Mokslo ir tikėjimo dialogai. Tiltai. Priedas: Mokslo darbai

In today’s productivity-oriented culture, topics related to death, illness, and loss are avoided. However, sooner or later people fall ill, die and various losses accompany everyone’s life. These experiences come together with spiritual pain, grief, tension, anxiety, fear and anger. If not addressed properly, these feelings cause physical and mental illnesses, loss of one’s identity, psychological trauma and interfere with fulfilling relationships. Spiritual health is the most important indicator of human health and the quality of life. It is also vital to the overall health of a person and is related to the essence of a human being and to what is valued and truly cherished by a particular person. This article reveals the changes in the state of a person in the presence of a disease from a psychological and theological perspective by analysing scientific literature, interpreting and systematizing information.

Self-leadership as self-directed leadership is based on the values of the whole person according to all his/her natural needs to strive not only for their sociobiological satisfaction, but also for God, a spirituality, nobility, higher meaning based on incomparable ideals. The pursuit of values is aided by following leaders, including clergy as moral authorities. This is especially necessary from a point of view of the special psychological experiences in the maritime business. The moral and business authority of the leader is valid for employees as the most important psychological support for their activities. Transcendental motivation is noble and very practical in all cases of professional and personal life. Ideally, becoming a leader is based on authentic following God as the great Leader. There are many opportunities to strengthen the self-leadership of maritime business participants on the basis of secular values. The difference is that parents, brothers or sisters, a friend, a clergyman, TV shows, and movies are more involved in the formation of sociocentric values. Parents, wife, familiar seafarer, teachers, board leaders or leaders in a port company, clergyman, TV shows, films, and NGOs are the most significant moral authorities for the transcendent values of maritime business participants.

A man living in an ultramodern society is increasingly questioning the meaning of his own existence, which is closely related to the finding of the answer of his own identity and the understanding of his place in the family and the society. In this process the very important place goes to the question of males self-realization in the labor market and to the way how a woman enters in to the labor market. The relationship between these two protagonists – the man and the woman – and the correlation of that relationship is what brings the man or the father to identity crises. The influence of the labor market is one of the most important factors contributing to identity crises in the sphere of been a male and in the sphere of being a woman. In this article we will analyse the changes of the ultramodern society, which have their connection with the transformations in the labor market and their influence on the men and the fathers of the ultramodern society.

for a long time to Lithuanian researchers. Therefore, German historiographic and local traditions became the knowledge transferor about the first churches in the Prussian lands to the north of the right bank of the Nemunas. The thinking constructs formed by German historiographic and local traditions were accepted without critical evaluation of Lithuanian historiography. The age of particular buildings was directly linked to the first mention of parishes or believers’ community, artefacts, local traditions and etc. However, such uncritical access is not always good. This is evidenced by the case of Rusnė (Russ) church and the story of the “aging” of Viešvilė (Wischwill) church which has been discussed more widely in the article.

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.

When Juozapas Mykolas Karpis became bishop of Samogitia, he published Epistola pastoralis – pastoral letter for clergy and seculars. In historiography it is known for its religious and ethnographical things and even to specialists in Lithuanian philology. However, it becomes the main object of this article because of the purpose to settle what kind of Samogitian diocese he wanted to create and how many influences for this process had his political activity. In the preface shortly introduced the concept of pastoral letter and its origin. Also, is given short descriptions of first pastoral letters in Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the first section introduced J. M. Karpis life details needed for the research. It helps to reveal future bishop experience, which could have influence, direct and indirect, for letters creation. In the second section and its subsections introduced some communities and problems descriptive in pastoral letter, through which reveals not even Samogitian episcopate situation, but and J. M. Karpis purposes in this diocese.

The analysis of the article focuses on the process of spiritual growth as integral component of every Christian life. The terminological and theoretical spectrum of this phenomenon is discussed together with elaboration of the dynamics, structure, and stages of spiritual growth. The significance of spiritual growth from the biblical and Church Magisterium perspectives is actualized. From these perspectives the process of spiritual growth is seen as a universal calling of the Church and its members. The possible linkages between theology and psychology are discussed as ways which can help to retain the holistic approach to the personal growth and one’s relationship with God.

In the 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council and the Moscow Patriarchate invited Christian churches to develop closer ecumenical relationships, the first signs of ecumenism appeared in Lithuania. In 1965, the first ecumenical service was held in the Šilutė Lutheran Church, which was attended by representatives of four denominations. Such ecumenical relations soon became a common phenomenon in Soviet Lithuania. The article analyzes the origins of the ecumenical movement and its development in Lithuania, as well as the reaction of the Commissioner of the Council of Religious Affairs in Moscow for Lithuania to this new religious phenomenon.

Der Artikel ist vorbereitet auf Grund der in den letzten Jahren erschienener und leicht erreichbarer fülle der verschiedenen Erinnerungen die sind geschrieben von der ehemaligen Einwohnern des Memellandes – genau litauischen wie deutschen Herkunft. Das Ziel dieser Forschung ist erkennen wie durch die Entwicklung des regionalen Selbstbewusstseins verwirklichten sich die Ideen und Modellen des nationalen und konfessionellen Bewusstseins die waren entwickelt von den Stellvertretern der selber Nation aber in den Verschiedenen historischen und konfessionellen umständen.