Watching – Page 6 – The Faithful Watchman

Head of Vatican Life Academy Gives Nod to Legal Assisted Suicide

The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life said he is personally opposed to assisted suicide but would not exclude it for others who wish to avail themselves of it.

In an April 21 debate on end-of-life issues at the Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia said that he endorses “accompaniment” and care as the best approach to assisting the terminally ill but recognizes the legitimacy of laws permitting assisted suicide as furthering the common good.

“In our society, a practicable legal mediation allowing assisted suicide cannot be excluded,” Archbishop Paglia said, under the conditions specified by the Italian Constitutional Court.

These conditions stipulate that to be eligible for assisted suicide, the person must be kept alive by life-sustaining treatments and be suffering from an irreversible pathology, which is a source of physical or psychological suffering that he considers intolerable, and he must be fully capable of making free and informed decisions, the archbishop noted.

“Personally, I would not practice assisting suicide, but I understand that legal mediation can constitute the greatest common good concretely possible in the conditions in which we find ourselves,” Paglia added.

Christians in the Holy Land say they’re under attack as Israeli-Palestinian violence soars

Church officials and Christian leaders in Israel blame a minority of Jewish extremists for the attacks. They say Israel’s far-right government has fostered a culture of impunity.

Upstairs in his monastery tucked in the Old City, Brother Matteo Munari heard a commotion at the Church of the Flagellation, along the path where Jesus is said to have carried his cross on the way to his crucifixion.

Munari, 49, went downstairs and found that a 10-foot statue of Jesus had been wrested off its pedestal and thrown to the ground, its face partially destroyed. When the church’s doorman tackled the man suspected of toppling the statue on Feb. 2, Jewish ritual tassels that had been concealed under his clothes emerged, the Franciscan friar said.

“He was kind of crying. Like, ‘We have to destroy all the statues and the idols in Jerusalem,’” Munari told NBC News last week as he gazed at the smashed face of Jesus, now awaiting repair at the church, which was built in 1929 on a site that dates to the 12th century.

“I just felt sad for him,” he added. “I think he wanted to do the right thing. So the problem probably was not the man himself, but who instructed him to think in this violent way.”

Israeli police confirmed that a U.S. citizen in his 40s was arrested at the scene, adding that investigators were “working diligently to maintain security, order and freedom of worship for members of all religions and denominations.”

NASA Is Tracking a Huge, Growing Anomaly in Earth’s Magnetic Field

NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.

The space agency’s satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field strength within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.

The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) – likened by NASA to a ‘dent’ in Earth’s magnetic field, or a kind of ‘pothole in space’ – generally doesn’t affect life on Earth, but the same can’t be said for orbital spacecraft (including the International Space Station), which pass directly through the anomaly as they loop around the planet at low-Earth orbit altitudes.

During these encounters, the reduced magnetic field strength inside the anomaly means technological systems onboard satellites can short-circuit and malfunction if they become struck by high-energy protons emanating from the Sun.

UNPRECEDENTED: Iran’s crown prince meets Netanyahu, quotes the Bible, extols Cyrus the Great & future ‘Cyrus Accords’

Did you ever imagine a major Iranian political leader coming to visit Israel, not to threaten the Jewish people with genocide, but to offer his hand of peace, cooperation and mutual respect?

It may sound like fiction – like one of my novels – but it’s actually happening this week.

In an historic development, Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi – the son of Iran’s late king, or shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi – arrived at Ben-Gurion International Airport yesterday, accompanied by his wife, Yasmine.

“Yasmine and I just arrived here in Israel,” Pahlavi immediately tweeted to his 1.2 million followers. “We are very happy to be here and are dedicated to working toward the peaceful and prosperous future that the people of our region deserve. From the children of Cyrus, to the children of Israel, we will build this future together, in friendship.”

The reference was to Cyrus the Great, described both in Persian history and in the Bible as one of the most powerful and influential leaders in the history of the ancient Persian empire, and the man who gave the Jewish people their freedom, sent them back to Israel to resettle their homeland, and gave them both the permission and the money to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

Biden Administration Dictates Religious Policy to Israel at Jewish Holy Site

The Biden administration is dictating religious policy to Israel over the delicate question of mixed-gender prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Judaism.

U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain, who happens to be Muslim, tweeted on behalf of the administration Sunday that the U.S. supports the implementation of an expansion of the space for egalitarian — i.e. mixed — prayer at the Wall.

In traditional, or “Orthodox,” Judaism, men and women pray separately, and men lead the services. Since only men are religiously obligated to pray, the space allocated to men is larger than the women’s section at the Wall.

In other Jewish denominations, such as “Reform,” men and women pray together, and women often lead services. Reform is the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S., but is smaller in other parts of the world.

