By Robert Royal.

But first a note: Only two days until Elizabeth Mitchell's course on St. Edith Stein and St. John of the Cross! Do yourself a great spiritual favor this Fall and enroll right away. And spend some high-quality time in the presence of two great saints with much to say to us about the riches of the Catholic mystical tradition.

Now for today's column...

Virgil's Aeneid - the epic poem about the founding of Rome that virtually every literate person in the West has read since the time of Christ - has a line that has puzzled many a reader. Aeneas descends to the underworld. He sees evil souls being punished, the good enjoying the Elysian Fields (roughly, heaven), and a parade of the future heroes who will bring about the glory of Rome. One figure in particular is striking (and frustrating when you're a student trying to parse the Latin): tu Maximus ille es, unus qui nobis cunctando restituis rem ("You are, Fabius Maximus, who alone by delay renewed our State.") Fabius Maximus was a legendary general who by shrewd "delaying" tactics defeated the fearful leader of Carthage's army, Rome's greatest opponent, Hannibal.

We don't often think of delay as a way to win wars - or win anything for that matter. And it's unusual to see Romans, who just around the time of Jesus brutally conquered wherever they wanted, praising a practitioner of military finesse. When the Cunctator ("Delayer") took over, a huge number of Rome's troops had just been crushed at the battle of Cannae, and many thought Rome should simply surrender to Carthage. But Fabius Maximus roused the city and began a long campaign of attrition, avoiding great battles against impossible odds, but chipping away at the enemy in many small skirmishes. The Carthaginian armies eventually collapsed.

Roman history is unknown to most readers today. But all this has been in my mind as I've been thinking lately about Pope Leo and what is likely to be his long papacy. Speculations about this are already tiresome and range from dismay to optimism. One thing we can already start to see, however, is that he's not a man for head-on major battles - as much as many people (myself included) would like swift and strong action.

He's clearly a Fabius Maximus type. The cumulative effect of many small acts will determine the Church's course for the next two decades and will decide whether She will, slowly, make headway against the many forces, within and without, poised - let's be frank - to destroy Her.

I've long believed that the pope does not have to be a global ambulance chaser, so to speak, inserting himself into what look like - to the worldly - the Really Important Things. (The Vatican's recent call for a two-state solution in Israel, for example, not only proposed an impossibility, but was a misuse of the Church's moral authority where it has no more insight or influence than anyone else.)

By all means: denounce war; discourage gun crime (without thinking you have a solution about mass shooters in a heavily-armed place like America); encourage welcoming the stranger (also without thinking that that it's an immigration policy); advocate care of Creation; warn about the threats of AI. But the real action - Pope Leo has signaled this repeatedly - is to encounter Jesus Christ and to live His goodness and truth.

It's more than enough for any pope to feed and water God's people and to invite those outside to join the fold - by conversion and small daily steps of repentance, not by the politically inspired suicide of "diversity" and "inclusion."

Until these last days, I had hopes that Pope Leo got that.

After the LGBT Jubilee fiasco this past weekend, I also have doubts.

First, we saw the spectacle last week of Fr. James Martin putting a pre-emptive spin on the pope's views about LGBTs and the Church. He reported that he "heard" Leo tell him to continue his ministry along the lines that Pope Francis had already encouraged.

As an American, Pope Leo must be aware that this sort of thin...