Divinity School

The Rev. R. Douglas Pitt, a retired Episcopal rector who had been senior minister at Old St. Paul's in downtown Baltimore and earlier served two other city parishes, died Jan. 27 of complications from a stroke at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 85. Mr. Pitt was born and raised in Richmond, Va., and attended the University of Virginia, earning his bachelor's degree in 1951 from the University of Richmond. His college studies were interrupted by service with the Army's 279th General Hospital during the Berlin airlift after World War II. Mr. Pitt graduated in 1954 from Bexley Hall, the divinity school of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he won a prize for his preaching.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Few regard death as a good thing, but is there such a thing as a "good death"? Duke University believes there is and that each of us is entitled to one. Toward that end, the school has opened a $13.5 million research center devoted to the care of terminally ill patients and their families. The existence of the institute is an emphatic assertion that the end of life need not be a choice between a lingering, painful death and a Kevorkian-style assisted suicide. There is a third option, a death carefully controlled to minimize pain while allowing the patient opportunities to come to terms with the end of life.

Where Paul Flowers has been: Florida (born); Wales (toddler); Nashville (teen-ager); ninth grade (dropped out); San Francisco (headed there at 17); homeless (once he arrived); college (off and on); Pentagon (Navy intelligence); divinity school (virtually); and Baltimore (bike messenger, coffeehouse waiter and ponderer of the universe). Where Flowers is going: New Orleans (to talk to voodoo priests); Arizona (to meet with Hopi elders); Central America (to visit Mayan ruins); Egypt (pyramids)

IT'S NAPOLEON Bonaparte. No, it's Kaiser Wilhelm. No, Benito Mussolini. Or is it Saddam Hussein? .....Who will the Antichrist character prove to be? .....The Book of Revelation, that feverish final vision of the New Testament, depicts his epic origins: Out of the sea will rise a beast with 10 horns and seven heads, diadems on its horns, "blasphemous names" on its heads.From this fearsome beast will emerge the Antichrist incarnate, archvillain of the apocalypse and a dark emblem of Christian millennial theology.

Bill Krulak believes that during key points in his life, he has felt the guiding hand -- and mercy -- of God.During one of his two tours of duty in Vietnam as a Marine Corps infantry officer, he stepped on a land mine. It didn't immediately explode, though, allowing him to leap to safety. The hand of God, he figured.After retiring from the military, his sensitivity to people in crisis and pain led him to discern a call to the seminary and life as an Episcopal priest. Again, the hand of God.Now, he feels that hand nudging him to a church on Roland Avenue: St. David's, a congregation that had been seeking a rector for three years.

A memorial Mass for the Right Rev. Cedric E. Mills, who had been rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Baltimore for nearly 23 years before becoming the first resident bishop of the Virgin Islands, will be offered at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the church at Lafayette and Arlington avenues.Bishop Mills, who was 88, died July 3 of a respiratory illness at a hospital in San Pedro, Calif., where he had lived since his retirement in 1972.Services for Bishop Mills, were July 7 at St. Peter's Church in San Pedro.

Nathan A. Chapman Jr., the once-prominent money manager whose fraudulent investments in his own companies caused a scandal for Maryland's public employee pension system, is scheduled to be released from federal custody Friday after serving 41/2 years. Chapman, convicted by a federal jury in 2004 on 23 counts of fraud and filing false tax returns, was most recently assigned to an undisclosed halfway house run out of Annapolis Junction, according to a Bureau of Prisons website. The Baltimore Sun sent a letter to Chapman inviting him to be interviewed in connection with his release, but he did not respond.

The Rev. Francis Lee Cutair III, a retired Episcopal pastor, died of Alzheimer's disease at Citizens Care Center in Havre de Grace. The Darlington resident was 66. Born in Arbutus, he was a 1956 graduate of Catonsville High School. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree at the Peabody Conservatory and taught music at Franklin and Owings Mills elementary schools. In 1966 he received a Master of Divinity degree at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. After ordination to the priesthood he served at St. George Church in Manchester, Grace Church in Darlington and Ascension Church in Scarboro in Harford County.

Organ to make debut Sunday at Baker ChapelA new organ in Western Maryland College's Baker Chapel, built with pieces of other campus instruments, including the original 1895 organ, will make its debut in a recital at 4 p.m. Sunday.The free concert will feature Victoria Sirota, vicar of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Nativity in Baltimore. An accomplished musician and teacher, she earned degrees from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Boston University and Harvard Divinity School.The new organ replaces a 1927 M. P. Moeller pipe organ in the chapel.