A charismatic demagogue with millions of devoted followers. New media with little government regulation. The threat of violence in the streets. No, we’re not talking about the 45th president.

“My hope for L.G.B.T. Catholics is that they all feel welcome and comfortable in any parish in the world,” Sister Gramick says. “That they might feel just as much a part of the church as anyone else.”

In a handwritten letter, Pope Francis congratulated Sister Gramick on “50 years of closeness, of compassion and of tenderness” in a ministry that he described as being in “the style of God.”

The “Faith Manifesto,” signed by around 6,000 people, sharply criticizes the demands of the Synodal Path, which amount to a “self-secularization of the church,” Bernhard Meuser said.

“Sometimes we live in a spirit of a ‘parking lot’; we stay parked, without the impulse of desire that carries us forward. We do well to ask: where are we on our journey of faith?”

We have learned a lot about sexual abuse by Catholic clergy since The Boston Globe unveiled its investigation in 2002, writes an expert in child protection. That is bringing us closer to the goal of seeing no new cases.

For the first time, a layman and a nun provided the English and Spanish translations of Francis’ weekly catechism lesson rather than a cloaked monsignor, a small but revolutionary change for the Vatican.

“It is a risk, yes: having a child is always a risk, either naturally or by adoption,” Pope Francis said. ”But it is riskier not to have them.”

The temptation is to fight the ghosts of Modernism by denigrating those working for social justice and “elites” as anti-religious co-conspirators. But this would be a disservice to the truth and to the church.

In mid-January, a law firm is scheduled to publish a report into the handling of clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, where Pope Benedict XVI was archbishop.