By Robert Royal.

The word I hear most from Catholics as we approach the end of the first month under our American-born pope is "relief." Serious tensions had accumulated within the Church under Pope Francis, who sometimes seemed to be deliberately - or haphazardly - exacerbating divisions. Openness, dialogue, and listening towards liberals well beyond the borders of the Faith, but exclusion, peremptory fiats, and ignoring of traditional Catholics. And yet, the progressives, too, felt dissatisfied: Francis died without allowing deaconesses (let alone women priests), pulled away the football after repeatedly teeing it up in front of the LGBT+ crowd, dithered over the runaway German "synodal" way.

And in the end, he even kicked the can down the road for his own synodal path by removing the "hot-button" issues from consideration by assigning them to ten "study groups" (reports due this month) and scheduling an "ecclesial assembly" (whatever that is) three years from now, when he almost certainly knew he would not be around.

So, it's no surprise that many Catholics are, at least for the moment, enjoying a breath of fresh air in the Church. With the possible exception of Robert Prevost, Pope Leo XIV himself, whose job it now is to be pontifex maximus, the supreme bridge-builder, in the midst of it all. He's receiving granular scrutiny already for what he may or may not be signaling about the direction of his papacy. And that, too, is a concerning factor: Like everyone else in our social-media age, whatever he does or says (and sometimes things invented about him) is instantly transmitted and judged, not so much by the standards of the Gospel as by the most superficial and overheated modes of our times.

Jesus famously left us the saying: "every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." (Matthew 12:25) (It's telling that if you Google "a house divided," it returns a TV series of that name, and only further down the Gospel reference.) And given our media environment, Pope Leo XIV was right to tell the assembled journalists after his election that, whether they are aware of it or not, they have a high calling, and an especially difficult one today:

"Blessed are the peacemakers" (Matthew 5:9). This is a Beatitude that challenges all of us, but it is particularly relevant to you, calling each one of you to strive for a different kind of communication, one that does not seek consensus at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it. Peace begins with each one of us: in the way we look at others, listen to others and speak about others. In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say "no" to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.

That's easier said - though well said - than done, especially since journalists themselves have for years been drawn into a different "paradigm" of their profession. With a few noble exceptions, they often now think of themselves as social justice warriors instead of reporters. They serve up, or fail to cover, stories already intended to produce partisan outcomes (and online clicks) rather than information and context by which people can make responsible judgments.

Leo rightly added: "let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let us free it from aggression. We do not need loud, forceful communication, but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice. Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world. Disarmed and disarming communication allows us to share a different view of the world and to act in a manner consistent with our human dignity." [emphasis added]

Here at The Catholic Thing we have not shied away from controversy or recalling hard truths. But controversy is something different than combat...