"We are weary".

That's a line from Crisis magazine's editor, Eric Sammons, about the Papacy of Pope Francis.

I’m not going to carve sections out of the article, as I will sometimes do, as I try to be constantly conscious of the fact that he is the Pope and deserves respect. Additionally, as Pope Francis tends to be vague, which I think is his nature, not intentional, as Sammons and others like to claim (and in the professional world I've known professionals who were absolute geniuses, but whose instructions were completely impossible to understand) I don't want to be in the position of criticizing something that's magisterial, when I think it isn't.  Indeed, Ed Conte, the Canon Lawyer, regularly puts out statements on his blog, which is linked in here, that people making some specific criticism have fallen into heresy in regard to this item:

What if the Western World is the "special case"?

And it comes in the wake of The Synod on Synodality, which "progressives" in the Church have celebrated but which has been fatiguing in the extreme on the orthodox.  

And given this, Sammons is correct in at least that statement.  Many of us are weary.

Sammons is also correct that to a certain extent many are marking time, that being the old military term for marching in place.  Pope Francis is now quite elderly and there's a sense that we're worn out and waiting for the changing of the guard. This isn't the same at all as wishing somebody dead, which would be gravely sinful, but rather just knowing that we're at the end of things in this Papacy, probably.  The next one is around the corner, one way or another, probably.  Pope Francis is 87 years old.  At 87, as a man, you could pass any day.  Of course, it's not completely impossible by any means that he'll be the Pope for another decade, and perhaps, although it's unlikely, another two.

I think this is true, FWIW, of politics as well.  People have fatigued in a major way of Donald Trump, whom I'm not comparing to Pope Francis, and of Joseph Biden, whom I'm also not comparing to Pope Francis, and are marking time.  As with all of these individuals, there are the ardent supporters and the ardent opponents, whom are not tired, and they are the ones who do most of the talking.  As Sammons notes, however, there are now a lot of people who sort of shrug their shoulders and simply go on. They aren't ignoring things per se, they're simply too weary to react much.

Whether you'd be inclined to react much or not depends on how religious you are, in regard to the Pope, or how political you are, in terms of American politics.

Some, on both sides of the Papacy, react quite a bit.  Most people trudge on. As St. Paul notes, married men have the concerns of the day for their families, and women do as well.  Being assailed by the constant winds of religious storms adds to their burdens, and they close the windows and doors, or mostly do.  Probably a lot frankly did when they received a handout on the Synod on Synodality and saw its childish artwork and cartoon sans serif font.  "Oh great, more 1970s stuff".

The devout, including clerics like on Catholic Stuff You Should Know, will complain that Americans pay more attention to football than religion.  Lots of people note that most Catholics just ignored the Synod process and didn't participate.  Some assert that participation came more from the Catholic left than any other. And indeed, all this is probably true. But fatigue is an element of it.  At the time of the Synod, we were already years into the Francis Papacy and occasionally distressing quotes. The German Church was years into its march into heresy, and nothing was stopping it.  We were right out of COVID 19 when the doors of the churches had been closed.  And now somebody wants us to participate in a Snyodal process?

Most people are just going to ignore that.  Those who don't, are the already fanatically devoted, perhaps temporarily in the case of those without the burdens of making a living and providing for a family.  Some are the tirelessly devout, who are to be admired.  Some of the tirelessly devout, on the other hand, who already were suspicious of Pope Francis, turned their back on him.

And the same with American politics.  People are endlessly weary of Donald Trump and his extremism, and of the extremism of the American left, and have had enough.  For that reason, the current polls, which we already know most people will not participate in, may not mean very much.  The primaries are marching on, and a lot of American voters may simply skip them.  In the end, Biden may stand a better chance than things currently reflect, simply because people detest him less than Trump.

There probably are lessons to be gleaned from all of this, but they're hard to pick up from the inside.  If you are the person leading the charge, looking back to see who has dropped out of it, or never joined it, probably isn't something that you do much.  Those right around you, at the head of the charge, obscure your vision anyhow.  

And, particularly for the elderly, effecting change takes on a sense of impending mortal limitation.  If you don't get your work done, it might never get done.  For Trump and the MAGA, if he isn't reinstalled as President, his movement will fall apart and his goals, whatever they are imagined to be, will fracture into pieces, some irreparably broken. For Pope Francis, if he's attempting to steer the Church in certain directions, and it certainly seems to some extent, with the Synod, he is as to how the Church is structured, if he passes before his hoped for changes are complete, the next Pope may see that they are not in the form which he hoped for.  Pope's after all, are monarchs.

In an odd way, however, there's some comfort for the weary in all of this, particularly for Catholics.  The Pope many feared would make radical changes really has not, and his most controversial act does not change any doctrine. While it does explore things theologically, it does so on the topic of blessings (and is hard to understand for a layman).  Its issuance has made the rise of the African Church manifestly apparent, and that the future lies in that direction, and towards orthodoxy, pretty clear.  Catholics can rest in that the Catholic belief that the Holy Spirit will not allow the Church to fall into error has not been tested and found wanting.

Politically, we have yet to see how things will resolve.  It's scary out there, to be sure.  But perhaps the weariness disguises disgust at a system that's been increasingly failing since the 1980s and needs to be fixed.  Perhaps that will happen as well.