Repentance

Brother Kevin Strong, principal of Archbishop Carroll High School in Radnor, has faith that the thief who stole the $5,000 gold-painted sign in front of the school Feb. 21 will return it out of the goodness of his heart. "I am an eternal optimist," Brother Strong said yesterday, "and I believe in the goodness of human nature. So I believe it will turn up. " Brother Strong, who has asked the Radnor police to investigate the theft, said he had reason for hope because this was not the first time the hand- carved mahogany-red sign, which bears the school name, was stolen.

Under a large white tent in Beverly's Riverfront Park, the Rev. Charles L. Greene Sr. had been feverishly preaching a sermon entitled "The Last Call" for half an hour when he called for sinners to come to the stage and repent. As Mr. Greene writhed and sweated behind the pulpit, his rhythmic message of wretched sins and sweet salvation was punctuated with guttural gasps for air, organ riffs and cries of encouragement from 250 people seated on folding chairs and in the bleachers.

It is not enough to say you are sorry. You have to change your ways. Repentance goes beyond a prayer for forgiveness, says Rabbi Ruth N. Sandberg, a professor of rabbinics at Gratz College in Cheltenham. It also must include a close examination of your life. Such repentance and change are the central focus of the month of Elul, which precedes Rosh Hashanah, the new year holiday in the Jewish calendar. It is a time when Jews all over the world repair their relationships with others in order to enter the new year with a clean slate.

One by one, men and women at the Jewish senior center wrote their regrets or something they would like to change on a little piece of paper and dropped their small, folded missives into a pot of water. If they could manage, they walked up to the pot, which represented a running stream. If they couldn't, the pot was brought to them. The ceremony took place last year at the David G. Neuman Center in the Northeast. It replicated the tashlikh ritual of casting off sins, a ritual many Jews perform outdoors as part of Rosh Hashanah.

In response to President Clinton's sex scandal - and in anticipation of the Jewish High Holidays - the country's largest Reform rabbi association has called on Jews and the rest of the nation to "acknowledge our wrongdoings. " "We invite all Americans, of all religious groups, to join us this year in dedicating this High Holy Day period . . . as a trumpet call to repentance," the Central Conference of Jewish Rabbis declared Wednesday, and called for a "national 10 days of atonement.

DOTTED WITH ASHES, Jean Lauletta of Northeast Philadelphia prays at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church at 13th and Chestnut Streets. Yesterday, Christians citywide commemorated Ash Wednesday, the traditional start of Lent, by receiving ashes on their foreheads in an act of repentance.

There is a missing link in the scandals involving television evangelists, politicians and Wall Street that have assaulted our senses in recent months, and it has to do with something we rarely talk about any more: Repentance. The dictionary defines repent: "to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life; to feel regret or contrition. " That process apparently has not yet begun in the lives of Jim and Tammy Bakker. In fact, as theologian Martin Marty told Newsweek, when some television ministers are caught in an indiscretion, in order to hold on to their supporters, "you admit as little as possible.

Never has an act of "contrition" received as much advance publicity as Gary Hart's proclaimed act of repentance on "Nightline. " ABC plugged it as if it were the network's first offering of the new fall television season. There was "Father" Ted Koppel hearing the public confession of the fallen parishioner. It was more than a little much. The sad truth is that Hart still does not seem to understand the issue. He apologized to supporters for letting them down. That's just good politics.

CAN PEOPLE change? Judaism's response: a resounding yes! It is this core belief that drives our concept of repentance in the High Holy Days. Two major holidays make up the High Holy Day period. Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sundown Wednesday, celebrates the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur is our Day of Atonement. The two holidays, together with the days in between, comprise the Ten Days of Repentance. The Jewish community is preparing to delve into the difficult questions posed by the belief that we can change.

Q: I have heard you mention repentance many times on your radio program, especially when people are trying to decide whether to forgive someone else or themselves. You have talked about the four R's required for repentance. I'm always driving in the car when you are doing that part and can never stop to write it down. Could you do this here, please? A: Check the Scriptures and you'll see that repentance is a constant requirement from the prophets and from God. The qualities of repentance, getting back on track, are the four R's. The first is responsibility: We must recognize that we have done wrong.

