Search

The Indigenous village of Bykovskiy is located 40 km from Tiksi, the administrative center of Bulunskiy District (Ulus), in the northern part of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutiya), Russia. Founded as a Soviet fishing cooperative, it became home to Indigenous Sakha, Evenkis, Evens, as well as to Russian settlers and political prisoners from the Baltic states. Post-Soviet transformations, coupled with escalating environmental change processes, has been altering the local economy and subsistence activities since the 1990s. Although our interlocutors directly observed and experienced such changes, they seemed to ignore the visible problem of severe coastal erosion that was destroying a local cemetery. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the study region in 2019, and combines approaches from the anthropology of climate change with reception and communication studies. It examines “ignorance” as a strategy of adaptation to multiple stressors under historically reproduced colonial structures of governance.

The construction of railroad infrastructure in East Siberia and the Russian Far East was a key aspect of Soviet industrialization during the 1970s and 1980s. Although built primarily for freight transportation, the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) and the Amur-Yakutsk Mainline (AYaM) have also been used for passenger transport and have thus contributed to increased mobility and heightened local expectations about future mobility. This article presents the results of an extensive survey carried out in the BAM/AYaM region, which maps experiences of individual mobility, including usage-related needs, practices, and expectations. The findings show low levels of satisfaction differing across the region’s social and spatial diversity. The paper argues that hierarchies of mobility prevail at two related levels in the BAM/AYaM region: 1) the state’s regional development policies favor industrial development, focusing on freight transportation while neglecting local passengers’ needs for improved individual mobility; and 2) intersectional structural conditions along lines of diversity, such as gender, age, ethnicity, and place of residence, result in mobility disadvantage and lower mobility satisfaction. These hierarchies are embedded in the broader social and spatial inequality structures in the Russian Federation.

The town of Tiksi came into being in the 1930s, when the Soviet Union intensified its efforts to industrialize the Arctic. A critical element of that policy was to make the Northern Sea Route a viable Arctic shipping lane and Tiksi, located where the Lena River meets the Arctic Ocean, became an important transportation hub on that route. Post-Soviet transformations led to a rapid decline in population numbers and economic significance of the town, while climate change opened up new opportunities for shipping and mammoth tusk collecting. Today, the situation seems to have stabilized but the promises of a bright future pronounced in strategic papers by the government are yet to be realized. The article explores the socio-economic, infrastructural and environmental changes of recent decades in order to explore future development prospects for Tiksi. The infrastructural legacies of the Soviet past, combined with the environmental conditions of the region, result in the intertwined material dependencies of built and natural environments. Still, these material dependencies are neither straitjackets nor unchangeable. It is the interplay between global climate change, national policies, and local initiative that will challenge the material dependencies of the past and present.

This introduction attempts to situate railroads, which have rarely been the object of ethnographic attention, within current debates of anthropology and related disciplines. While mobility is certainly one dimension of human-railroad entanglements, the introduction calls to explore political, social, material, and affective lives of railroads in Europe and Asia as well. Often, connections provided by railroads are precarious at best: enveloped in state and local politics, they appear to some as promise and to others as menace. Planning, construction, decay, and reconstruction constitute the temporal and material life cycle of these infrastructures. Attending to particular ethnographic and historical contexts, the introduction aims to demonstrate how railroads, these potent symbols of modernity, continue to be good to think with. The version of record is December 2020, though the actual publication date is May/June 202.

This paper presents the results from fieldwork conducted in three focal areas of the “Nunataryuk” EU H2020 permafrost project: the Nordic Area (Greenland and Svalbard), the Beaufort Sea Area in Canada (Northwest Territories/ Inuvialuit Settlement Region and Gwich’in First Nation Traditional Territory) and Northeastern Siberia in Russia. The paper analyzes the entanglement between social and environmental change and presents a risk analysis framework, including the interconnected geo-physical & socio-cultural risks, with the aim to improve adaptation and mitigation strategies of local communities. Guided by a mixed-methods approach, the research outcomes are the result of field-based research, including focus groups, qualitative interviews, participant observation, community workshops – as well as a quantitative survey in three settlements (Qeqertarsuaq in Greenland, Aklavik in Canada and Longyearbyen on Svalbard).

