Fonned and Refonned: What God Effects through the Liturgical Assembly of Christians

(Excerpt) It is a privilege to be invited to offer a keynote address to the Institute of Liturgical Studies, where so much serious reflection and energy for the renewal and study of Christian worship has been generated. As will become clear to you almost immediately, keynote today does not mean key in the sense of offering the key concept that is needed to unlock all subsequent deliberation on the important topic of forming Christians. In my case, key refers more frankly and realistically to the indispensable need to start somewhere by opening the door to subsequent work in the institute-with its speakers, its group sessions and workshops, and its liturgies. In a real sense what is needed at this year\u27s institute is not so much a key but a whole ring of keys. We who gather build on the two previous years\u27 work on worship, culture, and catholicity. Having explored the tensions between worship and culture in 1997, and the eschatological dimensions of those relationships in 1998, the institute this year turns to a moment of advocacy for the indispensable task of forming Christians

Transformed and Transforming: What God Effects through the Presence of Christians in the World

(Excerpt) On the model of mystagogy: remember your experience last night at the vigil, please, and recall these words from the eucharistic prayer: God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table for solace only and not for strength; for pardon only and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ that we may worthily serve the world in his name.\u27 And from Welcome to Christ: Dear Christian friends: Baptized into the priesthood of Christ, we are all called by the Holy Spirit to offer ourselves to the Lord of all creation in thanksgiving for all that God has done and continues to do fur us. It is our privilege to affirm those who are endeavoring to carry out their vocation as Christians in the world.

Criteria for central bank assets: lessons from pre-ECB France

The Banque de France was founded in 1800 to discount bills and issue currency. Initially, it was a private institution run by its stockholders. The Banque was nationalized in 1936 and its governing council was staffed by officials with a mandate to represent various interests in society. The Banque's autonomy was largely restored in 1973, and the Banque became officially independent in 1994. Whereas the Banque had originally lent appreciable sums to the Treasury, such lending was scheduled to be eliminated beginning in 1993 as part of the move toward monetary union. At that time the monetary policy operations of the Banque were revised substantially. The Banque also operates as a commercial bank, including taking deposits and holding an investment portfolio, although such activities are secondary to its responsibilities as the central bank.Banks and banking, Central - France ; Banque de France ; Monetary policy - France

Structure and dynamics of topological defects in a glassy liquid on a negatively curved manifold

We study the low-temperature regime of an atomic liquid on the hyperbolic plane by means of molecular dynamics simulation and we compare the results to a continuum theory of defects in a negatively curved hexagonal background. In agreement with the theory and previous results on positively curved (spherical) surfaces, we find that the atomic configurations consist of isolated defect structures, dubbed "grain boundary scars", that form around an irreducible density of curvature-induced disclinations in an otherwise hexagonal background. We investigate the structure and the dynamics of these grain boundary scars

What Makes an Economy Productive and Progressive? What Are the Needed Institutions?

Institutions again have become the focus of the theorizing and empirical work of economists concerned with the determinants of economic growth, and of cross country differences in income levels. One central argument of this paper is that institutions and institutional change need to be understood as tightly intertwined with the technologies used in an economy, and with technological change. A second argument is that, in general, societies have very limited ability to design institutions that are effective, and that the processes of institutional reform work erratically.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

The Market Economy, and the Scientific Commons

It is widely believed that while society allows technology to be private property, scientific knowledge is public and open. However, over the past quarter-century there has been increasing patenting of quite basic scientific knowledge. This essay argues that this is potentially a very serious problem. The future development of technology, as well as the future progress of science, is greatly facilitated when basic scientific knowledge is public and open. The paper explores the various factors that have led to the growing privatization of scientific knowledge. And it explores a variety of policy changes that can stop, and even reverse, these trends.Science, Technology, Patents, Open Knowledge.

Economic Development from the Perspective of Evolutionary Economic Theory

The purpose of the article is to discuss the differences between the evolutionary economic theory and the neoclassical theory from the appreciative viewpoint that aims to capture the basics of what actually is going on, leaving aside formal mathematical modeling in the two theories. As the result, evolutionary theory sees the economy as always in the process of change that involves economic actors taking actions that break from previous behavior, and an environment in continuing flux because of the innovation. While neoclassical theory sees the economy as at rest, or undergoing well anticipated change it has nothing to say about these kinds of conditions. Therefore the author believes the processes of economic catch-up have to proceed under the implicit or explicit guidance of an evolutionary economic theory.

Empirical evidence on the recent behavior and usefulness of simple-sum and weighted measures of the money stock (commentary)

Money supply