Vatican says Church does not support same-sex civil unions – despite Pope comments

The Vatican has said comments by Pope Francis on civil union laws in a documentary last month were taken out of context and did not signal a change in Church doctrine on homosexuals or support for same-sex marriage.

The documentary, Francesco, which premiered at the Rome film festival on 21 October, made headlines for a comment in which the pope says that homosexuals have a right to be in a family and that civil union laws covering homosexuals are needed. 

The pope’s comments as portrayed prompted praise from liberals and calls for urgent clarification from conservatives. 

But last week, the Vatican secretariat of state issued guidance to its ambassadors all over the world to explain the pope’s remarks.  

It claimed that the documentary spliced together parts of an old interview, deleting the context and the interviewer’s questions. 

“More than a year ago, during an interview, Pope Francis answered two different questions at two different times that, in the aforementioned documentary, were edited and published as a single answer without proper contextualisation, which has led to confusion,” reads the guidance, an unsigned version of which was posted on social media on Sunday by the Vatican nuncio to Mexico, Franco Coppola. 

Before the film’s premiere, director Evgeny Afineevsky told reporters he had interviewed the pope. After the premiere, he repeated that the footage came from an interview with the pope with a translator present. 

But the comments appear to have been taken from a May 2019 interview with Mexican broadcaster Televisa that was never aired, although the Vatican did not confirm or deny it – it only said that the comments were taken from a 2019 interview. 

The Vatican did not comment on the allegations published in Italy and Mexico that it cut the quote it provided Televisa after the interview, which was filmed with Vatican cameras. 

In the interview, Pope Francis said: “homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable over it.” 

The Vatican note said the comments referred to parents with gay children and the need not to kick them out or discriminate against them. Francis was not endorsing the right of gay couples to adopt children, even though the placement of the quote in the documentary made it seem that he was. 

Later in the 2019 interview, Pope Francis answered a different question by saying: “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. I stood up for that.” 

The guidance says that Pope Francis Francis was explaining his position in 2010 when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires. He opposed same-sex marriage but welcomed extending legal protections to gay couples.  

The documentary left out footage from the same interview in which Francis said: “it is an incongruence to speak of homosexual marriage.” 

“It is clear that Pope Francis was referring to certain state provisions and certainly not the doctrine of the Church, which he has reaffirmed numerous times over the years,” the Vatican note said. 

Francis’s comments caused uproar partly because the Vatican's doctrine office issued a document in 2003 in which it prohibited endorsing civil unions.  

The document, which was signed by Francis’s predecessor as pope, says the church’s support for gay people “cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or legal recognition of homosexual unions.” 

The Catholic Church teaches that gay people must be treated with dignity and respect and that homosexual tendencies are not sinful – but also that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered”.  

Neither the Vatican nor Afineevsky has answered questions about the cut quote or its origin. 

Additional reporting by AP: Reference: Independent: Alessio Perrone:  2 hrs ago

Orthodox priest in 'critical condition' after shooting in Lyon, France

French police locked down parts of Lyon on Saturday as they searched for gunmen who shot an Orthadox priest with a sorn-off shotgun before fleeing.

The priest, who has Greek nationality, was closing his church when the attack happened and is now in a serious condition. The interior ministry warned people to "avoid the area" where the attack took place.

A police source said the priest was of Greek nationality, and had been able to tell emergency services as they arrived that he had not recognised his assailant.

The motivation for the attack was not known last night, but the shooting came in the wake of several grisly Islamist attacks on French soil and a growing tension between France and the Muslim world.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, lashed out at Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, slamming Turkey's "bellicose" stance towards Nato allies.

Mr Macron said that France's wish was now that things "calm down" but for this to happen, it is essential that the "Turkish president respects France, respects the European Union, respects its values, does not tell lies and does not utter insults," Macron said.

🔴 #Lyon : un homme blessé par balle rue St-Lazare dans le 7e arrondissement, dans des circonstances encore obscures. Le tireur serait en fuite. Le secteur actuellement bouclé par les #policiers @lyonmag pic.twitter.com/8RUoFFXDNi

— Julien Damboise (@JDANDOU) October 31, 2020

Protests erupted Friday in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mali, Mauritania and Lebanon, the latest in a string of mass rallies denouncing France.

Turkey had led the charge in accusing Mr Macron of having a “problem with Islam” and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan even suggested he get his mental health checked and called for a boycott on French goods.

In an interview on Saturday Mr Macron added: “Today in the world there are people who distort Islam and in the name of this religion that they claim to defend,  they kill, they slaughter … today there is violence practised by some extremist movements and individuals in the name of Islam.”

Recent terror attacks on French soil have reignited the debate over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

“We will not give up caricatures and drawings, even if others back away,” Mr Macron said in a speech this month after an 18-year old Islamist beheaded a school teacher who had shown his class Mohammed cartoons that were recently republished by satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

"I can understand that people could be shocked by the caricatures but I will never accept that violence can be justified," Mr Macon told Qatar-based TV channel Al-Jazeera in a long interview on Saturday.

“Of course this is a problem for Islam because Muslims are the first victims,” Macron continued. “More than 80 percent of the victims of terrorism are Muslims, and this is a problem for all of us.”

© AP A soldier blocks the access to the scene after a Greek Orthodox priest was shot Saturday Oct.31, 2020 while he was closing his church in the city of Lyon, central France. The priest, a Greek citizen, is in a local hospital with life-threatening injuries after being hit in the abdomen, a police official told The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

France is still reeling from Thursday’s attack in Nice in which Brahim Assouaoui, a Tunisian 21 year old who had only arrived in Europe from Tunisia last month, murdered three in the Riviera town’s Notre-Dame Basilica.

