Świadek męczeństwa i jego rola w świetle jurysprudencji Kongregacji Spraw Kanonizacyjnych

In the legal understanding, martyrdom requires external recognition as well as external evaluation. For this reason, the visual witness appears in the context of death (the witness of martyrdom). His job is to cognitively and consciously evaluate the fact of the physical loss of life. The reason to begin the process of canonization can only come about in close connection with the evaluation of internal state of love and faith of the martyred person; but not necessarily. Since death for the faith has the value of the Sacrament of Baptism, it may happen that an unbeliever or someone not practicing his faith, can give his life for the faith. Through this act, he absolves his unbelief or committed sins and can become blessed or a saint of the church. This is, however, a unique gift of God’s grace which is rather rare. Usually a zealous, faith-filled life, prepares the believer to follow the footprints of his Master and give his own life.The witness is the person who knows something important about the ongoing canonization case. He is a person who personally saw (de visu) or heard (ex auditu) something important in connection with the death of a particular person whose case is in process of establishing a potential martyrdom. When there is a lack of witness de visu there is a need to examine the witness ex auditu or else ex auditu a videntibus. These are the persons who do not know the development of these tragic events personally, but heard about them from the person (people) who directly participated in those events.In the legal understanding, martyrdom requires external recognition as well as external evaluation. For this reason, the visual witness appears in the context of death (the witness of martyrdom). His job is to cognitively and consciously evaluate the fact of the physical loss of life. The reason to begin the process of canonization can only come about in close connection with the evaluation of internal state of love and faith of the martyred person; but not necessarily. Since death for the faith has the value of the Sacrament of Baptism, it may happen that an unbeliever or someone not practicing his faith, can give his life for the faith. Through this act, he absolves his unbelief or committed sins and can become blessed or a saint of the church. This is, however, a unique gift of God’s grace which is rather rare. Usually a zealous, faith-filled life, prepares the believer to follow the footprints of his Master and give his own life.The witness is the person who knows something important about the ongoing canonization case. He is a person who personally saw (de visu) or heard (ex auditu) something important in connection with the death of a particular person whose case is in process of establishing a potential martyrdom. When there is a lack of witness de visu there is a need to examine the witness ex auditu or else ex auditu a videntibus. These are the persons who do not know the development of these tragic events personally, but heard about them from the person (people) who directly participated in those events

Misja Kościoła w ujęciu kardynała Kurta Kocha. Kościół w dialogu ekumenicznym

Cardinal Kurt Koch has been serving as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (now: Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity) since July 1, 2010 and at the same time as president of the Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism. Administrative duties have not impoverished or diminished his theological reflection. His thought is in many ways original and lucid. He refers with respect to tradition, but he breathes equally strongly the problems of the present. At the center of his reflections is the mystery of the Church and its vocation to promote unity among the witnesses of Christ. He is convinced that Christians are persecuted today not because they are Catholics or Orthodox, Protestants or Pentecostals, but because they are Christians. This text presents the figure and some views on his ecclesiology.Kard. Kurt Koch od 1 lipca 2010 r. pełni obowiązki przewodniczącego Papieskiej Rady ds. Popierania Jedności Chrześcijan (obecnie: Dykasterii ds. Popierania Jedności Chrześcijan) i jednocześnie przewodniczącego Komisji ds. Kontaktów Religijnych z Judaizmem. Obowiązki administracyjne nie zubożyły i nie pomniejszyły jego refleksji naukowej. Jego myśl jest w wielu aspektach oryginalna i klarowana. Odnosi się z szacunkiem do tradycji, ale równie mocno oddycha problemami współczesności. W centrum jego rozważań jest tajemnica Kościoła i jego powołania do promowania jedności wśród świadków Chrystusa. Jest bowiem przekonany, że chrześcijanie są dzisiaj prześladowani nie dlatego, że są katolikami czy prawosławnymi, protestantami czy zielonoświątkowcami, ale dlatego, że są chrześcijanami. Niniejszy tekst prezentuje postać i kilka spojrzeń na jego eklezjologię w wymiarze ekumenicznym. Cardinal Kurt Koch has been serving as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (now: Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity) since July 1, 2010 and at the same time as president of the Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism. Administrative duties have not impoverished or diminished his theological reflection. His thought is in many ways original and lucid. He refers with respect to tradition, but he breathes equally strongly the problems of the present. At the center of his reflections is the mystery of the Church and its vocation to promote unity among the witnesses of Christ. He is convinced that Christians are persecuted today not because they are Catholics or Orthodox, Protestants or Pentecostals, but because they are Christians. This text presents the figure and some views on his ecclesiology in the ecumenical dimension

Maria – Mutter der Hoffnung und des Trostes. Der spezifische Beitrag der Ordensperson im Dienst des Evangeliums der Hoffnung

