Conscience

They gathered in the shadow of the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, Philadelphia's main Catholic church, in an amen chorus of support for nuns. "For Sister Marie Timothy, who assured me I didn't have an attitude problem and that I was a strong woman in the making," said a school nurse. "For Sister Evelyn, who put my feet on the path of demonstrating in Washington in 1972," said a baby boomer. "To Sister Mary Paul, for teaching us the mysteries of sex in middle school!"

Legislation has been introduced in many states recently to make employers pay for contraceptives for their workers. Politicians argue that failure to cover these services constitutes a needless burden on women. But don't be fooled. Concern about providing more comprehensive health insurance is hardly the issue. The disturbing thread running through these bills is the intent to purge from law any recourse to conscientious objection in matters of human reproduction. And since today the Catholic Church stands alone in opposition to contraception, one could argue that Catholic health-care professionals and Catholic institutions are being singled out for harassment.

'Conscience," explains the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. " And it adds: "In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. " A law that strongly protects a person's obligation of conscience, particularly in the area of his professional work, is admirable.

Fred W. Friendly once said that, with TV, "we can take the people there and show them what is happening. " This TV pioneer, president of CBS News and godfather of public broadcasting died Tuesday at 82. With Edward R. Murrow, Mr. Friendly set a standard for integrity that the world of journalism still reveres. He wanted the broadcast journalist to be a person you instinctively trusted - free from personal or institutional bias, free most of all from the green smear of the dollar.

Lately, some U.S. bishops have been warning Catholic politicians who support abortion rights - politicians such as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry - that they should refrain from Communion. The issue has reached such a peak that on Wednesday, 48 Catholic members of Congress (all Democrats) sent a letter to Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington that such a campaign might revive anti-Catholic bigotry. This campaign is ironic, since it suggests that the hierarchy might be repudiating the church's own teachings about religious freedom and conscience.

I once worked in a philosophy department in which one of the professors was active in NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association. The secretary, a deeply religious woman named Julie, was assigned the task of typing up his man-boy love manuscript and sending it off to the publishers. She came close to quitting, but was the sole bread winner for three children. Finally, she held her nose and typed one-handed. I think of Julie when I think about the issue of whether pharmacists should be permitted to refuse to fill prescriptions at which their conscience balks.

When the threat of war tests our nation, it is easy to understand why naming a high school for activist Bayard Rustin gives some of us reason for pause. To many, these times seemingly call for American unity; one nation indivisible; duty before personal expression. But Mr. Rustin, in another era haunted by war, fought the majority view, seeking change where it was unheard of - and largely unwanted. This African American, who was raised in West Chester, came of age during a time of rigid restrictions: racial, political, and social.

A case of a lawyer who suffers an untimely attack of conscience and exposes his disreputable client is so rare that you might think directors would be tempted to look into it. Then again, they might retort that nobody would believe such a movie. Rive Droite, Rive Gauche, an amiable and neatly turned blend of sex and politics, offers a rebuttal of this view. And with Gerard Depardieu arguing before the court, one comes to believe in this outburst of principle. Rive Droite, Rive Gauche, which is playing today and next Thursday as part of the series of French film premieres at the Theater of the Living Arts, is a piece that seeks to charm and amuse rather than provoke.

BEIJING - They are calling it the death that awakened the conscience of China. A 2-year-old girl crushed by two vans last week and then ignored by 18 passersby as she lay bleeding on the street died at 12:32 a.m. Friday of systemic organ failure at a hospital in the southern Guangdong province. By midday, there were two million condolence messages flooding the Internet for the girl, whose name was Wang Yue, or Yueyue for short. "Heaven's roads have no cars. Go in peace, little Yueyue," wrote one woman.

Maybe it was the approach of Lent that pricked the thief's conscience. One week after a TV/VCR was stolen from St. Matthew Lutheran Church on Chester Avenue, the set turned up on the church doorstep, undamaged. "I'm sure whoever did it felt bothered by it, [but] we're not sure what the true story is," said a church spokeswoman who asked that her name not be used. According to Moorestown police, a church worker noticed the set missing Feb. 10 but did not report the theft until Feb. 17. That morning, officers questioned church regulars, including youths in the community-service program, church workers and a neighborhood youth who once vandalized the church by leaving a running hose in its mailbox.

By Scot Lehigh Although Rick Santorum says he's not running for pastor-in-chief, the Republican primary campaign has revealed a candidate too governed by faith to lead a diverse country. That's not because the former Pennsylvania senator is Catholic. Rather, it's because his ultraconservative religious beliefs so inform his life, his values, and his worldview that he would not be able to separate that perspective from public-policy questions, or to decide an issue on the facts rather than faith, even if he wanted to. Not that he does want to, of course.