(In Islam, men and women also pray separately, except at the Kaaba in Mecca. There is no egalitarian prayer at other Muslim holy sites, including at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which sits above the Western Wall.)

The Western (or Wailing) Wall is the surviving remnant of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. Many Jews avoid praying on the Temple Mount itself — which is a Muslim holy site today — for fear of accidentally stepping on the Holy of Holies, the spot where the presence of God is believed to have dwelt, and which was entered only by the High Priest on the annual Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

Humans Are on Track to Achieve Immortality in 7 Years, Futurist Says

A new video from the YouTube channel Adagio revisits futurist Ray Kurzweil’s ideas about how for humans, both singularity and immortality are shockingly imminent—as in, potentially just seven years away.

Both concepts may take a stretch of reality to attain, but Kurzweil and his supporters are quite limber. The idea of singularity is the moment AI exceeds beyond human control and rapidly transforms society. Predicting this timing is tricky, to say the least.

But Kurzweil says one crucial step on the way to a potential 2045 singularity is the concept of immortality, possibly reached as soon as 2030. And the rapid rise of artificial intelligence is what will make it happen. Kurzweil believes that our technological and medical progress will grow to the point that robotics—he dubs them “nanobots”—will work to repair our bodies at the cellular level, as reported by Lifeboat, turning disease and aging around thanks to the continual work of robotic know-how. And then, voilà: immortality.

Actress Patti LuPone Smears American Christians as No Different from the Taliban

Actress and Broadway star Patti LuPone said during her Tuesday appearance on The View that she has “no idea what the difference is” between “our Christian right and the Taliban.”

After being asked what she thought about “DeSantis and the LGBTQ,” LuPone said, “That is extremely upsetting. These are human beings. And I could cry. They’re not harming anybody.”

“I don’t know why he’s doing this,” LuPone said of Florida Gov. Ron (R). “And I said this before, and I’m going to get in trouble, but I have said this before, and it’s been in print: I don’t know what the difference between our Christian right and the Taliban is. I have no idea what the difference is.”

“I just don’t know what the difference is. What’s happening in this country right now in the name of religion is so dangerous,” the Heist star continued. “And it’s not this country. It’s not America.”

Dalai Lama Apologizes After Video Shows Him Kissing Young Boy On Mouth, Asking Him To Suck His Tongue

The Dalai Lama, the Tibetans’ 87-year-old spiritual leader, issued an apology Monday morning after video surfaced of him kissing a young boy on the mouth earlier this year in northern India.

The incident happened in February in the hillside city of Dharamshala during an event for the M3M Foundation, a philanthropy group started by an Indian real estate company.

After the Dalai Lama kissed the boy, he stuck out his tongue and told the boy to “suck my tongue.”

“A video clip has been circulating that shows a recent meeting when a young boy asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama if he could give him a hug,” said a statement on the exiled leader’s Twitter account, which has 19 million followers. “His Holiness wishes to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends across the world, for the hurt his words may have caused.”

“His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras,” the statement continued. “He regrets the incident.”

North Carolina Clinic Apparently Performed Gender Surgery On 14-Year-Old Girl: Report

The cosmetic surgery clinic performed a double mastectomy.

A North Carolina cosmetic surgery clinic appears to have performed gender surgery on girls as young as 14.

The Cosmetic Concierge, a plastic surgery clinic in Charlotte, performed elective double mastectomies on teen patients, including at least one 14-year-old, Reduxx reported.

This month, screenshots of “before and after” photos on the clinic’s website were posted on Twitter, prompting outrage from social media users. The images showed the results of “top surgery” procedures, which remove the healthy breasts of females who desire a more masculine appearance. The photos also included the ages of the patients, some of whom were listed as 14, 15, and 16.

The clinic appears to have removed the photos from its website. An archived version of the page from January 22 showed the images present on the site, Reduxx reported.

New Gene Discovery Predicted To Yield Life-Changing Alzheimer’s Treatment

A group of scientists at Cardiff University have revealed stunning information that could lead to life-changing treatment for sufferers of the most common form of Alzheimer’s disease in the next 15 years.

The research by the scientific team started in 2009, and in 2022 they announced they had found three genes that led to the disease. But now they have announced discovering 92 more genes.

“By 2040 I think we’ll be in the position to offer a range of treatments and we might not know exactly why, but one of them will be able to act on the huge range of causes,” Professor Julie Williams, the Cardiff Dementia Centre’s director, stated.

“Once you know where to start looking then you can study the effects which genes have on specific brain activity,” Williams said. “Things are speeding up and improving all the time. I’ve learnt more in the last seven years than I did in the previous 20. Tests which cost millions in the 90s can be carried out for around £30.”