By Francis X Maier

But first, a note: Don't miss Robert Royal's new six-week online course on "The Catholic Heart of St. John Henry Newman," which begins this evening. For more information (including how to participate if you can't participate in live Wednesday sessions) or to enroll, click here and make the acquaintance of one of the greatest Catholic writers and thinkers in the English language.

Now for Mr. Maier's column . . .

I first experienced Rome in 1971 on our honeymoon, visiting my wife's uncle, a priest who served for a decade in the Congregation (now the Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith. What I remember most vividly about those few days is a Fellini-esque evening performance of Aida with elephants in the Baths of Caracalla, followed by a hair-raising drive home through Roman traffic.

The city then was an electric blend of the sacred and profane: a cocktail of religious piety, garish energy, and opiate nostalgia; strange and addictive at the same time. I loved it.

I returned to Rome for Church-related work in 1985, '87, '89, '97, '99, 2001, '14, and '15, always with roughly the same mix of feelings. In all those visits, the living Catholic soul of the city - if you cared to look for it - redeemed the vulgarity and offered some clean, fresh oxygen to inhale along with the narcotic scent of memory and ruins.

Throughout the papal tenures of Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger, serious pastoral concerns, evangelical zeal, and exceptional intellect coincided and reinforced each other. Exacting Catholic thought mattered. It was the fertile soil for Christian action. This seemed to continue, or at least not to be stymied, in the first two or three years of the Bergoglio pontificate.

I visited Rome twice in 2018, again for Church-related work. The spirit of the place by then was entirely different. And so it remains. Some of my disenchantment today doubtless comes from my age, not the city's; skepticism tends to grow along with one's years. But there are days now when (Catholic) Rome really does feel like Constantinople in the last years of the Palaiologoi emperors: a museum in the midst of the hostile and indifferent, curated by the mediocre.

For the believer who looks too closely and reflects too long, Rome can be as much a wound as a source of refreshment. This isn't new of course; quite the opposite. Martin Luther had the same reaction. That didn't end well.

It is new, though, for the age cohort of men and women (i.e., mine) entering their teens as Vatican II opened, and blessed by a string of intellectually gifted popes. The current pontificate has important strengths, but not in the same category. Pope Francis's distaste for the United States is tiresome, given the loyalty and generosity of American Catholics. But it's understandable from a Latin American perspective. His opening to China may prove to be a bitter mistake.

Still, the Vatican has centuries of experience at playing the long game. It's possible that time could prove such policies fruitful. U.S. dominance will pass just as every other empire's power has passed. Thus, some of the criticism directed at Francis is simply excessive.

Unfortunately, what this pontificate - including its advisers and boosters - will be held accountable for is its carelessness with canon law; its impatience with even faithful questioning of its actions; and its record of creating ambiguity and confusion. Whether these behaviors are conscious and intentional or not is irrelevant. The consequences are damaging.

The widespread and very public resistance to Fiducia supplicans, the recent Vatican text on the nature of blessings and their application (especially to persons in "irregular" sexual unions), has no precedent in the last half-century. It's an imprudent, flawed document. The negative reaction to it, from individual bishops and entire bishops' conferences, is warranted.

A priest friend with Vatican experience recently suggested, in private conversation, that there are...