When we ask about the specific contribution of consecrated persons in the service of the Gospel of hope, we reply that it can be essentially summed up by three behaviors. Firstly, when we talk about hope, it means that we are experiencing some form of anxiety, possibly fear of distress. It is necessary, therefore, to look at fear from the perspective of Christian hope, which overcomes the fear, distances and eliminates any distress. Secondly, when we try to decipher the time of trials in its fullest sense, both spiritual as well as existential experience, familial or communal, we understand it as another way of experiencing hope. Thirdly, He gives strength in the holy anxiety about the things of the Lord, in order to realize what he is calling one to do. He will give the strength to follow this road and arrive at the goal of one’s journey.When we ask about the specific contribution of consecrated persons in the service of the Gospel of hope, we reply that it can be essentially summed up by three behaviors. Firstly, when we talk about hope, it means that we are experiencing some form of anxiety, possibly fear of distress. It is necessary, therefore, to look at fear from the perspective of Christian hope, which overcomes the fear, distances and eliminates any distress. Secondly, when we try to decipher the time of trials in its fullest sense, both spiritual as well as existential experience, familial or communal, we understand it as another way of experiencing hope. Thirdly, He gives strength in the holy anxiety about the things of the Lord, in order to realize what he is calling one to do. He will give the strength to follow this road and arrive at the goal of one’s journey

Il ‘mondo’ dei Padri della Chiesa fra Occidente e Oriente

The “world” of the Church’s Fathers. Between Occident and Orient – the same Spirit but a different Sensibility The word Father is used in the New Testament to mean a teacher of spiritual things: “For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the Gospel, I have begotten you. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:15, 16). The first teachers of Christianity seem to be collectively spoken of as “the Fathers” (2 Peter 3:4). The Fathers have learnt from other Fathers, and in the last resort from the Apostles, who are sometimes called Fathers in this sense: “They are your Fathers”, says St. Leo, of the Princes of the Apostles, speaking to the Romans. The Fathers of the whole Church are especially the earlier teachers, who instructed it in the teaching of the Apostles, during its earliest stage. It is difficult to define the boundaries of the first age of the Church, or the age of the Fathers. It is commonly held that the Council of Chalcedon in 451 has to be considered the final limit of the period of the early Church. Nevertheless, “The Fathers” must undoubtedly include, in the West, St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636), and in the East, St. John Damascene (d. about 754

Changed Patterns of Genomic Variation Following Recent Domestication: Selection Sweeps in Farmed Atlantic Salmon

The introduction of wild Atlantic salmon into captivity, and their subsequent artificial selection for production traits, has caused phenotypic differences between domesticated fish and their wild counterparts. Identification of regions of the genome underling these changes offers the promise of characterizing the early biological consequences of domestication. In the current study, we sequenced a population of farmed European Atlantic salmon and compared the observed patterns of SNP variation to those found in conspecific wild populations. This identified 139 genomic regions that contained significantly elevated SNP homozygosity in farmed fish when compared to their wild counterparts. The most extreme was adjacent to versican, a gene involved in control of neural crest cell migration. To control for false positive signals, a second and independent dataset of farmed and wild European Atlantic salmon was assessed using the same methodology. A total of 81 outlier regions detected in the first dataset showed significantly reduced homozygosity within the second one, strongly suggesting the genomic regions identified are enriched for true selection sweeps. Examination of the associated genes identified a number previously characterized as targets of selection in other domestic species and that have roles in development, behavior and olfactory system. These include arcvf, sema6, errb4, id2-like, and 6n1-like genes. Finally, we searched for evidence of parallel sweeps using a farmed population of North American origin. This failed to detect a convincing overlap to the putative sweeps present in European populations, suggesting the factors that drive patterns of variation under domestication and early artificial selection were largely independent. This is the first analysis on domestication of aquaculture species exploiting whole-genome sequence data and resulted in the identification of sweeps common to multiple independent populations of farmed European Atlantic salmon

Linkage Disequilibrium Mapping in Domestic Dog Breeds Narrows the Progressive Rod-Cone Degeneration Interval and Identifies Ancestral Disease-Transmitting Chromosome

Canine progressive rod–cone degeneration (prcd) is a retinal disease previously mapped to a broad, gene-rich centromeric region of canine chromosome 9. As allelic disorders are present in multiple breeds, we used linkage disequilibrium (LD) to narrow the ∼6.4-Mb interval candidate region. Multiple dog breeds, each representing genetically isolated populations, were typed for SNPs and other polymorphisms identified from BACs. The candidate region was initially localized to a 1.5-Mb zero recombination interval between growth factor receptor-bound protein 2 (GRB2) and SEC14-like 1 (SEC14L). A fine-scale haplotype of the region was developed, which reduced the LD interval to 106 kb and identified a conserved haplotype of 98 polymorphisms present in all prcd-affected chromosomes from 14 different dog breeds. The findings strongly suggest that a common ancestor transmitted the prcd disease allele to many of the modern dog breeds and demonstrate the power of the LD approach in the canine model