CAN PEOPLE change? Judaism's response: a resounding yes! It is this core belief that drives our concept of repentance in the High Holy Days. Two major holidays make up the High Holy Day period. Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sundown Wednesday, celebrates the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur is our Day of Atonement. The two holidays, together with the days in between, comprise the Ten Days of Repentance. The Jewish community is preparing to delve into the difficult questions posed by the belief that we can change.

Vince Fumo's longtime executive secretary in Harrisburg was sentenced in federal court yesterday to four years' probation in connection with a scheme to steal $70,000 by submitting bogus invoices for Senate reimbursement for meals at a posh Philadelphia restaurant. But since fraud charges were filed last December against Sue Skotnicki, 53, of Camp Hill, she's made a clean break with her past. Both Assistant U.S. Attorney John Pease and defense attorney Catherine Recker recommended a sentence of probation and suggested that Skotnicki's post-offense behavior was a template for other guilty defendants.

A Phoenixville man who expressed his displeasure with neighborhood children by blaring the soundtrack of a pornographic movie into their midst will get a chance to make amends. A preliminary hearing for Michael W. Buck, 27, resulted in an agreement that means the most serious charge against him - corruption of minors - will be dropped if he meets a series of conditions within 90 days. He must take an anger-management course, receive a mental-health evaluation, perform 20 hours of community service, avoid any criminal contact with neighborhood children, pay a $300 fine, and write a letter of apology to the affected families.

For the third time, an anti-homosexuality evangelist has sued for what he describes as police interference with his free-speech rights at gay-pride events. Michael Marcavage, the director of Philadelphia-based Repent America, said he was physically restrained by city police on four separate occasions, and once, he said, an officer put him into a chokehold. His civil-rights suit, which names the city and several individual police officers, was filed yesterday in federal court in Philadelphia.

Almost 150 years after many of its congregants and clergymen last prospered from the American slave trade, the Episcopal Church USA will publicly repent tomorrow for its forebearers' roles in what it has condemned as "a fundamental betrayal of the humanity" of all involved. At 10:30 a.m., Episcopalians from across the country will meet at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in West Philadelphia. Founded in 1792 by the Rev. Absalom Jones, a former slave, it is the nation's oldest black Episcopal church - a poignant setting for a "service of repentance and reconciliation.

One of the great pleasures of moviegoing is the sight of two attractive people locking lips. (Others might say knocking boots, but they are much too literal.) Starring Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz as Jack and Joy, a slacker and a workaholic who drunkenly meet, mate and marry during a Sin City spree, What Happens in Vegas . . . boasts the not inconsiderable appeal of good-looking people having a good time - even while having a bad time. The story follows the outline of a familiar nursery rhyme.

ISN'T IT amazing how many hard-core criminals see the light . . . after they are put in jail? Somehow being in jail and locked up for a long time gives the murderers among us time to reflect - but only because they were caught and punished. Finally, it has caused them to repent. William Barnes shot a cop years ago, put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, suffering from the wounds, and it was only by chance that Barnes didn't kill the officer that day. He might very well have been tried for murder a long time ago, instead of now. Lynne Abraham is right, in my opinion - no amount of repentance can justify letting Barnes off the hook for shooting police officer Walter Barclay.

When it was his turn to speak yesterday, Kenneth Jenkins told the judge that he didn't buy houses in Camden to launder drug money and defraud home buyers. He said that he had gotten into real estate because he had quit the drug business, and that the witnesses who testified against him had lied. But U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson didn't see it that way. She called Jenkins the "least repentant" defendant she had ever seen and then sentenced him to 30 years in federal prison.

A few weeks ago, as the news pounded us with stories of vicious murders, I asked theologians, clergy, academics and others how our conscience gets formed. This was in the context of the killings of members of a judge's family in Chicago, a judge and others in an Atlanta courtroom, and 10 people, including the shooter, on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota. This question seems to buzz around my head like a persistent horse fly: Is it possible to get beyond the reach of God's forgiveness?

FREEDOM of speech is one of our most precious rights. But I think the real issue regarding Repent America's actions at Outfest was their flagrant disregard for the law and the police. They were given a permit to protest from one specific area at Outfest. What they did was take it upon themselves, of course with "God" on their side, to walk among the many Outfest participants and preach their message of intolerance. Their Christian agenda is protected and wholly supported by freedom of speech, much like that of the Ku Klux Klan to march.