Many readers might be old enough to remember the days of black-and-white television and the public service announcement with the theme, "Don't make a good boy go bad; remove your keys from your car when it is parked." There were several of those ads in the 1960s or '70s that seemed to be telling us that leaving the keys in our car when it was parked was all it took to destroy a young man's character.

Here comes  the Pope, whose disposition for bad news, one may hope, is a strong one, inasmuch as the the U.S. media keep dishing out the bad tidings.  The media theme is that, whatever else His Holiness may find here, in addition to an endless diet of presidential campaign news, he will find a flock looking askance at him.

I had originally intended my “Lawyers Behaving Badly” series to be a two-parter.  But these darn lawyers just keep on getting into trouble, and that trouble keeps on making news.  As with the attorneys discussed in the previous two columns, the ethical lapses of these lawyers only contribute to the public’s poor perception of the profession.

Memory is an odd thing.  Anyone who explores his or her mind daily will come to realize there’s a strange moving around of furniture that goes on.  Memories shift and get shunted aside.  Some take on a different perspective or different priority.  For example, the memory of being jilted in high school was clear once upon a time, vivid and painful, but after years of happy marriage and having children, takes on an entirely different cast and comes to matter very little in context.  Young people don’t know this and can’t imagine how it is true.  That’s why they’ve got to have faith sufficient to “hold on” until the worst is over, instead of doing something rash that may end their life or cause regret.  The expression “Time heals” is true, and ironically speaks to the double-edged nature of time acting on the human mind.  How wonderful it is that the unbearable anguish and grief of yesterday lifts at last, cleanses or at least becomes more tolerable.  Yet how sad when you struggle to remember the curve of her face, the last words he said to you, the gift your mother gave.  Time makes forgiveness possible and most apologies useless.