Anyone who has watched a child kick over a carefully built block castle knows the unfair advantage destruction enjoys. Building takes patience, imagination, and a willingness to keep working. Rebuilding asks something more: the courage to invest ourselves again when we know how much can be lost. In this article, originally published in Crisis Magazine, Sheryl Collmer applies that challenge to the Church, offering a pointed assessment of Pope Francis’s pontificate and asking how discouraged Catholics can help restore clarity, reverence, and confidence in the Faith.

Drawing on Nehemiah and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, Collmer turns from the failures she sees in Church leadership to work within reach of every Catholic. Confession, fasting, the Rosary, a crucifix on the wall, and the name of Jesus spoken naturally at home all give faith a visible place in daily life. Most of us will never make a decision in Rome. We do decide what we practice, what we teach our children, and whether our homes bear witness to the God we profess to love. There is rebuilding to be done, and we already have somewhere to begin.