Word: sin
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...marathon started in Hopkinton, a quaint New England town with brick houses, a local pizzeria and a lambasting preacher warning us about the evils of sin. April 16th is Hopkinton's big day, and the whole town turned out-piped music, banners and an arts and crafts sale sponsored by the local church ladies. Some hardcores celebrate Patriot's Day by meandering through the sneakered crowd in costumes from...
...bought them. Surveys of reading habits appear now and then; they must be discounted absolutely. Pollsters are not equipped with rubber truncheons to beat the truth out of interviewees. And where this subject is concerned, people lie. They will go on Donahue or Geraldo and confess, beaming, to every sin against God and man -- except the act of not having really read the latest much toted and touted tome they've been going around praising...
After carefully poring over "Telling Secrets at RAZA," the author's distinct stylistic intent becomes visible. Take for example his word choice in characterizing RAZA. He uses words such as "sin," "controversy," "imprisonment," "fate" and "schizophrenia." Anyone ingesting these words would certainly be astonished--the type of astonishment one would experience while reading a Harlequin romance...
...Father Richard McBrien, chairman of the theology department at the University of Notre Dame, dismisses the idea of a personal archdemon as "premodern and precritical." Individuals tend to personify evil, he explains, "because we see it in people." But for sophisticates acquainted with sociology and other disciplines, says McBrien, "sin is now seen as something systemic, institutional and structural, as well as personal." Laments William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist: "The devil has been soft-pedaled and de- emphasized by the church." Absent the notion of a personal devil, of course, exorcism becomes an obsolete, in fact meaningless, exercise...
...gnome of Old Nassau is aggrieved. A student named Matthew Eastwick has thrown an errant pass, bouncing a basketball off another student's ankle. Knowing that Eastwick had scored perfect 800s on his College Board entrance tests merely compounds the gravity of this sin in the gnome's considered opinion. He dances past the offender, arms flapping, and plants the lance. "Eastie, Eastie," he rasps, in a voice that is part James Cagney, part Peter Lorre, part Bethlehem, Pa., "didja get someone else to take your College Boards for ya? Didja?" Eastwick stands transfixed, while his tormentor teeters (Could this...