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To: Tom Clarke who wrote (4101)	7/7/2007 5:44:49 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5290

Pope revives old Latin Mass in concession to tradition; denies rollback of Vatican II The Associated Press Saturday, July 7, 2007 VATICAN CITY: In a major gesture to traditional, conservative Roman Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday removed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass, reviving a rite that was all but swept away by the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Benedict stressed that he was not negating Vatican II by allowing greater use of the Tridentine Mass. But his decision nevertheless overruled the objections of liberal-minded Catholics and angered Jews because the Tridentine rite contains a prayer for their conversion. Benedict issued a document authorizing parish priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass if a "stable group of faithful" requests it. Currently, the local bishop must approve such requests — an obstacle that supporters of the rite say has greatly limited its availability. "What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too," Benedict wrote. In reviving the rite, Benedict was reaching out to the followers of an excommunicated ultratraditionalist, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who split with the Vatican over Vatican II, particularly the introduction of the New Mass celebrated in the vernacular. The Vatican excommunicated Lefebvre in 1988 after he consecrated four bishops without Rome's consent. The bishops were excommunicated as well. Benedict has been eager to reconcile with Lefebvre's group, the Society of St. Pius X, which has demanded freer use of the old Mass as a precondition for normalizing relations. The other precondition is the removal of the excommunication decrees. The current head of the society, Bishop Bernard Fellay, welcomed Benedict's document in a statement. He said he hoped "that the favorable climate established by the new dispositions of the Holy See" would eventually allow other doctrinal disputes that emerged from Vatican II to be discussed, including ecumenism, religious liberty and the sharing of power with bishops. Benedict has made no secret of his affinity for the Tridentine rite and has long said the faithful should have greater access to it. But more liberal Catholics have suggested that in liberalizing the use of a rite that symbolized the pre-Vatican II church, Benedict was sending a strong message that Vatican II was not the "break from the past" that some view it as being. The document angered Jews, since the Tridentine rite contains a prayer on Good Friday of Easter Week calling for the conversion of Jews. The Anti-Defamation League called the move a "body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations," the Jewish news agency JTA reported. The Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Benedict to publicly point out that such phrases "are now entirely contrary to the teaching of the church." In addition to Jewish concerns, bishops in France and liberal-minded clergy and faithful elsewhere had expressed concerns that allowing freer use of the Tridentine liturgy would imply a negation of Vatican II and create divisions in parishes since two different liturgies would be celebrated. Benedict sought to allay those concerns in a letter to bishops accompanying the Latin text. "This fear is unfounded," he said. He said the New Mass remained the "normal" form of Mass while the Tridentine version was an "extraordinary" one that would probably only be sought by a few Catholics. The document "doesn't impose any return to the past, it doesn't mean any weakening of the authority of the council nor the authority and responsibility of bishops," Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said. However, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the head of the French Episcopal Conference, warned that the move will create divisions. "There will be resistance from both sides," to the new decision, he told Le Monde. "For some, asking for a Mass in Latin will seem like a standard aimed at testing the priests' loyalty to the pope," Ricard warned. The liberal lay church group We Are Church said that the move represented a step back from Vatican II and could set an even more conservative direction for the church. It warned of a "new split within many parishes, diocese and finally the entire Roman Catholic Church." "It is to be feared that while it appears to only be about the old Mass, in reality it is an attempt to set the Catholic Church on a new old course," the group said. Ricard, speaking on France-Info radio Saturday, said the move does not mean the entire church is becoming more fundamentalist. "Just because you have in a family a cousin who is a bit different, whom you tolerate and accept, doesn't mean that the whole family adopts his positions or his way of life," he said. Ricard said he wanted to "keep this measure in its proper place. It is not an upheaval in the church." The document was welcomed by traditional Catholics who remained in good standing with Rome but simply preferred the Tridentine liturgy and have long complained that bishops had been stingy in allowing it. "The traditional Mass is a true a gem of the church's heritage, and the Holy Father has taken the most important step toward making it available to many more of the faithful," said Michael Dunnigan, chairman of Una Voce America, the largest lay organization in the United States dedicated to promoting wider access to the traditional Mass. iht.com

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (4101)	7/7/2007 5:45:34 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 5290