The energy-momentum tensor form factors contain a wealth of information about the nucleon. It is insightful to visualize this information in terms of 3D or 2D densities related by Fourier transformations to the form factors. The densities associated with the angular momentum distribution were recently shown to receive monopole and quadrupole contributions. We show that these two contributions are uniquely related to each other. The quadrupole contribution can be viewed as induced by the monopole contribution, and contains no independent information. Both contributions however play important roles for the visualization of the angular momentum density., 6 pages, 1 figure, misprint fixed

We present the complete cross-section for the production of unpolarized hadrons in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering up to power-suppressed ${\cal O}(1/Q^2)$ terms in the Wandzura--Wilczek-type approximation which consists in systematically assuming that $\bar{q}gq$--terms are much smaller than $\bar{q}q$--correlators. We compute all twist-2 and twist-3 structure functions and the corresponding asymmetries, and discuss the applicability of the Wandzura--Wilczek-type approximations on the basis of available data. We make predictions that can be tested by data from Jefferson Lab, COMPASS, HERMES, and the future Electron-Ion Collider. The results of this paper can be readily used for phenomenology and for event generators, and will help to improve our understanding of the TMD theory beyond leading twist., Comment: Published in JHEP, 71 pages, 21 figures, references updated, discussion improved

A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule Jonathan Schlesinger (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017), 288 pp. ISBN: 9780804799966Ethnic and Religious Minorities in Stalin’s Soviet Union: New Dimensions of Research Andrej Kotljarchuk and Olle Sundström, eds. (Stockholm: Elanders, 2017), 283 pp., paperback $27.00. ISBN: 978-91-7601-777-7.Kosmologiia i praktika sibirskogo shamanizma Elena V. Nam (Tomsk: Tomskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2017), 296 pp. ISBN: 978-5-7511-2521-9.Kul’tura i resursy. Opyt etnologicheskogo obsledovaniia sovremennogo polozheniia narodov Severnogo Sakhalina Dmitrii Funk, ed. (Moscow: “Demos,” 2015), 272 pp. ISBN 978-5-9904710-6-1.Maritime Hunting Culture of Chukotka: Traditions and Modern Practices Igor Krupnik and Rachel Mason, eds. (Anchorage, AK: National Park Service, Shared Beringian Heritage Program, 2016), 343 pp. ISBN: 9780990725251. Litsom k moriu: Pamiati Liudmily Bogoslovskoi Igor Krupnik, ed. (Moscow: Moskva, 2016), 647 pp. ISBN 9785600013650.T-Bone Whacks and Caviar Snacks: Cooking with Two Texans in Siberia and the Russian Far East Sharon Hudgins (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2018), 448 pp. ISBN: 9781574417142.Bij de Joekagieren. Het oudste toendravolk van Noord-Oost Siberië / Life with the Yukaghir: Northeast Siberia’s Oldest Tundra People Cecilia Odé (Lias, Uitgeverij: Verschijningsjass, 2018), 240 pp., €29.95 (paperback). ISBN: 978-90-8803-099-4.

The town of Tiksi and the nearby indigenous village of Bykovskiy are located in northern Yakutia, where the Lena River meets the Arctic Ocean. Both owe their existence to Soviet policies and development plans, one tied to the Northern Sea Route, and the other to a fishing enterprise based on the labor of political prisoners. Post-Soviet transformations since the 1990s have severely altered the economic base of these communities, typically resulting in social, cultural and economic shocks and hardships. At the same time, both communities are affected by environmental change, most visibly in Bykovskiy, where coastal erosion caused by permafrost thaw has been destructing the local graveyard and endangers the housing infrastructure.Interestingly, when we conducted fieldwork there in 2019, our interlocutors seemed to pay very little attention to these environmental problems in the narratives they shared with us. While it might be tempting to accuse local residents of ignoring permafrost thaw and other environmental changes, the situation, we argue, is more complex. In fact, indigenous residents, especially, those making a living by practicing “traditional” activities, such as fishing and reindeer herding, have been observing extreme weather events, shifts in seasonal patterns, and changes in the behavior of land animals and fish for a long time. Similarly, to other parts of the Arctic, this accumulated traditional ecological knowledge has been helpful for adapting to the dramatically changing environment. At the same time, on the discursive and political level, this knowledge has been devalued or, at best, rated as a secondary source of information in relation to a more “advanced” institutionalized expert knowledge. Moreover, the Soviet modernization ideologies and discourses about human-environmental relations have impacted local knowledge, ethics and perceptions of the changing environment. This presentation calls for attention to historical and regional contexts and explores how hierarchical relations between different knowledge systems and how state modernization ideologies inform the ways in which indigenous communities in northern Russia relate to the effects of climate change today.

