By Francis X. Maier.

Earlier this month, I returned from two weeks in Rome covering the run-up and conclusion to the recent conclave. It was an extraordinary experience. On the day before Cardinal Prevost was elected, a friend and colleague - the excellent Jayd Henricks - asked me what I thought a new pope should take as his pontifical name. I said Augustine. More than Benedict or Dominic or any other saint, Augustine is the obvious patron for our age. Of course, we didn't get a "Pope Augustine." But we did get an Augustinian. I think - and I hope - that's significant. And I'll try to explain why.

Looking back on the Francis pontificate, I wonder if one of its main, if unintended, functions was to provide a clean break between the immediate post-conciliar period and its conflicts, and something living, organic, and new in the Leo papacy. We live in a turbulent time. It's similar to the Reformation - not in its historical details, but in its underlying impulses and dynamic. It's a deep re-formation of how we think about the world, the organization of society, and what it means to be human - all driven by technologies that make Gutenberg's printing press look like a toy.

In effect, we're at the end of one age, and the start of another. And that's exactly where Augustine found himself as bishop of Hippo, as the ancient Roman world fell apart. Augustine was always a realist, but also a man of hope. He pastored, encouraged, and faithfully served his people in a bitterly difficult time, while producing some of the most brilliant and fruitful thought in human history. If Leo XIV can deliver a fraction of that richness through his Augustinian formation, the Church will heal and thrive.

We need that new life. We need it because many of us - too many of us in my generation - live our faith mainly as a practical code of everyday behavior and good social ethics. But that's not Christianity, and we don't really need Jesus Christ or his Cross for any of it. Catholics in this country have historically been outsiders and unwelcome. So we've worked very hard over the past century to be accepted into American culture. In a sense, that's become our real religion. And we've succeeded exceptionally well at it - so well that many of us are much more faithfully "American" than we are "Catholic." The result is predictable.

A lot of American life today is a blend of vanilla spirituality that doesn't make many demands on our time and attention, and a pervasive, practical consumer atheism that does. The decline in our Catholic numbers nationwide is simply the truth forcing its way to the surface through layers of self-deception that we've accumulated as a Church over half a century or more. The truth can be painful, but it's never bad. The truth makes us free: free to change; free to remember who we are as Catholics and why we're here; and free to do better.

My point is this: What we choose or don't choose, what we do or don't do, does matter. Augustine said that being faithful in little things is a big thing, and the little things we do can have very big consequences. Our job isn't to succeed, but to witness. Recovering a humility about our own silent apostasies, the need for our own deeper conversion, and clarity about the challenges for Catholic life in our country that lie ahead - these things begin the renewal of our Church and our nation. And we can thank our current media and political leaders, in both parties, for pushing that process along with the unintended gift of their mendacity.

History is a great teacher, and one of its lessons is this: Under pressure, the tepid leave. But the faithful grow stronger, more committed to the truth, and thus more profoundly free. That's always been the story of the Church. And God always wins. Always. Despite all the malice directed at the Church down through the centuries; despite her own worst periods of bumbling and corruption; despite our own sins and failures and most ingenious acts of self-sabotage ...