Renewing Yourself Through the Practice of Honesty By Paul Wilkes Workman. 144 pp. $18.95 Reviewed by Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans Someone on the Internet confessional www.confessions.net hurt his hamster while cutting its hair. Someone else is cheating on his girlfriend. Another poster is having a tough time breaking an addiction to the World of Warcraft , according to recent posts. Check out the websites that allow anonymous virtual admissions.

BEIJING - They are calling it the death that awakened the conscience of China. A 2-year-old girl crushed by two vans last week and then ignored by 18 passersby as she lay bleeding on the street died at 12:32 a.m. Friday of systemic organ failure at a hospital in the southern Guangdong province. By midday, there were two million condolence messages flooding the Internet for the girl, whose name was Wang Yue, or Yueyue for short. "Heaven's roads have no cars. Go in peace, little Yueyue," wrote one woman.

It was the concert that changed the world. Twenty-five years ago today, the world was focused on Philadelphia and London for Live Aid, the megaconcert for African famine relief. For 16 hours, the world was a global village, as 1.5 billion TV viewers in 160 countries saw superstars U2, Paul McCartney, Elton John, The Who, Eric Clapton, Madonna and a reunited Led Zeppelin dazzle capacity crowds at Wembley and JFK stadiums. The concert raised millions for famine relief in Ethiopia - and it still serves as the model of how musicians can come together in times of need and speak out against injustice.

A police procedural that's less about criminal matters than it is about dialectics and existential quandaries, Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective is an anti-thriller in which little happens - there is plenty of talk, but even more silence. This cunning and provocative Romanian film requires patience, but its rewards are many: It's hard to imagine how a scene in which a police captain barks an order to bring him a dictionary can be loaded with suspense, but, really, it is. Forget the car chases; just watch as our hero flips the pages until he finds the definition for conscience . White-knuckle stuff.

George A. Richter Jr., whose World War II research was so secret that even a commendation did not describe it, was, as a daughter said, "a scientist with a conscience. " He wrote a book questioning the future of civilization. "He was fiscally conservative but socially not at all conservative," said Janis Richter. "I think he voted for [Black Panther] Eldridge Cleaver one year. " On Jan. 2, Mr. Richter, 90, a scientific researcher at Rohm & Haas Co. in Philadelphia from 1951 to 1981, died of heart failure at Pennswood Village, a retirement community in Newtown Township, Bucks County.

Joaquin Rivera, who died while waiting to see a doctor in a hospital emergency waiting room last Saturday and whose watch was then stolen, was a man whose life was filled with music. Rivera, 63, used his gift to bring together communities, inspire young people, and try to change the world, said friends, colleagues, and students. The silver-haired Rivera was rarely seen without his guitar slung over a shoulder, whether performing in the city's Puerto Rican community or fighting for political change elsewhere in the city.

Richard Cochran Albert, 63, of Ewing, N.J., a historian and protector of the Delaware River for more than a quarter-century, died Nov. 17 of a heart attack at Capital Health's hospital in Trenton. Born in Elizabeth, N.J., Mr. Albert grew up in Level Green, Pa. He earned a biology degree from Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, in 1968 and completed two years of Army service in Alaska before earning a master's degree in environmental science and engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1972.

Time was when only two things determined your status in the school cafeteria: the TV character on your lunchbox, and whether you had the year's coolest, junkiest snack inside. But in some schools, where kids are thinking about their environmental footprints, coolness is now measured by how "green" your lunch is: Reusable sandwich wraps and water bottles, recycled lunch boxes - even cloth napkins are hip. And, especially in schools with student gardens, the children are learning that eating locally grown fruits and vegetables is not only good for the Earth, the harvested produce is good for their bodies, too. "Everybody knows it's important to be environmental," says Sarah-Chen Ogorek, 13, an eighth grader at Springside School in Chestnut Hill, where the girls use student-decorated melamine plates in the lunch line, and where two science teachers have begun encouraging "Waste-Free Wednesdays," a weekly zero-waste lunch event.

How appropriate that the phrase shock the conscience comes up with regard to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, also known as KSM, mastermind of 9/11. The phrase acts as a reality check, forcing one's thoughts back to the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and the mass murder of almost 3,000 people: The innocents who had their throats slit by hijackers. The men and women who burned to death. Those who plunged to their deaths from the World Trade Center to escape the inferno. That was a shock to my conscience.