Word: shriven
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...only real friend in the criminal clan, Al Pacino's very weary, very unsuccessful and finally very touching soldier, a man the movie makes much more appealing than the law-enforcement bureaucrats who show not an ounce of understanding, let alone compassion, for the soul Pistone-Brasco has shriven in their service...
...fascinated by Cartoonist Conrad's portrayal of Father Ford bestowing a penitential blessing on a kneeling and presumably shriven New York City [Dec. 22]. I wonder if Conrad knows that he has the President of the United States giving the Boy Scout sign and not the ancient Christian gesture (index and middle fingers only) of God's peace. Intentional or unintentional, the bonus of that extra finger for New York serves to heighten the humor...
...knees," Abraham Lincoln once admitted, "by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." Jonathan Livingston Seagull clearly speaks to some kind of need in America for words of inspiration that do not instantly turn to ashes on the tongue. The Catholic Mass has been largely shriven of ritual mystery. Protestant sermons are soggy with sociology. Occultism, though thriving (TIME, June 19), comes on too much like fraternity rites staged by the devil's disciple. The old maxims ("This above all: To thine own self be true"; "I thank whatever gods may be/For my unconquerable soul," etc.) embarrass...
After describing how he was psychiatrically shriven of fear, at least for the time being, Greene quotes Dr. Freud: "Much is won if we succeed in transforming hysterical misery into common unhappiness." Alas, the post-couch Greene found himself afflicted with what he describes as a lifelong case of crushing boredom. Antidotes have included staying more or less drunk during his whole first year at Oxford, as well as a famous incident-described in an earlier literary collection and incorporated almost verbatim into this book-about playing Russian roulette with his brother's revolver. After six attempts, Greene insists...
...life and death, Hamlet shows repeatedly that he is coldly vindictive and diabolically foresighted. He not only sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to England with a sealed letter containing their own death warrants, but urges England's king to bump them off without warning-so that they cannot be shriven by a priest and will surely go to hell...