International audience; Thawing permafrost creates risks to the environment, economy and culture in Arctic coastal communities. Identification of these risks and the inclusion of the societal context and the relevant stakeholder involvement is crucial in risk management and for future sustainability, yet the dual dimensions of risk and risk perception is often ignored in conceptual risk frameworks. In this paper we present a risk framework for Arctic coastal communities. Our framework builds on the notion of the dual dimensions of risk, as both physically and socially constructed, and it places risk perception and the coproduction of risk management with local stakeholders as central com-ponents into the model. Central to our framework is the importance of multidisciplinary collabora-tion. A conceptual model and processual framework with a description of successive steps is developed to facilitate the identification of risks of thawing permafrost in a collaboration between local communities and scientists. Our conceptual framework motivates coproduction of risk management with locals in the identification of these risks from permafrost thaw and the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Positron beams, both polarized and unpolarized, are identified as essential ingredients for the experimental programs at the next generation of lepton accelerators. In the context of the hadronic physics program at Jefferson Lab (JLab), positron beams are complementary, even essential, tools for a precise understanding of the electromagnetic structure of nucleons and nuclei, in both the elastic and deep-inelastic regimes. For instance, elastic scattering of polarized and unpolarized electrons and positrons from the nucleon enables a model independent determination of its electromagnetic form factors. Also, the deeply-virtual scattering of polarized and unpolarized electrons and positrons allows unambiguous separation of the different contributions to the cross section of the lepto-production of photons and of lepton-pairs, enabling an accurate determination of the nucleons and nuclei generalized parton distributions, and providing an access to the gravitational form factors. Furthermore, positron beams offer the possibility of alternative tests of the Standard Model of particle physics through the search of a dark photon, the precise measurement of electroweak couplings, and the investigation of charged lepton flavor violation. This document discusses the perspectives of an experimental program with high duty-cycle positron beams at JLab., Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures This version superseeds the previous version which scientific content was decomposed into several more elaborated articles. All of these articles will be collected in the EPJ A Topical Issue about "Positron beam and physics at Jefferson Lab (e+@Jlab)"

The accelerating climatic changes and new infrastructure development across the Arctic require more robust risk and environmental assessment, but thus far there is no consistent record of human impact. We provide a first panarctic satellite-based record of expanding infrastructure and anthropogenic impacts along all permafrost affected coasts (100 km buffer, ≈6.2 Mio km2), named the Sentinel-1/2 derived Arctic Coastal Human Impact (SACHI) dataset. The completeness and thematic content goes beyond traditional satellite based approaches as well as other publicly accessible data sources. Three classes are considered: linear transport infrastructure (roads and railways), buildings, and other impacted area. C-band synthetic aperture radar and multi-spectral information (2016–2020) is exploited within a machine learning framework (gradient boosting machines and deep learning) and combined for retrieval with 10 m nominal resolution. In total, an area of 1243 km2 constitutes human-built infrastructure as of 2016–2020. Depending on region, SACHI contains 8%–48% more information (human presence) than in OpenStreetMap. 221 (78%) more settlements are identified than in a recently published dataset for this region. 47% is not covered in a global night-time light dataset from 2016. At least 15% (180 km2) correspond to new or increased detectable human impact since 2000 according to a Landsat-based normalized difference vegetation index trend comparison within the analysis extent. Most of the expanded presence occurred in Russia, but also some in Canada and US. 31% and 5% of impacted area associated predominantly with oil/gas and mining industry respectively has appeared after 2000. 55% of the identified human impacted area will be shifting to above 0 ∘C ground temperature at two meter depth by 2050 if current permafrost warming trends continue at the pace of the last two decades, highlighting the critical importance to better understand how much and where Arctic infrastructure may become threatened by permafrost thaw.

The hadronic form factors of the energy-momentum tensor (EMT) have attracted considerable interest in recent literature. This concerns especially the D-term form factor D(t) with its appealing interpretation in terms of internal forces. With their focus on hadron structure, theoretical studies so far have concentrated mainly on strongly interacting systems with short-range forces. Effects on the EMT due to long-range forces like the electromagnetic interaction have not yet been studied. Electromagnetic forces play a small role in the balance of forces inside the proton, but their long-range nature introduces new features which are not present in systems with short-range forces. We use a simple but consistent classical field theoretical model of the proton to show how the presence of long-range forces alters some notions taken for granted in short-range systems. Our results imply that a more careful definition of the D-term is required when long-range forces are present.

