificate was to be an era of mercy for sinners at the peripheries and accountability for malefactors at the Vatican."
And so it was, until the malefactors rose up to take over the asylum, even threatening a "schism" in the Church.
Well, guess what! There is already a schism in the Church: the decline of the Faith and support of the Laity, the "Body of the Church". Meanwhile, Pope Francis published his "Amoris Laetitia" document, opened a two year Synod on the Family, and revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church with regard to the death penalty.
This Pope is no push-over. If anything, he is keeping the velvet glove on his iron fist for too long in dealing with the "den of thieves" he inherited.
The rest of this screed is a hyperbolic and fevered accusation and condemnation of a good man and a Holy Father to his faithful. This Church greatly needed an "aggiornamento" called for by Pope John XXlll in the 1960's...and it has much greater need for it now, giving the exhuming of so many Church sins of the last century.
So don't be surprised by the vicious attacks on Pope Francis and his supporting Archbishops and Cardinals in their efforts to align Church teaching where possible with the basic needs of today's Catholic persons in their quest to achieve salvation. I have addressed in my opinion those opportunities in an earlier statement in this section. For it is members of the Laity like myself who must help to lead the Clergy out of the pit into which they have dug themselves.

GS