Collegian-Independent Online

In a brief Papal edict issued at Vatican City and repeated by the French Agence Havas news agency, Pope Leo XIII has declared that the technologies associated with Reunification are not a religious matter.

The two most significant issues being weighed by a Papal Commission of the Holy See were whether or not the Reunification Technology involved the soul, which would make it blasphemous, and whether or not acceptance of the tattoo was suicide.  

The Pope found that neither was the case. 

"That our vital activities proceed from a principle capable of subsisting in itself, is the thesis of the substantiality of the soul: that this principle is not itself composite, extended, corporeal, or essentially and intrinsically dependent on the body, is the doctrine of spirituality.  The Doctors of the Technosphere have not, themselves, described the "energy" that they harness as being the soul.  It is an easy error of language and thought for the public perception that this is the soul to be sustained.  It is an "animating energy" and through "animus" we easily derive the conclusion that it is the soul, however this is no more true than to suggest that the electrical impulses which cause the arm to move are the soul.  To regard the animiating energy harnessed by the reunification technology as the true "soul" is an error of materialism for Christians, and is as transparently foolish as the suggestion that the soul resides physicially in the heart or brain, and may be removed or consumed, as is held by some primitive tribesmen"

in another excerpt, the Holy Father held that acceptance, or self-application of the Technosphere tattoo was not suicide.

"Those who accept the tattoo which activates this technology are told that it will certainly kill them.  But the act of acceptance is not suicide, for it is also clear that divine provenance allows for their salvation.  For a man to offer to exchange places with a loved one who is condemned to death, and take their place in the cell is not suicide.  It is undertaking a grave, almost certain risk, but it does not disallow divine provenance.  Even unto the last, after his crucifixion, Saint Bartholemew was saved by the occurence of an earthquake.  To take all risks, knowing of grave consequence to protect one's society or family is not an act of suicide. The self application of the tattoo is not an inherent act of self destruction, but an expression of the willingness to die if no option is found and divine provenance does not interfere.  The gravity of this act should not be understated, however it falls short of suicide, being rather to enter knowingly into peril."

The Edict also stated in regards to the use of the tattoo to execute criminals that "The infliction of capital punishment is not contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the power of the State to visit upon culprits the penalty of death derives much authority from revelation and from the writings of theologians. The advisability of exercising that power is, of course, an affair to be determined upon other and various considerations."

The reading of the Edict before the Ecumenical Conference was disturbed when a group of more than seventy Cardinals, headed by Cardinal Lual Nihal of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, staged a walk-out on the Conference.  The walk-out was deemed a serious blow by Journalists who have been covering the Council, and it was suggested that the exit might turn into a full blow schism.  Cardinal Gebhard, Count of Calw, Tollenstein, and Hirschberg (who would historically have become Pope Victor II in 1055), has been widely mentioned as a potential Pope, and has worked with the Bishop of Tyre to advance a set of arguments condemning the entire Post-Avingnon Papacy as illegitimate.  While not widely supported by modern-era clerics, this movement, dubbed "primitivist" by its opponents, calls for a return to the basic principles of Medieval Christianity, and has proven widely attractive, especially given its hard line on Demons and other supernatural creatures.