This chapter covers the state of the art in understanding sustainability of cultures in the Arctic, including main theories, methodological approaches, and case studies. Interest in cultural sustainability has recently increased, and we present advances, knowledge gaps, and future research priorities. First, we review the discussion surrounding culture as a ‘fourth pillar’ of sustainability, highlighting concerns and critiques about this topic. Then we discuss the relationship to other concepts, such as the Anthropocene, the ontological turn, and the noosphere. Finally, we illustrate their applications in specific contexts of Arctic indigenous cultures, discuss language retention, and Russian literature on traditional land use. The chapter highlights theoretical considerations regarding cultural sustainability derived primarily from Scandinavian authors, broad discussions surrounding sustainability and related concepts in Russia, and empirical applications of ideas about culture and sustainability in the North American context.

The Drell-Yan process provides important information on the internal structure of hadrons including transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions (TMDs). In this work we present calculations for all leading twist structure functions describing the pion induced Drell-Yan process. The non-perturbative input for the TMDs is taken from the light-front constituent quark model, the spectator model, and available parametrizations of TMDs extracted from the experimental data. TMD evolution is implemented at Next-to-Leading Logarithmic precision for the first time for all asymmetries. Our results are compatible with the first experimental information, help to interpret the data from ongoing experiments, and will allow one to quantitatively assess the models in future when more precise data will become available., Comment: The paper is restructured with new discussions and results, TMD evolution is implemented at Next-to-Leading Logarithmic accuracy for all asymmetries. 27 pages and 10 figures

The covariant parton model is generalized to describe quark correlators in a systematic way. Previous results are reproduced for the T-even leading-twist transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions (TMDs), and for the first time all T-even twist-3 TMDs are evaluated in this model. We apply the approach to evaluate the fully unintegrated quark correlator which allows us to understand the model-specific relations between different TMDs. We verify the consistency of the approach, present numerical results and compare to available TMD parametrizations., Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures

In this interview, Peter Schweitzer discusses his interest in Siberian studies and Arctic research and addresses the so-called “ontological turn” within recent anthropological debates. His earlier academic interests in the hunting and gathering societies of Chukotka and northeastern Siberia took him to the University of Alaska Fairbanks and led to his eventual cooperation with natural science scholars examining climate change in the Arctic region especially in Alaska. Schweitzer’s current research project, “Configurations of Remoteness,” analyzes the construction of the Baykal-Amur Mainline [BAM] as an example of the influence of (transportation) infrastructure on the ecological and social conditions of a region. The research focuses on the mobility and sociality of people living in areas affected by the BAM and questions the construction of remoteness by observing shifts in that mobility and sociality among builders of the BAM. Schweitzer also discusses the current anthropological interest in ontology and suggests that, along with the more-than-human perspective in some of the social sciences, this enables scholars to go beyond the deconstruction of the “other” to allow for “alterity” as a tool in analyzing the world or worlds. The notion of different worlds (and one culture) is more radical than conceiving of one world from different cultural perspectives. A broader approach to human-environment relations that incorporates alterity offers more fruitful tools for researchers, expanding their analytical possibilities.

Selected topics related to the physics of the energy-momentum tensor (EMT) form factors are discussed. The topics are: 1) Fundamental mechanical properties of particles and gravity 2) Mechanical properties of non-spherical particles 3) Gravitational form factors of Goldstone bosons 4) Nucleon's seismology?, Comment: Talk given at 23rd International Spin Physics Symposium - SPIN2018 - 10-14 September, 2018 Ferrara, Italy

We explore the complete cross-section for the production of unpolarized hadrons in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering up to power-suppressed $\mathcal{O}(1/Q^2)$ terms in the Wandzura-Wilczek-type (WW-type) approximation, which consists in systematically assuming that $\bar{q}gq$-correlators are much smaller than $\bar{q}q$-correlators. Under the applicability of WW-type approximations, certain relations among transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions (TMDs) and fragmentation functions (FFs) occur which are used to approximate SIDIS cross-section in terms of a smaller subset of TMDs and FFs. We discuss the applicability of the WW-type approximations on the basis of available data., 6 pages, 3 figures, DIS2019 8-12 April, Torino, Italy

