ROME
Commonweal

By Robert Mickens
July 17, 2017

If you read the headlines of some publications, you would be convinced that Pope Francis’s project to renew and reform the Catholic Church has been dealt a staggeringly sharp blow and is now in deep crisis.

The journalists and commentators who are pushing this story line have what they believe is mounting evidence that the pontificate is on the ropes.

They point to the kerfuffle surrounding Francis’s controversial decision on June 30 not to renew Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s mandate as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

They also cite the temporary “forced suspension” one day earlier of Cardinal George Pell’s brief as head of the Secretariat for the Economy, due to still-unspecified charges of sexual abuse that the cardinal will soon confront in an Australian court. And they note the abrupt and still-unexplained resignation some…