Altar

The prosecutor could have called hundreds of witnesses to the carjacker's high-speed minivan and foot chase that ended under the altar of a Northern Liberties church on April 29. People all across the city saw the late-afternoon action, including rush-hour drivers on Interstate 95 and visitors along South Street. But Assistant District Attorney Kenneth McDaniel yesterday needed only a few key people to make out his case against David Collins, 30, of Mt. Ephraim, N.J., at a preliminary hearing before Municipal Judge William A. Meehan Jr. Collins, who has a record for car theft, was ordered to stand trial on carjacking, aggravated assault on two cops, theft and related charges.

A psychiatric patient escaped Grand View Hospital yesterday, punching an orderly, stealing an ambulance, and eventually bursting into St. Isidore's Church just as a funeral was to begin, police said. Wearing green hospital scrubs and booties, Joshua Herder, 19, dashed down the aisle past about 25 surprised mourners, followed hard by Quakertown Police Chief James McFadden, who said he tackled the escapee on the altar. The two men had met in the same church just the day before, when McFadden talked Herder into dropping an 18-inch knife - foiling Herder's plan to be shot to death by police in order to be with God. "I've made my Easter obligation," McFadden said yesterday after Herder was arraigned and sent to Bucks County prison on $250,000 bail.

In a corner of my dining room stands a small, dark, rectangular wooden table. Its spiraled legs angle slightly toward the center of the top and support a lower shelf beneath. While I do not know the origin of the table, I do know the story of how it came to be what it is today. Nearly 50 years ago, my sisters and I came to our mother with a proposition: We wanted to set up a family altar. Mom was astounded and a little worried. She didn't have a very positive feeling about altars and responded with the classic parental phrase, "Let me think about it. " Not only did she and my dad think about it, but she consulted our pastor.

DEAR ABBY: My boyfriend, "Wally," and I have been friends for several years, and a couple for nearly two. He recently brought up the subject of marriage, and we agreed that we are likely altar-bound. Only one thing gives me pause. A few months ago, Wally got plastered and had a fling with a female friend. He regretted it immediately and said it was what made him realize I am "The One. " (He is getting help for his drinking now.) The problem is, the woman is still pursuing him. She buys him gifts or brings him vegan meals.

DEAR ABBY: I have been in an on-again/off-again relationship with a man for 16 years — more on than off. We have two boys together. He recently moved back in, and things are going well. We're in our 30s, and I'm ready to be more than girlfriend and boyfriend. I'd like to ask this special man in my life to marry me, but I'm not sure if a woman should ever propose marriage to a man. Should I go ahead and do it, or just be patient? — Longing for More in Texas DEAR LONGING FOR MORE: By all means, ask him to formalize your relationship.

During three hours of emotional and sometimes contentious testimony, a former Bucks County altar boy Wednesday described how a priest in the landmark child-sex abuse and conspiracy trial molested him during an overnight visit when he was 14. The man, now 30, broke down several times recounting the alleged 1996 assault by the Rev. James J. Brennan that he said plunged him into a spiral of drugs and crime and still haunts him. He said Brennan,...

This is a tale of Romance, Interrupted. Kathleen O'Donnell and Adam Rolek met in 1953, when Joseph S. Clark Jr. was mayor, the Schuylkill Expressway was under construction, and Roxborough had more cachet than Manayunk. Kathleen was 14, and Adam, 18, worked part time as an usher at the Roxy Theater at Ridge and Leverington Avenues. They dated for nearly six years, went to her junior and senior proms together, and ultimately broke up over a convoluted misunderstanding. She thought Adam was secretly seeing someone else, so she broke up with him in 1959.

DEAR ABBY: A young bride-to-be who signed her letter "Touchy Decision in Ohio" prefers her stepdad walk her down the aisle at her wedding, but is worried about what her biological father (whom she sees once or twice a year) and others might think. In my many decades on this earth, especially during the last 10 or 15 years, I have seen all sorts of changes in wedding etiquette, including the customs governing who walks down the aisle. I've seen brothers escort sisters and children walk their mother to the altar.

George Nakashima moved slowly amid the sculpted furniture designs that have made him an internationally acclaimed woodworker and talked about a dream come true. Nakashima's "Altar for Peace," which sprang from a dream three years ago, is scheduled to be dedicated New Year's Eve during a concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. The concert will be directed by Leonard Bernstein and will feature folk singer Odetta. Nakashima said the wood for his altar came from a great tree.

