Klaipėdos universitetas

Jesus, the Son of God, through whom all things were created, united with the world when taking on a human body in the womb of Virgin Mary. Therefore, the Church addresses Mary as Mother while praying for protection and care. Pope Francis is particularly devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Holy Father Francis emphasises that Mary, while carefully watching Jesus fulfilling His mission, always points to Her Son Jesus and not to Herself. The article discusses the aspects of Pope Francis’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and his teaching about the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The idea of human reason’s positivist self-limitation is used by Benedict XVI and others to characterize an aspect of the long-lasting intellectual situation of Western technological-scientific civilization. Liberating human reason from its positivist self-limitation requires, in general, an overcoming of the historical process of Natural Science’s drifting away from Philosophy. In the case of Physics, it requires a point where both physics and philosophy have to deal together with the same problem. This paper first identifies a problem caused by specific reductionisms in Physics. These reductionisms cause certain deformations of physical knowledge, which in turn makes it desirable for physicists to dispose of an assessment of them. The paper then proposes specific steps in philosophically assessing these reductionisms. Such an assessment in turn is based on common experiential knowledge which is not restricted by any reductionisms. That excludes experiments and, thus, cannot be done with physical means, but only with philosophical ones. All this already constitutes a grain of sand of human reason’s liberation from its positivist self-limitation. It is not any imposition from outside physics, but a desideratum from inside physics. The second purpose of this paper is to briefly present the main ideas of that assessment. Implementing its consequences would bring about an epistemological mindset in Physics as a whole that is open to natural theology. Furthermore, it is suited to mitigate, or even eliminate, a certain quasi-contradiction in a physicist’s mind and professional work. To show that is the third purpose of this paper. Precisely these two issues offer a certain flanking aid to, though not a part of, the Evangelization. More specifically, that flanking aid consists in offering the epistemological mindset of Natural Realism and can be circumscribed by four aspects: the first is a general corroboration of the stance that Natural Realism is the true form of man’s relationship to reality; the second is a sort of contemplative mindset; the third is the elimination or the mitigating of the quasi contradiction referred to in the preceeding paragraph, and which can be called ‘unity of life’. The fourth aspect is a ripe fruit of the three aforementioned: an uncommon quietness and serenity of the spirit.

This article analyses the regional disparities of Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia). The investigation period (2004–2013) based on two very important moments for Baltic countries – accession to EU and the end of the EU funding period 2007–2013. It also analyses the change of socio-economic indicators such as the unemployment rate, the average gross wages and salaries and GDP per capita in regions of Baltic countries. The study aim was to determine regions where the unemployment rate is by 35 % higher than the national average and wages (salaries) are less than 75 % of the national average.

In recent years many countries have experienced stagnation or even decline in the amount of mortgage credits granted to households. The credit-granting process has become significantly complicated, less transparent and excessively time consuming. This study seeks to define the improvement opportunities for credit granting through creation of a simple, transparent and accountable framework of decision-making process. To achieve this purpose the authors used qualitative method – structured interview and graphical tools – decision tree. The developed framework makes it possible to identify areas of the credit granting that might have potential for considerable improvements. The empirical results of the study indicate that decision-making process in credit granting has considerable potential for improvements. The developed framework is supposed to help commercial banks to improve the quality and efficiency of the decision-making process in the credit granting and reduce cost of credit granting process. This is possible to achieve by cutting down the duration time of alternative solutions with negative outcome – credit denial. This research introduces a valuable framework of transparent and accountable model of decision-making process in the credit granting. The authors have found that the introduced framework is suitable not only for commercial banks but also for a wide range of organizations having similar complicated and multiple staged decision-making processes.