He first tried to behead Nadine Devillers, 60, then slit the throat of the sexton Vincent Loques, 55. A Brazilian mother-of-three, Simone Barreto Silva, who was stabbed several times, fled to a nearby restaurant where she died of multiple stab wounds.

Assouaoui was shot by police 14 times and is currently in a critical condition in hospital.

Prosecutors say he arrived illegally in Europe on Italy's Mediterranean island of Lampedusa on September 20 before landing in Bari, Sicily, on October 9 and coming to Nice just one or two days before the attack.

French police are now holding three people as they seek to ascertain whether he had accomplices.

A first man, 47, was detained on Thursday evening after being seen next to the attacker on surveillance footage the day before the attack. The second, held on Friday, is suspected of contacting Assouaoui the day before the attack.

On Saturday, police said a third man, aged 33, was arrested after being present when the home of the second suspect was raided.

Police are trying to work out whether the Nice stabbing had been planned in advance by committed jihadists.

Reference: Telegraph: Henry Samuel  1 day ago

Choosing Essential Oils for Subtle Energy Work- 2

When working with the aura and chakras, the vibration rate of essential oils may be more important than their chemistry, although they are of course related. Another aspect of their chemistry, or rather their molecular shape, is their ability to refract light-either to the left, to the right, or not at all.

The electrical frequency of essential oils can be measured in megaherz, although the reading changes dramatically depending on who has handled the oil. At present, it remains an inexact science, but one of great potential for working with auras and chakras, and the physical body; when these can also be routinely measured and compared to an optimum scale.

Some people lay great store on the colour of essential oils for subtle energy therapy. The colour of oils can vary quite considerably between different species; form clear to yellow, orange, red, brown, green and bright blue. These are one of the best obvious differences between essential oils, and colour has its own vibration, but this is actually a very complex subject, and is discussed later on. Energetic Aromatherapy.

Another difference between essential oils is their viscosity, which leads to an area of difference - evaporation rate - which has an importance when working with the human energy fields. The aura is a part of ourselves that is more connected to the spiritual realms then our physical body.

When thinking in energetic terms, we talk about 'grounding' a person who might be too 'spaced out', almost as if they could float off into the sky; or about 'centering' a person whose energy is dissipated and all over the place; or about 'lightening up' a person who is too 'heavy' energetically.

There's little point in using a grounding oil on someone who is already grounded to the spot, or lightening up someone who is already so light they are practically floating through the ceiling. Few of us have this last problem, however, and indeed, are seeking to 'lighten' up', in the sense of realizing spiritual potential. Really, we want to seek balance, and find the spiritual core that is at the heart of that balance.

The evaporation rates of essential oils tells us something about their quality in terms of energetic frequency. It's not the whole story, but part of it which needs to be considered. In perfumery, the evaporation rate of essential oils is categorized in three ways: top note for quick evaporation; middle note for average rate of evaporation; and base note for slow evaporation, the aroma that most endures.

When two or more essential oils are blended together the story becomes more complex, so in a particular perfume, for example, an essential oil might be classified as one of the components in the 'middle note', and in another perfume it may be a 'top note'. Everything is relative, and when blending essential oils for energetic work that is certainly true.

Each essential oil has its top note, middle note and base note. You can experience this yourself by putting a drop of any oil on your skin and sniffing it immediately, five minutes later, half an hour later and so on. Close your eyes and feel how deep each aroma can be.

To compare the evaporation rate of different essential oils you will need a few smelling strips. These can be made out of any absorbent white paper, or even out of natural undyed material.

Put a drop of essential oil on three strips, choosing one each from the three different evaporation-rate categories, and keep coming back to the strips over a period of time to see how their aromas change. The quicker the evaporation rate, the quicker the aroma molecules have released into the air - and the quicker they can move and influence the auric field. 

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens: Valerie Ann Worwood

Choosing Essential Oils for Subtle Energy Work

There is a flow of energy, not only between essential oils and people, but between people and essential oils; it's a two-way street. When choosing essential oils at ant time, then, we need to consider the source of those oils in terms not only of the plant species, location it was grown, growing and distillation conditions and so forth, but the human source of the mental energy that also affects these highly sensitive products of nature.

In a way one could suspect a crystalline action here, in that the essential oils seem not only to transfer energy, but to absorb and hold it, just as a 'crystal radios', and the computer revolution in Silicon Valley, California; silicon is crystalline.) This phenomenon is well known to scientists who increasingly study crystals with great interest.

There's a rumor circulating in some scientific circles that NASA currently has a programme in place where, in :the black room', a huge crystal sits in a pool of purified water, from which information is transferred by the water-memory mechanism, and from which a computer picks up the informational 'bytes' and records them.

Scientists watch as information seeps out of the crystal, in much the same way as Archaeologists have over the years successfully worked on many ancient languages and today scientists are working on the even more ancient code: the language of the universe that is hidden in crystals.

If we think of essential oils as liquid crystals, we should also ask ourselves what information has been absorbed by them in terms of energetic-transference - including other people's thought-forms. Essential oils have many qualities, only some of which we know well and appreciate.

Their chemistry is best understood, and this is how essential oils are usually defined. At University College, London, Dr Luca Turin has been working on the vibration rate of aromatic materials, which is a feature of their chemistry.

He believes it is the vibration of an aroma molecule that makes it 'smell' a certain way, rather than its molecular shape - which was until recently the usual explanation for the smell-mechanism (i.e. the shape of the aroma molecule 'locks' into an olfactory receptor which sends a message to the brain).

Establishing the vibration rate of an aroma molecule involves electron-tunnelling spectroscopy, and building up a database of the frequencies of essential oils will take years, according to Turin.

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens: Valerie Ann Worwood