In the 1989 film National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Aunt Bethany (played by Mae Questal), the aunt of family patriarch Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase), travels to the Griswold family home in Chicago to celebrate Christmas. Clark asks Aunt Bethany, whose hearing is failing, to say grace before

St. Pancras Church in Glendale, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, is directly across the street from where I live. I have given up counting the number of services since Sept. 11 that ended with the wail of bagpipes. They signal sorrow, a reminder of senseless destruction and irr

I wonder if Jim Florio, the former Governor of New Jersey who became famous because he raised taxes, feels any better about his fate now that he has been included in Caroline Kennedy’s new book of modern profiles in courage. Florio took office in 1990 and found himself staring at a recession-b

Faith, hope and charity, I remember chanting obediently as a child, responding to a second-grade catechism question about virtues. I recall the nuns delving into elaborate detail about faith and charity, but barely skimming the surface of hope. If I were teaching a catechism class today, I would byp

My working life is not all that hectic or stressful, but that hasn’t stopped me from fantasizing about retirement. I have never golfed and don’t especially want to, but I nevertheless enjoy imagining the feeling of strolling idly through verdant fairways and over footbridges that span gl

The ideal is collaboration, not confrontation. It would be just as wrong for the churches to expect the federal and state governments to solve the problem of sexual abuse of children as it would be for the government to expect the religious denominations to solve the problem.The problem is not relig