“In an institution as venerable as the Catholic Church,” writes Stephen P. White in the new issue of National Review, “shaking things up every now and then is not necessarily a bad thing.” And under Pope Francis, “a good shaking is what she got.”

What now? In the July issue, White, Rachel Lu, and Michael Brendan Dougherty contemplate the future of the church under the new pope — where there will be continuity and where there will (and should) be change. White writes:

Pope Leo inherits a church deeply divided over the relationship between truth and mercy. At its heart, this divide is over the lights by which the church ought to distinguish between true and false love. Should she listen to the world, discerning in its pleas, laments, and anguish a standard by which the church’s doctrine must be measured, judged, and if necessary, altered? Or is the church the custodian of truth, a truth revealed through Scripture and Tradition, which she has no authority to alter?

The task of resolving these questions, which rose to the surface under Francis, “will fall to his successor, and perhaps his next several successors as well.”

Rachel Lu looks at the history of the papacy in pondering the proper job of a pope. She writes:

Saints, scholars, schemers, soldiers, liars, lawyers, lechers, musicians, monks, martyrs, and megalomaniacs have all occupied the papal office. It’s a colorful cast of characters, with every kind of virtue represented, and likewise every vice. In general, the office tends to amplify both. Good men may be elevated to immense holiness. Bad men fall to astonishing depths. . . .

Power can have that effect.

Now possessed of that power, what should Leo do differently from his predecessors? Lu has a simple suggestion: “less.” Be “a capable administrator,” and leave “frontline evangelism to God and the laity.”

Our own MBD, in a similar vein, argues that the new pontiff’s greatest service to the church, in an effort “to restore true Catholic faith,” would be “to begin dismantling some of the accretions on the cult of the papacy.” For “laymen are nowhere in the Bible or Tradition taught to be preoccupied with the bishop of Rome but instead are assigned the task of working out their salvation in fear and trembling.

Elsewhere in this richly varied issue, you’ll find political and cultural coverage by our peerless writers and contributors:

NR’s Books, Arts & Manners section this month brings you not-to-be-missed reviews by Richard Brookhiser, on the major Buckley biography that has been 30 years in the writing, and by Commentary’s Abe Greenwald, on Douglas Murray’s important new book. And that’s not to mention Ross Douthat on movies, Bryan Garner on language (this time, misconceptions of originalism), and — last but not least — some funny stuff: James Lileks, Rob Long, and a classic-of-the-genre Happy Warrior by Daniel Foster.

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Let me use this phrase again: not to be missed. It’s true of this issue, and of all of them, as we at National Review strive to deepen conservatives’ understanding of the times we’re living in.