In the hadrocharmonium picture a $\overline{c}c$ state and a light hadron form a bound state. The effective interaction is described in terms of the chromoelectric polarizability of the $\overline{c}c$ state and energy-momentum-tensor densities of the light hadron. This picture is justified in the heavy quark limit, and may successfully account for a hidden-charm pentaquark state recently observed by the LHCb Collaboration. In this work we extend the formalism to the description of hidden-charm tetraquarks, and address the question of whether the resonant states observed by LHCb in the $J/\ensuremath{\psi}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\ensuremath{\phi}$ spectrum can be described as hadrocharmonia. This is a nontrivial question because nothing is known about the $\ensuremath{\phi}$ meson energy-momentum-tensor densities. With rather general assumptions about energy-momentum-tensor densities in the $\ensuremath{\phi}$ meson we show that a $\ensuremath{\psi}(2S)\text{\ensuremath{-}}\ensuremath{\phi}$ bound state can exist, and we obtain a characteristic relation between its mass and width. We show that the tetraquark $X(4274)$ observed by LHCb in the $J/\ensuremath{\psi}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\ensuremath{\phi}$ spectrum is a good candidate for a hadrocharmonium. We make predictions which will allow testing this picture. Our method can be generalized to identify other potential hadrocharmonia.

The form factors of the energy-momentum tensor can be accessed via studies of generalized parton distributions in hard exclusive reactions. In this talk we present recent results on the energy-momentum tensor form factors and densities in the bag model formulated in the large-$N_c$ limit. The simplicity and lucidity of this quark model allow us to investigate many general concepts which have recently attracted interest, including pressure, shear forces and angular momentum density inside the nucleon. The results from the bag model are theoretically consistent, and comply with all general requirements.

The energy-momentum tensor (EMT) form factors pave new ways for exploring hadron structure. Especially the D-term related to the EMT form factor D(t) has received a lot of attention due to its attractive physical interpretation in terms of mechanical properties. We study the nucleon EMT form factors and the associated densities in the bag model which we formulate for an arbitrary number of colors Nc and show that the EMT form factors are consistently described in this model in the large-Nc limit. The simplicity of the model allows us to test in a lucid way many theoretical concepts related to EMT form factors and densities including recently introduced concepts like normal and tangential forces, or monopole and quadrupole contributions to the angular momentum distribution. We also study the D-terms of rho-meson, Roper resonance, other N* states and Delta-resonances. Among the most interesting outcomes is the lucid demonstration of the deeper connection of EMT conservation, stability, the virial theorem and the negative sign of the D-term., Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures, typos fixed, reference added, published version

In July 2009, a public meeting was held in the village of Kivalina, Alaska. It was an opportunity for community members to voice their opinions and concerns regarding the Red Dog Mine’s development plans and especially the mine’s new waste management permit. Community members were concerned about the mine’s impacts on their land, their health, and their community as a whole. Mining has been a part of Alaska’s history since the 1800s while oil was discovered in the 1960s and drilling began on the North Slope in 1971. Indigenous communities in Alaska and Greenland are constantly adapting to the economic, political, social, and cultural environments they are a part of and their small-scale economies depend on their abilities to utilize informal economic means such as subsistence harvesting. Resource development is impacting subsistence in major ways: by threatening the natural environment and by increasing the cash flow to Indigenous people resulting in changing lifestyles, priorities, and values.

The Arctic is among the world’s regions most affected by ongoing and increasing cultural, socio-economic, environmental and climatic changes. Over the last two decades, scholars, policymakers, extractive industries, local, regional and national governments, intergovernmental forums, and non-governmental organizations have turned their attention to the Arctic, its peoples and resources, and to challenges and benefits of impending transformations. The International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP) has now transpired three times, most recently in April 2015 with ICARP III. Arctic sustainability is an issue of increasing concern within the Arctic and beyond it, including in ICARP endeavors. This paper reports some of the key findings of a white paper prepared by an international and interdisciplinary team as part of the ICARP-III process, with support from the International Arctic Science Committee Social and Human Sciences Working Group, the International Arctic Social Sciences Associat...

