Klaipėdos universitetas

125 years ago, the mission of the Lithuanian literary, political, and scientific newspaper Varpas (The Bell) published under the Czarist occupation was to interpret the issues of the national life, to raise the nation’s spirit, and to awaken and strengthen the national self-consciousness. Among other issues, the publishers devoted great attention to a fundamental human need, i.e. the maintenance of identity and its relationship to faith (Catholicism). Religion and language were interpreted as closely related phenomena and as the nation’s values of utmost significance for the maintenance of the national identity. Religion, language, and customs were so closely related that the destruction of one could undermine the fundaments of the other elements. People who had learnt their native language from their mothers, and later had disowned it, could have also questioned another legacy of the mother, i.e. faith. As demonstrated in the paper, the henchmen of the czarist government tended to simultaneously destroy both Catholicism and Lithuanianness in different ways, especially during the reign of Mikhail Muravjov. The authors of Varpas considered the Orthodox church to be the main factor of Lithuanians’ assimilation which tried to attract Lithuanians in different ways; another important factor of influence was school which taught children different subjects, even religious studies, in a non-native language. In the implementation of that kind of Muravjov’s strategy, some clergy collaborated with the invaders

Huge impact on the education system based on the universal Catholic pedagogics, and has too much emphasized working activity of the human and underestimated the nature of the personality’s expression, is analyzed in the paper. The mentioned issues are considered regarding the contemporary preparation of seafarers. Aim of the research is a revelation of the universally anthropological value of the education at conditions of protestant pragmatism and technocratism. Social influence of the protestant mentality is discussed. The preparation of seafarers is anthropologically evaluated. Methods such as retrospective analysis of scientific literature, comparison, heuristic analysis, interpretation and systemization were used in the research. Methodological principle of the research is neotomism. Theological tendencies of the protestant technocratism depreciated the personalistic culture that is psychologically compensated emphasizing the modern progress of the technological preparation of seafarers ignoring the broad approach to the valuable potential of the seafarer’s personality self-development. This approach lets create the universal local systems of the seafarers’ higher vocational education, and adequately combine the conditions of the complex human nature development and of the extreme work based on the European culture and authentic Christian heritage of education.

The essay introduces the Gramscian concept of hegemony to the study of identity politics, with a special focus on the distinction established by Jean and John Comaroff between hegemony and identity. The case of Catholic identity in Lithuania is used as an illustration why identity politics tend to fail when they are perceived to serve the ends of ideology rather than creating a hegemonic consensus.