A 2 1/2-foot high, 60-pound glistening bronze cross was stolen sometime Saturday from the altar of St. James United Methodist Church in Olney, police said yesterday. Archival photographs and artifacts also were taken from a glass cabinet in the church sanctuary. The theft put a damper on Palm Sunday services yesterday morning in the 177-year-old church on Tabor Road and Water Street. Members of the congregation gasped at the announcement by the Rev. Allan Honigman that someone made off with the spiritual emblem.

The criminal case resulting from the serial sexual assault of a 10-year-old Northeast Philadelphia altar boy may well have ended with Wednesday's guilty verdicts against a priest and a former Catholic-school teacher. But the convictions of the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero have also opened the door for a civil lawsuit with the potential to reach beyond the two defendants into the hierarchy of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The lawsuit by the former St. Jerome's altar boy dubbed "Billy Doe" was filed in July 2011 in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

MINUTES before former Catholic-school teacher Bernard Shero was convicted Wednesday of raping an altar boy, he joked with the court crier and a deputy sheriff about leaving the courtroom. "Good effort, though," Shero chuckled, when told he couldn't. Shero wasn't laughing for long. On its fourth day of deliberating, a Common Pleas jury convicted Shero, 50, of all five crimes of which he was accused, and convicted his co-defendant, disgraced priest Charles Engelhardt, of four of the five counts against him. The jury deadlocked on one charge against Engelhardt, 66: involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child.

In a case that has already put a Philadelphia Catholic Church official behind bars for covering up child sexual abuse, a jury returned guilty verdicts Wednesday against a priest and a former parochial-school teacher for the sexual assault of a 10-year-old Northeast altar boy. Wednesday's verdicts against the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero for the serial sexual assault of a St. Jerome's pupil in 1998 and 1999 were lauded by District Attorney...

The child-rape trial of a Philadelphia Catholic priest and an ex-parochial-school teacher goes to a Common Pleas Court jury Friday after the end of testimony and one defense lawyer's plea for acquittal. Burton A. Rose urged jurors not to convict former teacher Bernard Shero because of his awkward appearance or the salacious nature of the charges against him. In his closing Thursday, Rose read the list of charges against the 49-year-old, vision-impaired English teacher: rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, child endangerment, and two related counts.

Lawyers for a priest and a former parochial-school teacher attacked the credibility Wednesday of a 24-year-old Northeast Philadelphia man who says the pair sexually assaulted him when he was a 10-year-old altar boy. The witness - The Inquirer does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault - was questioned for almost four hours by lawyers for the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero. On Tuesday, the witness told the Common Pleas Court jury that serial sexual assaults by Engelhardt, another priest, and Shero while he was a fifth grader at St. Jerome's parish school shattered his childhood and propelled him into a life of petty crime and drug addiction.

THE CRIMINAL TRIAL of a priest and a former Catholic schoolteacher accused of sexually assaulting an altar boy began Monday with the prosecutor calling the defendants "predators" who subjected the boy to "the most vile acts. " Conversely, defense attorneys painted the now-adult accuser as a drug-addicted liar angling for a payout. As their attorneys spoke of them, defendants Rev. Charles Engelhardt, 66, and Bernard Shero, 49, sat stone-faced and spoke only when they stood to plead not guilty.

As construction was winding down at the new Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Church building in Limerick, Jack Schmidt sneaked in to get a glimpse of his past. The retired Peco worker had grown up in West Kensington as a member of St. Boniface Catholic Church, which closed in 2006 and which was demolished last year. But inside Blessed Teresa was a 37-foot-high reminder of the years Schmidt, 71, served as an altar boy, attended Boy Scout meetings, and went to school in the Philadelphia parish.

NEW YORK - NBC says Liz Lemon, the harried heroine of 30 Rock , will soon be getting married. Fans of 30 Rock might have reasonably assumed that Lemon, played by Tina Fey, would ride out the series' seventh and final season as a perennial bachelorette unlucky in love. But Fey, who is also the creator and producer of the NBC comedy, clearly thought otherwise. The network said Thursday the perennial bridesmaid will wed on the 30 Rock episode that airs Nov. 29. "But not in a creepy way that perpetuates the idea that brides are virgins and women are property," according to the NBC announcement.

To many Polish American Catholics in South Jersey, St. Joseph's is the mother church. Their love for her endures like the New Hampshire granite of which the majestic edifice at 10th and Liberty Streets in Camden was constructed nearly a century ago. The Whitman Park neighborhood has frayed almost beyond recognition, and church membership has fallen to less than a quarter of its mid-20th-century peak of nearly 4,000 families. But St. Joe's will likely be filled next Sunday as the parish celebrates its 120th anniversary.