The chromoelectric polarizability of $J/\psi$ is extracted from lattice QCD data on the nucleon-$J/\psi$ potential in the heavy quark limit. The value of $\alpha(1S) = (1.6 \pm 0.8) \,{\rm GeV}^{-3} $ is obtained. We also comment on the possibility of hadrocharmonia., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, expanded discussion, typos fixed, published version

The D-term is a particle property defined, similarly to the mass and spin, through matrix elements of the energy-momentum tensor. It is currently not known experimentally for any particle, but the D-term of the nucleon can be inferred from studies of hard-exclusive reactions. In this work we show that the D-term of a spin-1/2 fermion is of dynamical origin: it vanishes for a free fermion. This is in pronounced contrast to the bosonic case where already a free spin-0 boson has a non-zero intrinsic D-term as shown in an accompanying work. We illustrate in two simple models how interactions generate the D-term of a fermion with an internal structure, the nucleon. All known matter is composed of elementary fermions. This indicates the importance to study this interesting particle property in more detail, which will provide novel insights especially on the structure of the nucleon., Comment: 8 pages

The physics related to the form factors of the energy momentum tensor spans a wide spectrum of problems, and includes gravitational physics, hard exclusive reactions, hadronic decays of heavy quarkonia, and the physics of exotic hadrons described as hadroquarkonia. It also provides access to the "last global unknown property:" the D-term. We review the physics associated with the form factors of the energy-momentum tensor and the D-term, their interpretations in terms of mechanical properties, their applications, and the current experimental status., Comment: typos fixed, published version

This work deals with form factors of the energy-momentum tensor (EMT) of spin-0 particles and the unknown particle property D-term related to the EMT, and is divided into three parts. The first part explores free, weakly and strongly interacting theories to study EMT form factors with the following findings. (i) The free Klein-Gordon theory predicts for the D-term D = -1. (ii) Even infinitesimally small interactions can drastically impact D. (iii) In strongly interacting theories one can encounter large negative D though notable exceptions exist, which includes Goldstone bosons of chiral symmetry breaking. (iv) Contrary to common belief one cannot arbitrarily add "total derivatives" to the EMT. Rather the EMT must be defined in an unambiguous way. The second part deals with the interpretation of EMT form factors in terms of 3D-densities with following results. (i) The 3D-density formalism is internally consistent. (ii) The description is subject to relativistic corrections which are acceptably small in phenomenologically relevant situations including nucleon and nuclei. (iii) The free field result D=-1 persists when a spin-0 boson is not point-like but "heuristically given some internal structure." The third part investigates the question, whether such "giving of an extended structure" can be implemented dynamically, and has the following insights. (i) We construct a consistent microscopic theory which, in a certain parametric limit, interpolates between extended and point-like solutions. (ii) This theory is exactly solvable which is rare in 3+1 dimensions, admits non-topological solitons of Q-ball-type, and has a Gaussian field amplitude. (iii) The interaction of this theory belongs to a class of logarithmic potentials which were discussed in literature, albeit in different contexts including beyond standard model phenomenology, cosmology, and Higgs physics., 26 pages, 3 figures

While Pope Francis’ popularity grows with the media, disenfranchised Roman Catholics, and groups usually unfriendly toward Catholicism, he arouses concern among Christian traditionalists. Much unease comes from mixed messages utilizing a kind of duplicity different from heretical double-truth teachings of the Latin Middle Ages. This use of alternate truths for different audiences reverses the medieval employment, offering the public not the literal, traditional sense (which the Latin Averroists saw as suited for mass consumption) but symbolic or figurative versions once reserved for the sophisticated and erudite, while insisting that more robustly faithful elites still embrace the stricter teachings of the Church. Moreover, this “reversed” double truth can itself be doubled yet again, if the higher elites privately believe the same, weaker, less robust truths disseminated to the masses, although holding them in a more rationalized, sophisticated form. Modernized double truth is not new, but previously the papacy enforced a singularity for Church teaching. With Pope Francis, however, the doubling of truth appears at the peak of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. This has profound consequences for bioethics, (1) constituting a third version of Catholic moral teaching, following both the Tridentine manualist version, and the rationalist, Vatican II modernist rendition, to form a post-modern approach to moral truth, (2) subverting traditional Catholic bioethicists, while calling into question the Roman Catholic Church as a reliable ally against militant secularism in current bioethics. Ancient Christianity as exemplified in the Orthodox Church offers a better model for bioethics, due to its basis in asceticism, worship, and a noetic approach to truth that is not dependent on the vicissitudes of discursive rationality or a chief primate to arbitrate them.