Scientists try to solve mystery of Hambo Lama Itigilov in Buryatia 04.07.2007, 18.41 MOSCOW, July 4 (Itar-Tass) -- Scientists and theologians from around the world are trying to solve the mystery of the incorruptible body of Hambo Lama Itigilov known as the “Buryat Nostradamus”. About 150 researchers and theologians from Europe, Mongolia and Russia are attending the first-ever international conference “Pandito Hambo Lama Itigilov” underway at the official residence of the Buddhist traditional church of Russia – the Ivolginsky Datsan -- near Ulan Ude. Hambo Lama died in 1927 while meditating in lotus posture and praying for the repose of his soul. The body stayed in the ground for 75 years. In 2002, when the tomb was opened, Buddhist monks saw that the body of their teacher had not decayed. Now the relics, which are kept in a special shrine, are an object of worship. Buddhists believe that Hambo Lama cognised Void, or Ultimate Reality. Before leaving this world, he fell in a state of mediation and cleansed his body to such extent that it became incorruptible. Secular experts cannot explain why some of the characteristics of the lama’s body are identical to those of living people. The participants in the conference called Hambo Lama “the Buryat Nostradamus”. Buryat theologians have found a book written by the lama allegorically in the old Mongolian language. High priest Baldan Lama Bazarov has been quoted by VIP. Buryatia.ru as saying at the conference that the deciphering of the book started immediately after its discovery. It took two years to get a clue to part of the message, in which Hambo Lama predicted events of the 1920-1930s. But Buddhist philosophers say the code used in the book is not quite clear. The message itself is intricate enough as “one word can have different meanings”, Baldan Lama Bazarov said. “He is the Buryat Nostradamus. If we can decipher the whole message, we will acquire the greatest knowledge,” a senior researcher at the Russian State Humanitarian Institute, Tatyana Strizhova, said. According to the legend, 75-year-old Pandita Hambo Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov XII assumed the lotus posture, meditated and ceased to breath in 1927. The monks put in him in this posture in a pine box, filled it with salt and interred in a cemetery. The head of the department of personal identification at the Russian Health Ministry’s forensic medicine centre, Professor Viktor Zvyagin, said Hambo Lama’s body is no different from the body of a person who died 12 hours ago. Zvyagin and his colleagues studied tissue samples from the “incorruptible body”: hairs fallen from the lama’s head, skin pells, and a nail cut. They were compared to the samples of living persons, including those of Professor Zvyagin, and led researchers to the conclusion that the protein structure had not changed and matched that of a living person. The chemical analysis of the body produced stunning results. Scientists could not explain whey Itigilov’s body contained no or an infinitesimally small amount of chemical elements. “Itigilov is not alive of course, for he cannot stand up and walk,” the Versiya newspaper said, referring to Professor Galina Yershova of the Russian State Humanitarian University who had also studied the body. “But when leaving this world in a state of meditation he fell not into death but in some other condition. The findings allow us to assume that the lama put himself in a state of anabiosis.” She believes that Hambo Lama was buried alive and remained alive in the tomb all this time. “Hambo Lama’s condition changed after he was removed from the tomb, practically before our eyes,” Yershova said. Experts say that no preserving agents were used for the conservation of the body. The analysis of a cell by the nuclear resonance method showed that the nucleus of the cell was there and the state of cytoplasm was close to that of a living person. Although the Pandito Hambo Lama Itigilov is a unique case, he is not the only “incorruptible” Buddhist, PRS.ru said. The mummified body of monk Vuc Khac Minh has been sitting in lotus posture in the temple at Duc, 23 kilometres from Hanoi, for 300 years. Unlike Vuc Khac Minh, Itigilov’s body has not shrunk and has suffered practically no changes at all. Moreover when the lama’s skin was accidentally punctured, a red jelly-like stuff, which had once been the blood, oozed out of the puncture. Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov was the head of Buddhists in Eastern Siberia from 1911 to 1917. He became famous as a philosopher and a doctor. He spent his whole life in Buryatia and left Siberia only once to attend celebrations marking the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov. During World War One he organised hospitals and received several state awards. He became fabled in his lifetime. One of the legends holds that like Christ he could walk on the water. Buddhists still treat Itigilov as a living person who is in a special state of body and mind, NEWSru.com said. They believe that neither knowledge nor acute mind can turn one into Dashi-Dorzho. One has to feel enormous compassion for all living beings and become a bodhisattva, i.e. “a perfect being that has the compassionate determination to aid all beings and who is on a mission to liberate all sentient beings, and only then will he rest in his own enlightenment…” itar-tass.com