The Witness of the Worshiping Community

(Excerpt) Christ is risen! Alleluia! CR: He is risen indeed! Alleluia!) What more does the church have to do than to proclaim this? What else must the church witness to than the resurrection of the crucified One, who is present in its midst through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments? Oh, yes, we have to spin out the meaning of the cross and resurrection of Christ; we have to celebrate it worthily and compellingly in our public assemblies; we have to reorder our lives In conformity with its implications, turning away from the way of the world and toward the new life under Christ\u27s reign; we have to invite others to reorder their lives according to this new reality for the world; and we want to invite them to join us in a community of proclamation and celebration

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and Lutheran Book of Worship: What Was Renewed?

(Excerpt) Missing first four pages of the 1970s there were those who objected to the idea of liturgy as action because they thought it placed an undue emphasis on human activity instead of on God\u27s work through the means of grace.4 Obviously, liturgy is a work performed by a person or a community, so human action is unavoidable. It is a human act to read scriptures, preach sermons, baptize, or proclaim the words of institution, even though we confess that the Holy Spirit works through these means of grace to create or awaken faith. One may also say that liturgy, like all the activities of the church, is inspired or engendered by the Holy Spirit. For this reason the chief service has been called \u27\u27the divine liturgy (e.g. the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom)

The Meaning of Advent: Implications for Preaching

If we confess that the Holy Spirit, at work in the church at all times and in all places, in some sense inspired the development of a liturgical calendar and a pericopal system for the expansion of the Mystery, the edification of the faithful, and the amplification of preaching possibilities, then we must also confess that the Spirit could effect changes in the meaning of the various feasts and liturgical seasons with the passage of time and with shifts in the expression of piety. The Holy Spirit did not retire in the fourth century any more than he did after the day of Pentecost

Martin Luther\u27s Revision of the Eucharistic Canon in the Formula Missae of 1523

Martin Luther was the most conservative of the Reformers when it came to the work of liturgical revision. This was nowhere more evident than in his first effort at revising the Mass for evangelical usage: the Formula missae et communionis of 1523. He retained the use of the Latin language along with the optional use of lights, incense, and vestments. On the whole, the Formula missae faithfully followed the traditional Western structure, sequence, and content of the Mass. It is characterized not by what Luther added to the traditional Mass, but by what he deleted

Overstating the evidence - double counting in meta-analysis and related problems

Background: The problem of missing studies in meta-analysis has received much attention. Less attention has been paid to the more serious problem of double counting of evidence. Methods: Various problems in overstating the precision of results from meta-analyses are described and illustrated with examples, including papers from leading medical journals. These problems include, but are not limited to, simple double-counting of the same studies, double counting of some aspects of the studies, inappropriate imputation of results, and assigning spurious precision to individual studies. Results: Some suggestions are made as to how the quality and reliability of meta-analysis can be improved. It is proposed that the key to quality in meta-analysis lies in the results being transparent and checkable. Conclusions: Existing quality check lists for meta-analysis do little to encourage an appropriate attitude to combining evidence and to statistical analysis. Journals and other relevant organisations should encourage authors to make data available and make methods explicit. They should also act promptly to withdraw meta-analyses when mistakes are found

Patient experience in primary care: association with patient, physician and practice characteristics in a fee-for-service system.

Nowadays we typically use patient experience as a quality of care indicator, although this has some limitations. The aim of this study was to investigate to what extent patient, physician and practice characteristics were associated with patient-reported experience of care in the major dimensions in family medicine in a fee-for-service system. The data came from the Swiss part of the Quality and Costs of Primary Care (QUALICOPC) study, an international cross-sectional survey. A random sample of 194 Swiss family physicians and 1540 of their patients were included in this analysis. We assessed patient experience using three scores characterising access, communication and continuity-coordination. Multilevel statistical methods were used to analyse these scores based on patient-level, physician-level and practice-level factors. Poor experience of access was associated with poor health (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 1.91, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.54-2.55) but was lower among older patients (IRR 0.75, 95% CI 0.63-0.88). Experience of access was also reported as poorer in urban areas and in practices including other paramedical professionals (besides medical assistants) (IRR 1.27, 95% CI 1.06-1.51). Communication was reported as poorer in practices where physicians achieve greater daily face-to-face consultations (IRR 1.16, 95% CI 1.08-1.25) and in patients reporting higher incomes (IRR 1.24, 95% CI 1.01-1.52). Additionally, younger patients reported poorer continuity-coordination experience. In the continuity-coordination domain, patient experience appeared better in group practices (including other family physicians) and in those of physicians with a greater weekly workload in terms of hours. Finally, we found experience of communication and continuity better in the French-speaking area than German-speaking area of Switzerland. In this study, we found that patient experience in family medicine in Switzerland was very good for all domains studied; access, family physician-patient communication and continuity-coordination of care. Most often, predictive factors of care experience relate to the patient's characteristics, such as age and health status. However, several practice characteristics such as size, composition and functioning (in particular, time spent with the patient) represent potential levers for improving patient-reported experience. The variations observed between the three linguistic areas in Switzerland are also interesting, since they raise the issue of the role of sociocultural factors in this field

Primary care in Switzerland: evolution of physicians' profile and activities in twenty years (1993-2012).

