By Stephen P. White.

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, May 15th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the election of Leo XIV, his first week as pope, and other issues in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel...

Now for today's column...

The election of Leo XIV comes at a significant moment in the life of the Church in the United States. Though Leo spent much of the past four decades outside the United States - primarily in Peru, but also in Rome - it would be hard to overstate the opportunity (and challenge) that comes with having a pope who is a native son of these United States.

Trying to predict how a pontificate will play out this early in the game is a fool's errand, but there is good reason to suppose that Pope Leo is reluctant to appear more preoccupied with the affairs of the world's only superpower than the responsibilities of his office require. In short, he won't want to seem like a homer. Nevertheless, the energy and interest his election has created here is remarkable.

A 30,000-foot view of the cultural and ecclesial landscape provides some general sense of what this pontificate might mean for the Church in the United States.

Americans under the age of 40 mostly do not remember a time when the large institutions that form the pillars of our common life had been working well. Distrust of institutions is now widespread, and for understandable reasons.

The most fundamental institution of society, the family, has been in trouble for decades. Since the advent of the sexual revolution, we have seen widespread divorce, ubiquitous contraception, industrial-scale abortion, collapsing marriage rates, the legal redefinition of marriage, and sub-replacement birth rates.

The carnage and confusion this has produced are widespread and manifest. Young people are dissatisfied and disheartened, and have a hard time imagining how things might be otherwise. A shockingly high percentage of them no longer see marriage and family as important sources of meaning and happiness.

Our political life is not exactly a model of stability and civic-mindedness. Polarization has become a chronic problem. There is little consensus about the existence of the common good, let alone anything approaching a consensus about how to pursue it.

Both parties seem convinced of the righteousness of their vision of the American past and future, but neither seems able to find a way to govern on behalf of the whole. Perhaps worse, neither party seems particularly interested in doing so, each defining themselves at least as much in opposition to the failings and sins of the opposition as to some positive, coherent vision of a future together.

We are going on three generations of Americans - Millennials (who are approaching middle age), Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha - who have little or no memory of a Catholic Church unsullied by the abuse crisis and its fallout. The public moral authority of the Church, and especially our bishops, has waned.

We have also just lived through a contentious pontificate in which debates about how best to engage and evangelize the modern world have revealed even deeper divisions in which not just the means of proclamation but the substance of the message to be proclaimed have been called into question from within the Church.

The Church in every age faces obstacles to the proclamation of the Gospel, but a Church that lacks confidence in the truths it would proclaim would struggle to gain traction in any age.

One could go on: our popular culture seems stuck in an oscillation between transgressive vulgarity and nostalgia; the post-war international order is cracking if not actually broken; our educational institutions have lost sight of what edu...