Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, October 25

Religion and Geopolitics Review this week includes:

• A chaotic synod? Not in its results
• The Pope is not the problem
• Pope Francis speech at the conclusion of the Synod
• Cardinal Pell: Synod says no to 'secular agenda'
• Meet Archbishop Bruno Forte
• Light from the East - Robert Moynihan
• An Orthodox view of Church and State since the Edict of Milan

This week's Religion and Geopolitics Review focuses on the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family. Jeff Mirus and Phil Lawler provide commentaries on the synod. While both agree that it was, like many other synods, messy and machination-filled -- the two men see lively debate among the bishops as a good thing; and that Pope Francis ensured that the bishops acted, in Francis' own words, "cum Petro et sub Petro" [with Peter and under Peter].
(Dr. Mirus and Mr. Lawler have been doing great things for years with their CatholicCulture website; with these current essays on how we should view the fraternal disputes in Rome, they are leaving the rest of the ecclesial commentariat in the dust.)


Pope Francis' speech at the conclusion of the synod further dispels any notion that the Church will "bow down to a worldly spirit" or "neglect the 'depositum fidei'" [the deposit of faith]. This is further echoed in a recent interview with Cardinal Pell of Sydney, Australia. At the other end of the theological spectrum is the man who authored the homosexual passages contained in the leaked Relatio: Archbishop Bruno Forte. For those who might want to know more about Forte, here is one perspective.

The synod was not without a light from the east. Archbishop Stanislaw Gądecki, the head of Poland's bishops' conference joined the voice of the global south in response to the Relatio. Gądecki, however, was not the only important prelate from the east. Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion observed one session of the synod and spoke with Pope Francis in an hour-long meeting. On October 17, Hilarion gave an impressive talk to the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Southern Italy in which he spoke of the meaning of authentic freedom, the relationship of church and state, and the ensuing conversion of Russia.


Note: We linked last week to an article responding to an interview with Cardinal Kasper in which he identifies himself with the atheist West regarding homosexuality and rejects the views of the Church's growing global south.