BACKGROUND: According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Swiss healthcare system is one of the most effective in the world. Yet, as other occidental countries, it has to face the increase of chronic diseases frequency and its resulting cost, particularly for primary care (PC). However very few consistent data are available to describe PC features and its evolution over time. The aim of this study is to describe the evolution of the Swiss PC physicians' (PCPs) profile and activities between 1993 and 2012. METHODS: The date come from two independent European surveys carried out in Switzerland respectively in 1993 and 2012. Both surveys were cross-sectional ones and based on representative samples of 200 PCPs, interviewed by questionnaire. RESULTS: In 20 years, PCPs became older (median age 46 vs 56, p < 0.001) and more feminized (7 % vs 22 %, p < 0.001). Nowadays, they more often work in group practices (28 % vs 52 % in 2012, p < 0.001) and are more involved in other paid activities (28 % vs 66 % in 2012, p < 0.001). All the PCPs have a computer in 2012 (78 % in 1993, p < 0.001) and it is mostly used for keeping records of consultations (47 %). The number of daily face-to-face contacts with patients decreased from 31 to 24 but the average length rose from 15 to 20 min (p < 0.001). PCPs provide fewer pediatric and gynecological services but their activity remains globally unchanged in other domains. The frequency of meetings with other disciplines decreased significantly (e.g. once/month face-to-face meets with ambulatory specialists: 78 % vs 23 % in 2012, p < 0.001). The involvement of PCPs in follow-up and treatment of chronic disease globally little differed. In 2012, 8.5 % of the PCPs never performed any chirurgical acts (vs 0 % in 1993, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: This study showed a substantial evolution of Swiss PC over the last twenty years in terms of socio-demographic, organizational and service provided. The main changes include: feminization and ageing, lower diversity in services provided, fewer but longer consultations. These changes may have important implications for patients' management and will need to be considered for health planning purposes

Primary prevention of sexually transmitted infections in Switzerland: practices of family physicians and their determinants-a national cross-sectional survey.

To describe the activities of general practitioners (GPs) pertaining to primary prevention in the field of affective and sexual life, studying the advice they provide as well as their vaccination practices. Cross-sectional national survey. The study was carried out using the Swiss Primary Care Active Monitoring GPs' network, a national GP network created in 2012. One hundred and seventy Swiss GPs, from a random sample from professional lists stratified by canton, participated in the present study. Prevention practices against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) performed by GPs through advice provided as well as their vaccination practices. Predictive factor of these practices through their links with the doctors' relevant characteristics and their opinions about STI prevention. Approximately 80% consider prevention in the area of affective and sexual life to be part of their duty and discuss it easily with patients. Most of them spontaneously give advice regarding STIs during a routine consultation. Regarding human papillomavirus (HPV) immunisation in adults, almost half of GPs report never doing it, while almost 75% often or always immunise their adult patients against hepatitis B. Higher numbers of consultations per day are associated with vaccinating more adults against HPV (OR 1.13 (1.05 to 1.23)) and against hepatitis A (OR 1.17 (1.05 to 1.31)). Vaccinating children against hepatitis B is associated with practising in rural areas (OR 4.64 (1.20 to 17.98)). GPs practising in the French-speaking region of Switzerland immunise children less against HPV (OR 0.40 (0.20 to 0.80)). Longer consultations are associated with providing advice on affective and sexual life during a first consultation (OR 1.08 (1.01 to 1.14)). Swiss GPs are involved in primary prevention against STIs and consider it as their responsibility. Prevention practices are associated with GPs' favourable opinions on prevention

Emergence of long-range order in BaTiO3 from local symmetry-breaking distortions

By using a symmetry motivated basis to evaluate local distortions against pair distribution function data (PDF), we show without prior bias, that the off-centre Ti displacements in the archetypal ferroelectric BaTiO3 are zone centred and rhombohedral-like in nature across its known ferroelectric and paraelectric phases. With our newly-gained insight we construct a simple Monte Carlo (MC) model which captures our main experimental findings and demonstrate how the rich crystallographic phase diagram of BaTiO3 emerges from correlations of local symmetry-breaking distortions alone. Our results strongly support the order-disorder picture for these phase transitions, but can also be reconciled with the soft-mode theory of BaTiO3 that is supported by some spectroscopic techniques.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure