...Running head: ASSOCIATED CATHOLIC CHARITIES CUSTOMER SATISFACTION The Customer Satisfaction of Associated Catholic Charities Of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston Jill Brasher Elizabeth Haberer Mini Joseph Reena Mathew Karen Villareal Kirk Workman Craig Wondergem University of Houston Abstract One hundred seventy four individuals participated in a study to measure satisfaction of services received. The study hypothesized that at least 80 percent of the clients surveyed would report satisfaction with the services they received from the Associated Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston (ACC). The study also hypothesized that there would be no significant differences between gender and reported satisfaction. It was further hypothesized that there would be no significant differences between ethnicity and reported satisfaction. Moreover, it was hypothesized that there would be a positive correlation between age and reported satisfaction scores. A ten question three point Likert scale instrument to survey clients satisfaction with convenience, timeliness, language, treatment, and overall help received by worker, program, and agency. Data was collected through telephone and written survey format on an immediate feedback or mail-out basis. The results indicated that 89 percent of the clients surveyed were satisfied with the services they received from ACC. Furthermore, the...
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...Christian Community “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8, NIV). Through Christ, the first community of Christians - the Apostles - was created to serve as an example of the need to love Christ not just as an individual, but also to share with other believers and grow spiritually as a collective body of Christ. The Bible provides Christians with an assurance that Christ’s love is to be experienced and shared by all who believe in Him. In Acts 2:42-47, Paul describes one of the early Christian communities learning the “apostles’ teachings and fellowship”. He states, “All the believers were together and had everything in common.” “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.” The apostles fostered the Christian’s need to learn about Christ and praise Him together in their own daily life as well as the manner in which they shared the life and word of Jesus with the new Christians. In addition to a Christian community providing mutual learning and worship, the Bible also describes Christians as encouraging one another and inciting one another in the love of Christ. In Hebrews 10:24-25 it is said, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on love and good deeds. Let us not give...
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...Exchange 37 (2008) 124-155 www.brill.nl/exch Ethiopian Traditional Values versus the Social Teaching of the Church Solomon Dejene Research Student, Nijmegen Institute for Mission Studies, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Email: S.Dejene@nim.ru.nl Abstract Even if the Roman Catholic Church does not have a very long history in Ethiopia and constitutes a small minority of the society, her social significance is great in part due to the structural development programs she runs through out the country. The main aim of this paper is to identify how much the Church1 has made use of traditional systems and values in reflecting and communicating pastorally particularly in regard the Social of the Church (henceforth CST). By analyzing four selected pastoral letters, this article tries to spell out the strengths and shortcomings of the Church in employing traditional systems and values in giving form to the CST. Keywords Catholic social teaching, human dignity, common good, solidarity, reconciliation and peace, contextualization, Ethiopian traditional values Introduction Most of the current national boundaries of Africa were drawn during the colonial period and do not reflect the socio-cultural, ethno-linguistic and religious compositions of the colonies. Although Ethiopia has successfully overcome European colonial power and survived as an independent state with the exception of a five year Italian occupation (1936-41), its contemporary national boarder is a result of the scramble for Africa....
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...Introduction to Philippines The Philippines is an UN-recognized country in Asia. It was one of the richest countries in Asia (after Japan). But, since the end of World War II, the Philippines economy faced a downward slide and now it is one of the poorest countries. The Philippines is the third largest English-speaking country in the world. The country is divided into three geographical areas: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. It has 17 regions, 81 provinces, 136 cities, 1,494 municipalities, and 41,995 barangays. The Philippines has developing economy with agricultural and service sector base. The poverty line is 40% it means 40% of the population remain be poor. The large trading partners‟ of the Philippines are the US and Japan. 1. Area: 300,000 sq km (115, 830 sq miles), 7107 islands (7,108 at low tide) 2. Population: 100,617,630 (12th rank in population) (2014 Estimate) 3. Capital city: Manila, part of the Metro Manila conurbation 4. Largest city: Quezon City 5. Languages: Official Language(s): Filipino, English National language: Filipino 6. Currency: Peso (1 Peso = 0.022 Dollar) (Mar. 2015) 7. GDP (PPP) : 29th largest economy in the world : $751.770 Billion (2015) : 6.1% growth in 2014 : 5.5% 5-year compound annual growth : $6,985.680 per capita 8. Unemployment: 6.0% (2014) 9. Inflation (CPI): 2.40% (2015) Demographic Details Geography: Philippine Location: Southern Asia, archipelago between the Philippine Sea and the south china...
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...decades, there have been arguments on whether women should be ordained to work in the clergy. Over the years, some religions have embraced the idea while some still cling to the past idea that women should not be ordained to serve in the clergy. Taking an example of Christianity, one of the churches that have embraced the ordination of women is the Anglican Church. On the other hand, the Catholic Church has maintained its stand by not ordaining women to priesthood. There are scholars who have argued in biblical view on why it is vital for women to be ordained as priests. This paper expounds on the importance of ordaining women to serve in the clergy. Discussion The controversy regarding on whether women should be ordained to serve in the clergy is still going on to date. While others feel that it should not be so, there are people who strongly feel that women should participate fully in the church...
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...university, for its part, must never lose sight of its particular calling to be a "universitas" in which the various disciplines, each in its own way, are seen as part of a greater unum. How urgent is the need to rediscover the unity of knowledge and to counter the tendency to fragmentation and lack of communicability that is all too often the case in our schools!”1 This seems to be a challenge for both, Catholic and non-Catholic universities. The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical framework that helps to conceptualize ethics and to clarify the characteristics and limits of the different ethical theories. In other words, students without philosophical background will find here a synthetic “road map” of ethical approaches. This framework has been previously published in a book in Spain2. In this paper, authors will describe the model and discuss how it has been successfully tested in two different contexts: a University of Catholic Inspiration and a State University. The framework proposed offers sound and solid philosophical foundations, consistent with Catholic social tradition. It allows students to engage with different business ethics traditions, mapping the territory with a critical approach, and showing their limitations. Authors of this paper strongly believe...
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...in this case are Christianity, Islam, and accounting as a calculative science because each constitute a social ideology where they are systems of belief that inform conduct in everyday life. And what is Enlightenment itself? From the explanation of Kant, “Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority. Minority is incapacity of using one understands without the direction of another. This state of minority is self-caused when its source lies not in a lack of understanding but in a lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another. Dare to use your own understanding.” From the Christian dialectic, human Enlightenment decline. It is characterized by the existence of a war against the accumulation of wealth, which is considered as an obstacle to the development of capitalism. In catholic paternalism, it is seen the pressure internally and externally. Internally, there was hypocrisy of economic in the body of the Church, where they prohibit lending practices and interest rates, but the Church itself there is excess wealth. Externally, the secularization of Church function in the form of God monarchy or God monopoly, faced with land acquisition monarchy that led to growing speculation, rents, and rising land prices. In Addition, the English revolution in the form of agricultural technology push declining Catholic morality. The exploitation of export trade wool from England and cost inflation at home led to the seizure...
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...John Razel A. Mapaye BSA –IV Accounting Synthesis Case Name: “The Vatican Bank: Conforming to Caritas in Veritate?" By Richard Hudson Facts: The Institute for Religious Works (IOR), commonly known as the Vatican Bank is one of the most secretive and controversial financial institutions in the world. Since the inception of the modern Bank in 1943, the Vatican Bank has faced a series of scandals relating to its role in the Second World War, accusations of money laundering and its role in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. However, what makes these scandals and accusations particularly interesting is that the Vatican Bank operates within the Catholic Church, an organization with its own tradition of financial ethics developed over multiple centuries. Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Caritas in Veritate represents the most recent expression of Catholic thought relating to financial ethics. This article considers whether these scandals directly contradict the ethical stance of the encyclical and whether this in turn undermines the Vatican Bank’s ethical standing. The Vatican Bank: What is it and how does it work? The name ‘Vatican Bank’ is a somewhat misleading name as it implies the Vatican Bank is heavily integrated into the Holy See (the microstate consisting of Vatican City). In fact, the Vatican Bank is a privately held bank, rather than a state-owned bank, and therefore its assets are not directly connected to the Holy See. Despite the Vatican Bank’s...
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...Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole.[1][2] For many the term usually refers to Christians and churches belonging to the Roman Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See.[3] For others it refers to the churches of the first millennium, including, besides the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and the Assyrian Church of the East.[4][5] And for others again it refers to "adhering to the catholic faith as it has been inherited from the earliest Christians ... seeking to restore the faith and order of the primitive church",[6] as claimed by the Anglican Communion, various Lutheran churches,[6][7][8] and other Reformation and post-Reformation churches.[9][10] The Catholic claim of continuity is based on, among other factors, Apostolic succession, especially in conjunction with adherence to the Nicene Creed.[11] In the sense of indicating historical continuity of faith and practice, the term "catholicism" is at times employed to mark a contrast to Protestantism, which tends to look solely to the Bible as interpreted on the principles of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation as its ultimate standard.[12] It was thus used by the Oxford Movement.[13] This contrast, however, is not so clearcut for Anglican theologians such as Alister McGrath: "Anglicanism is not...
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...Cultural Analysis The marketer needs basic information to evaluate a country market’s potential, identify problems that would eliminate a country from further consideration, identify aspects of a country’s environment for possible adaptation, and develop a strategic market approach. One further use of the information collected in the preliminary analysis (cultural analysis) is as a basis for country notebook. A country notebook includes a Cultural Analysis, Economic Analysis, Market Audit and Competitive Market Analysis. The data suggested in the cultural analysis includes information that helps the marketer make market-planning decisions. However, its application extends beyond product and market analysis to being an important source of information for someone interested in understanding business customs and other important cultural features of the country. The information in this analysis must be more than a collection of facts. You need to interpret the meaning of cultural information. That is, how does the information help in understanding the effect on the market? For example, the fact that almost all the populations of Italy and Mexico are Catholic is an interesting statistic but not nearly as useful as understanding the effect of Catholicism on values, beliefs, and other aspects of market behavior. Furthermore, even though both countries are predominantly Catholic, the influence of their individual and unique interpretation and practice of Catholicism can result in important...
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...Robbert K. J. Maseland First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my advisor, Dr. R. K. J. Maseland, for his academic guidance and encouragement throughout the research. He has been very generous sharing his experiences on institutional and cultural determinants on economy, as well as on academic research methodology and beyond. I would not have finished such a thesis paper without his support. His effort and patience would never be forgotten. Abstract The democracy’s inequality decreasing effect has been appealing to researchers for long but lacks concentrated argumentation and empirical evidence, as well as the interaction between democracy and religion. This paper conduct an empirical analysis covering time period of 1978-2010 with 86 countries to test the hypotheses of whether democracy decreases inequality and whether an egalitarian religion decreases the influence of democracy. The result shows the direct effect of democracy is weak, however, the hypothesis of religion’s effect on the democracy’s influence is partially confirmed. Therefore, democracy itself has minor influence on inequality while a large proportion of the effect is religion-related. Key words Democracy Religion Inequality 摘要：民主对贫富差距的削弱作用长期以来受到学界的广泛关注，但是迄今尚未有统一的论证和支持的实证研究，同样值得研究而没有定论的还有民主和意识形态之间的关系。本文对1978-2010年间86个国家的民主和贫富差距数据进行了实证分析，试图验证民主对贫富差距是否有削弱作用以及平等主义的意识形态是否会削弱民主的效果。回归结果显示民主对贫富差距的直接效果弱而不显著，但是意识形态在影响民主对贫富差距的效果却很大程度得到印证。因此，民主对贫富差距至多仅是微弱效果，而意识形态的加入可以大幅增强解释效果。 ...
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...” discusses whether Muslims show any systematic differences on individual and country levels in various issues such as democracy, large scale violence, corruption, tolerance and social inequality. In terms of inequality, Fish compares Muslim and non- Muslim countries in relation to gender and income inequality. As a result of his data analyses he concludes: “On gender based inequality Muslims lag; on income inequality they lead” (Fish, 2011: 228). I consider the finding about income inequality as an unexpected one because in the income inequality literature, religion in general and Islam in specific are not commonly considered as potential determinants. Fish`s proposed causal mechanism makes his study even more suspicious because his references are anecdotal and his reasoning is culturalist. This is why, I decided to investigate his findings deeper and conduct a test on his claims that Muslims are culturally more egalitarian than Christians. The plan of this paper works in the following way: I will start with a literature review and continue with a brief summary of Fish`s data analysis and his major claims about the causal mechanism behind the relationship between Muslim culture and egalitarian state policies. Afterwards, I will continue with my alternative replication of Fish`s regression analysis with a different dataset which measures inequality in an alternative way. Then, I will introduce my test in relation to one part of his causal mechanism and attempt to answer the...
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...and work in an insular marketplace; they are now part of a worldwide economy with competition coming from nearly every continent. For this reason, organizations need diversity to become more creative and open to change. Therefore maximizing and capitalizing on workplace diversity has become an important issue for management today. Since managing diversity remains a significant organizational challenge, managers must learn the managerial skills needed in a multicultural work environment. Supervisors and managers must be prepared to teach themselves and others within their organizations to value multicultural differences in both associates and customers so that everyone is treated with dignity. Diversity issues are now considered important and are projected to become even more important in the future due to increasing differences in the population of many countries. Companies need to focus on diversity and look for ways to become totally inclusive organizations because diversity has the potential of yielding greater productivity and competitive advantages. Managing and valuing diversity is a key component of effective people management, which can improve workplace productivity. Unmanaged diversity in the workplace might become an obstacle for achieving organizational goals. Therefore diversity can be perceived as a “double-edged sword”. 2. Concepts of Diversity Diversity is a subjective phenomenon, created by group members themselves who on the basis of their different social identities...
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...In this essay, I [avoid personal pronouns in academic writing] would like to put on the Agenda the issue of ‘Hoarding and Squalor’ so as to bring awareness on the impact of this condition on the individual, families and the wider community. I analyse the issue of ‘Hoarding and Squalor’ by using existing evidence anecdotal evidence through studies on the impact and consequences this issue at micro and macro level. Further I will demonstrate the associated current social policies around this problem by incorporating a combination of techniques with the aim of advocating for better supports and systems. My overall aim is to bring about a change, in particular around three goals. These goals are inclusive of Social Policy review, multi-agency approach and trans-disciplinary delivery, funding request from the State Government in particular Families and Communities Services (FACs) and Mental Health in order to work with families in a person [spelling error] cent[e]red, strength based manner to ensure sustainable results. I incorporate Jansson’s steps of, diagnosing the context to identify contextual constraints and opportunities, softening the context to make it more amenable to a specific policy initiative and lastly activating change to get a decision maker or legislator to put an issue on the agenda of the other decision makers in the agency, community or legislative setting. (Jansson, 2003, pp. 148-165). Diagnosing Context What is Hoarding and Squalor In May 2013, for...
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...world around them, have different languages, and also have different ways of expressing their personality. Differences between individuals within a culture are much greater than differences within groups. A person's belief, personality, sexual preferences, social standing, education, among other factors affect human behavior and culture. Recognizing and understanding differences in cultural patterns provides a framework for interpreting goals and behaviors of others. The purpose of this paper is to analyze religion and sexual identify/ orientation and point out their significance in understanding cultural differences. Religion Religions throughout the world are distinct in differences and relationship, with some having faith in saints, some in sacrifices and some in multiple gods. Religion is observed throughout the world in unlike traditions in few factors or other and can affect an individual’s behavior in his or her own tradition. According to Santrock (2010), people in numerous traditions will carry on the religion that he or she was educated; people carries on the religion in which he or she was informed through his or her parents. In the U.S. the most general religions observed are Catholic, Protestant and Catholic. In spite of being the most general religions every religion can have subgroups which grasp beliefs or differences that are varying from the whole. This is general in many...
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