Word: venial
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Israel and the P.L.O., in Cambodia and Afghanistan. Since the bomb fell on Hiroshima, mankind has fought roughly 125 wars (of one sort or another), including the longest one in U.S. history. But all of these collisions fell short of the nuclear. They thereby seemed weirdly permissible: as sins, venial, not mortal. They were not, after all, the utmost we had to deal out in fatality. We did not drop what we might have dropped onto Hanoi. By this reasoning, nonnuclear bloodshed is forbearing and almost virtuous...
Sister Mary Ignatius (Elizabeth Franz) has taught for many years at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow school. She believes that to spare the rod is to spoil the child, perhaps eternally. Her rod is the catechism. Her prize pupil (Mark Stefan) can make pinpoint distinctions between venial and mortal sins. The sister pops a cookie into his mouth after each impeccable response, and Stefan plays the role with the precision of an ordained parrot...
...greatest gift psychiatrists could bring to government is the capacity to forgive. Until recently, only Barbara Walters had that power, but now with psychiatrists at the helm, all sins become venial. One would expect a psychiatrist Governor to exercise his right of pardoning condemned prisoners, of course, and that would be most pleasing to opponents of capital punishment. Only one area of danger exists, and that is in the traditional circumstance of a Governor's phoning the prison at the last minute to cancel the execution...