Fine-scale population structure analysis of seven local Swiss sheep breeds using genome-wide SNP data

As part of the global sheep Hapmap project, 24 individuals from each of seven indigenous Swiss sheep breeds (Bundner Oberländer sheep (BOS), Engadine Red sheep (ERS), Swiss Black-Brown Mountain sheep (SBS), Swiss Mirror sheep (SMS), Swiss White Alpine (SWA) sheep, Valais Blacknose sheep (VBS) and Valais Red sheep (VRS)), were genotyped using Illumina's Ovine SNP50 BeadChip. In total, 167 animals were subjected to a detailed analysis for genetic diversity using 45193 informative single nucleotide polymorphisms. The results of the phylogenetic analyses supported the known proximity between populations such as VBS and VRS or SMS and SWA. Average genomic relatedness within a breed was found to be 12 percent (BOS), 5 percent (ERS), 9 percent (SBS), 10 percent (SMS), 9 percent (SWA), 12 percent (VBS) and 20 percent (VRS). Furthermore, genomic relationships between breeds were found for single individuals from SWA and SMS, VRS and VBS as well as VRS and BOS. In addition, seven out of 40 indicated parent-offspring pairs could not be confirmed. These results were further supported by results from the genome-wide population cluster analysis. This study provides a better understanding of fine-scale population structures within and between Swiss sheep breeds. This relevant information will help to increase the conservation activities of the local Swiss sheep breed

Use of domesticated pigs by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in northwestern Europe

Acknowledgements We thank the Archaeological State Museum Schleswig-Holstein, the Archaeological State Offices of Brandenburg, Lower Saxony and Saxony and the following individuals who provided sample material: Betty Arndt, Jo¨rg Ewersen, Frederick Feulner, Susanne Hanik, Ru¨diger Krause, Jochen Reinhard, Uwe Reuter, Karl-Heinz Ro¨hrig, Maguerita Scha¨fer, Jo¨rg Schibler, Reinhold Schoon, Regina Smolnik, Thomas Terberger and Ingrid Ulbricht. We are grateful to Ulrich Schmo¨lcke, Michael Forster, Peter Forster and Aikaterini Glykou for their support and comments on the manuscript. We also thank many institutions and individuals that provided sample material and access to collections, especially the curators of the Museum fu¨r Naturkunde, Berlin; Muse´um National d0 Histoire Naturelle, Paris; Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C.; Zoologische Staatssammlung, Mu¨nchen; Museum fu¨r Haustierkunde, Halle; the American Museum of Natural History, New-York. This work was funded by the Graduate School ‘Human Development in Landscapes’ at Kiel University (CAU) and supported by NERC project Grant NE/F003382/1. Radiocarbon dating was carried out at the Leibniz Laboratory, CAU. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Cloning and Characterization of the Canine Photoreceptor Specific Cone-Rod Homeobox (CRX) Gene and Evaluation as a Candidate for Early Onset Photoreceptor Diseases in the Dog

Purpose: The cone-rod homeobox protein (CRX) is a member of the homeodomain-containing protein family expressed in the retinal photoreceptors and pinealocytes; it is involved in the regulation of the coordinate expression of multiple photoreceptor specific genes during retinal development. Mutations in the CRX gene are causally associated with retinal degeneration phenotypes in man. To clone the full length cDNA, characterize the genomic organization of canine CRX, map the gene in a radiation hybrid (RH) panel, and evaluate it as a candidate for canine inherited retinal degenerations. Methods: cDNA representational difference analysis (RDA) was done using normal and cone degeneration (cd) affected retinas. Exonic primers designed from consensus sequences of mammalian CRX cDNA were used to amplify and sequence dog genomic DNA. Canine specific primers were used for RH mapping of CRX on the RH3000 cell line. Linkage, sequencing and/or mapping the disease locus was used to evaluate CRX as a disease associated candidate gene. Results: The gene comprises three exons and two introns and codes for a transcript with a 900 bp open reading frame (ORF). In agreement with human map data, RH mapping placed canine CRX on the proximal end of CFA1, in a region of synteny with HSA19q13-q13.3. Based on RH mapping, meiotic linkage or sequencing data, we excluded CRX as the cause of canine early onset photoreceptor degenerations affecting Alaskan malamutes (cd), collies (rod-cone dysplasia 2, rcd2), American Staffordshire terriers, and Tibetan terriers. Conclusions: Canine CRX has a high level of nucleotide and amino acid sequence identity with ortholgous sequences reported for other species. The gene is excluded from causal association with 4 early onset photoreceptor diseases affecting cones (cd) or rods and cones (rcd2, PRA in American Staffordshire terriers, and Tibetan terriers)