Faith

Playwrights who venture behind the walls to attempt a prison drama face an inescapable reality. From the songbook of Johnny Cash to the hard-time inmates of The Shawshank Redemption and Oz, the genre is so entrenched in popular culture that every theme and possible variation has been around the exercise yard many times. In the Philadelphia premiere of Jesus Hopped the "A" Train, Stephen Adly Guirgis has written a play that crests to moments of visceral power by proceeding along his own track.

They are a disparate bunch, the six high-schoolers. Two want to be doctors, a third wants to teach, another hopes to be a physical therapist. Another plans to enlist in the U.S. Air Force, while the sixth is unsure what life holds. But these 17-year-old seniors at St. Joseph School here share at least one trait: Their faith in the Roman Catholic Church, and a belief in its leader, the pope. Yesterday, they also shared something else when the six learned that Pope John Paul II's scheduled trip to the United States had been canceled.

Charlestown Supervisor William W. Buckwalter is dying of liver cancer, and in a telephone interview on Tuesday the eight-year veteran supervisor, who officially resigned his post Monday, says he is ready for death. "I have a God who spoke the world into being, Buckwalter said. "I have a God who can take away this cancer. God can lift me up or take me home. Whatever happens, it is glorious," Buckwalter said. Buckwalter's religious faith has impressed colleagues and friends who have spoken with him since he learned in October that he only had a few months to live.

WHILE THE hulking figure did some light running and shooting at one end of the court after the 76ers had finished their practice Thursday, coach Doug Collins couldn't help but make his way down to observe and offer some words. Though he has been reluctant to talk or speculate about a possible debut of Andrew Bynum in order to concentrate on healthy players, Collins did open up a little about the team's prized summer acquisition. With a sweat-drenched shirt on his back and a brace on his right knee, Bynum took some short, lefthanded jump-hooks from both sides of the basket, then took a series of 15-footers after backpedaling, stopping and jogging forward to receive passes from assistant coach Jeff Capel.

James S. Nocco has a lot of faith in prayers. That's why he starts off each week with a visit to the Shrine of the Miraculous Medal in Germantown. "I wouldn't be alive today or working as a cop if my mother's prayers hadn't been answered many years ago," said Nocco, 46, the 6-foot-3 commander of the Police Department's Northeast Detective Division. Going to the shrine has nothing to do with any fears Nocco may have about being a police officer. Prayers, literally, once saved his life, he said.

In Faith, Pat Graney looks at women as aesthetic objects and as sex objects. There's no question that women fare better under the first category than the second, but the gist of this hour-long dance is much more interesting than a competition for top honors. Faith, which was performed last night by the Pat Graney Company at the Painted Bride Art Center and runs there through tomorrow night, is about our perceptions of women in various contexts. In four sections, Faith opens and closes with tributes to the great painters Caravaggio and Michelangelo.

THIS LETTER IS for all the Catholics out there. Do not let your faith in your God be shaken. I know that's hard to understand considering all the horrible things that are going on now with the clergy and the sex-abuse scandals, but the culprits of these crimes are men, not God. And yes, that includes the pope. Stop treating the clergy like they are God themselves. They are not divine, they are flesh and blood like the rest of us. So that makes them fallible like us also.

I'M BAFFLED by the School Reform Commission's resolution empowering the administration to sit down with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers to renegotiate our contract in "good faith" or cancel it on June 30. The SRC resolution raises two puzzling questions: 1. How do you negotiate in "good faith" with the same people who want to break the contract they negotiated in "good faith" just 17 months ago? 2. How do you bargain in "good faith" when the other party has a gun to your head and seems eager to pull the trigger?

Folks from scientists to self-appointed saints have weighed in on the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, which is on public display for the first time since 1978. Carbon dating suggests the shroud is about 700 years old, but the faith of believers holds it to be the physical trace of Christ's resurrection. When I was young and arrogant, I thought people should believe only for good reasons, which meant reasons that I thought were good. People who simply believed things on insufficient evidence seemed ignorant, gullible and dangerous.

This Christmas brings the customary buffet of animated holiday releases to screens large and small. Polar Express has drawn children and parents to multiplexes for weeks, earning more than $50 million at the box office. Davey and Goliath's Snowboard Christmas, produced by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, will air on cable television systems and local stations. And from Disney, Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas DVD is destined for hundreds of thousands of stockings. Although evangelical Christianity seems ascendant in America today, all of these cartoons have one thing in common: They offer a Christmas without Jesus, Mary or Joseph.