This article analyzes paternal time allocation with children in Lithuania and explores paternal and spousal cross effects in time investment. Effects of paternal health status, alcohol consumption and health insurance status on paternal-child time allocation are also examined. The research finds a modest after-tax family income effect for paternal time, but not when examining paternal-spousal cross effects for child time investment. Regarding paternal-spousal cross effects, while both are very highly significant statistically, this research finds almost twice the complementarity for the Lithuanian paternal hour with children for spousal time with children than for a spousal hour for paternal time with children. The paper identifies several possible factors in the Lithuanian context contributing to a complementary effect and away from a substitutionary effect. Spousal age and educational effects – the former negative, the latter positive – are found for spousal time allocation with children but not found significant paternally. To our knowledge this is the first study to examine paternal time allocation in Lithuania for children including health status, alcohol consumption, insurance status and paternal/spousal cross effects for time allocation with children. Compared to our previous research, it also supports caution against assuming that parental cross effects on time allocation in a Lithuanian social context mirror such in the U.S.

The authors of this article examine the evaluation of education service quality from parents’ perspective, since parents as well as their children are the consumers of these service. Often there is a trend in Lithuania that education services are provided to children; even though, the service provision contract is signed between the education institution and parents. On the other hand, a part of services of specialists of education assistance are dedicated to parents. Moreover, parent education, cooperation and communication process is between the education institution and parents. The education institution is not able to solve most of the problems without the assistance of parents. Therefore, the authors present the point of view of 400 parents towards the quality of the provided education services.

The article presents a survey on Klaipėda district residents’ attitude towards corruption. It is necessary to evaluate the level of corruption in a particular local area because understanding the incentives for corruption and self-dealing is a precondition for making progress. Citizens’ perceptions are important for local governments where citizens have more direct impact on political representation and service provision in their communities. The research revealed that Klaipėda district residents’ attitude towards corruption is negative and the population is aware of the harm caused by corruption. The respondents rarely face the forms of corruption practices. Most respondents think that excessive bureaucracy and the complexity of the legal framework, which is constantly changing, contribute to prevalence of corruption. Most respondents have given bribes to medical personnel. The respondents assume that the most effective anti-corruption means is the inevitability of punishment, as well as giving publicity to corruption acts. When faced with corruption, residents would turn to law enforcement bodies and use anonymous helpline.

In the period of the 18th and 19th century, the interest in the ethno-cultural identity of various ethnic groups had begun to grow in Germany. For more than forty years a famous researcher of Baltic languages, ethnographer and archaeologist prof. Adalbert Bezzenberger focused his activities on the Curonian Spit by devoting his attention to the history and culture of the settlements and the endangered Kursenieku language. His work “Über die Sprache der preußischen Letten” (1888) became the first professional study of the Kursenieku language. Not only does the work contain a description of the Kursenieku language prepared in accordance with the tradition of comparative linguistics of that time, and is based on a large amount of factual materials accumulated by the investigator himself, but it also includes a number of texts and a glossary. Since the Kursenieku language did not have a written form, every documenter, including Bezzenberger, used one’s own system of spelling. This work is important for the reconstruction of the Kursenieku language of that time, as well as for the overall research of the history of the language in general. The article presents the assessment of Bezzenberger’s contribution to documenting the Kursenieku language in the general context of written sources of the Kursenieku language, it also aims at discerning the tendencies of language development reflected in sources of different chronological periods.

Before the mid-20th century, the Jews in Žemaitija were the most numerous and economically and culturally significant minority, with close contacts with the Žemaitijans. The paper focuses on the stereotypical characteristics of Jews as reflected in Žemaitijan dialect texts from an ethnolinguistic point of view. The analysis of these characteristics provides knowledge about the evaluated nation from the perspective of the evaluating nation. The research into stereotypical images of Jews rests on the view that they consist of a specific set of certain common characteristics and traits, and an analysis of linguistic expression provides more detailed information about them. The research has revealed that the ethnic stereotype of Jewish people in Žemaitijan dialect texts is quite positive.

The article is intended to introduce the topicality of one subdialect (namely, Northern Samogitians of Kretinga) referring to and defining its sociocultural identity, i.e. the usage of subdialect, and various factors, which have the most important role – sufficiently developed infrastructure, predominating ideology and the positive attitudes based on value system of users of the dialect.