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Italy

Catholic Church Opens Up To Yoga And Meditation

ADNKRONOS, LA STAMPA (Italy), THE TELEGRAPH (UK)

Worldcrunch

ROME- With a surprising twist of flexibility, a key Italian bishop and doctrinal expert has given his green light to integrating yoga and meditation into Roman Catholic spiritual practices.

Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli, the bishop of the city of Frascati, near Rome, said that he is "open" to forms of eastern meditation previously rejected by the Vatican, as long as they are used in conjunction with the framework of Christian spirituality, writes La Stampa.

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(source: Juni)

So, could we envision a Sunday mass with a "prayer mat" in the near future? Probably not, nor should anyway expect to see the faithful reciting Our Father in a lotus position, pranyana during a decade of the rosary, nor the happy baby pose after communion...Still, this could be a subtle revolution inside a Church, as it prepares to usher in a new papacy after decades of doctrinal traditionalism.

Mons. Martinelli had launched an official catechism study in 2010 with the translated English title of “50 + 3 Topical Arguments- Fragments of Catholic truth- Catechesis Dialogica.” One of the arguments deals with how Christians should meditate, which La Stampa reports for the first time: “Christians, for their meditations, can learn from other religions," the document states. "Meditation practices (such as zen, yoga, controlled breathing, mantra...) from the Eastern Christian and other non Christian religions, can be suitable means to help the faithful to stand before an inwardly lying God."

In 1999, six years before he succeeded John Paul II as Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s watchdog of doctrinal orthodoxy. He issued a document, according to The Telegraph, which warned Roman Catholics of the dangers of yoga, Zen, transcendental meditation and other "eastern’ practices. They could “degenerate into a cult of the body” that debases Christian prayer, the document said.

Monsignor Martinelli was a collaborater of then Cardinal Ratzinger, which shows that a potential change in the Church could be brewing.

“It’s an accusation that has nothing to do with reality,” Vanda Vanni, the founder of the Mediterranean Yoga Association, told Adnkronos, an Italian news agency, in reference to the Church's standing antagonism toward the practice. “It’s a theory — if one can call it a theory — that is totally without foundation. Yoga is not a religion or a spiritual practice.”

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Green

Forest Networks? Revisiting The Science Of Trees And Funghi "Reaching Out"

A compelling story about how forest fungal networks communicate has garnered much public interest. Is any of it true?

Thomas Brail films the roots of a cut tree with his smartphone.

Arborist and conservationist Thomas Brail at a clearcutting near his hometown of Mazamet in the Tarn, France.

Melanie Jones, Jason Hoeksema, & Justine Karst

Over the past few years, a fascinating narrative about forests and fungi has captured the public imagination. It holds that the roots of neighboring trees can be connected by fungal filaments, forming massive underground networks that can span entire forests — a so-called wood-wide web. Through this web, the story goes, trees share carbon, water, and other nutrients, and even send chemical warnings of dangers such as insect attacks. The narrative — recounted in books, podcasts, TV series, documentaries, and news articles — has prompted some experts to rethink not only forest management but the relationships between self-interest and altruism in human society.

But is any of it true?

The three of us have studied forest fungi for our whole careers, and even we were surprised by some of the more extraordinary claims surfacing in the media about the wood-wide web. Thinking we had missed something, we thoroughly reviewed 26 field studies, including several of our own, that looked at the role fungal networks play in resource transfer in forests. What we found shows how easily confirmation bias, unchecked claims, and credulous news reporting can, over time, distort research findings beyond recognition. It should serve as a cautionary tale for scientists and journalists alike.

First, let’s be clear: Fungi do grow inside and on tree roots, forming a symbiosis called a mycorrhiza, or fungus-root. Mycorrhizae are essential for the normal growth of trees. Among other things, the fungi can take up from the soil, and transfer to the tree, nutrients that roots could not otherwise access. In return, fungi receive from the roots sugars they need to grow.

As fungal filaments spread out through forest soil, they will often, at least temporarily, physically connect the roots of two neighboring trees. The resulting system of interconnected tree roots is called a common mycorrhizal network, or CMN.

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