Perhaps you read it, too.  I'm referring to an obituary about Erich Priebke, a Nazi who was convicted of ordering the execution of 335 men and boys at the Ardeatine Caves in Italy in 1944.  Mr. Priebke was 100 years old.
     Is this justice, one might ask?  Is it fair that someone guilty of committing such a heinous crime lives to be 100 while countless other perfectly good individuals, famous and not, die much younger?  Is it right that a Nazi prison guard should outlive even the survivors of those he killed?
     No, it does not seem right or fair that such a thing would happen.  On the face of it, one would be hard pressed to find anyone who would disagree that Priebke's crime was horrific.  Almost all of us would agree that his conduct exceeded every boundary of human thought and decency.
     Ironically, however, if we were to follow postmodernity's insistence that truth is always relative, we would, as the philosopher Richard Rorty, himself no friend of religion, pointed out, have no basis to say whether Priebke's action was evil or not.  Absent some sort of absolute standard, we have no way to know.
     Rorty is quite right.  Moreover, we still face a conundrum, that is, why did Priebke live so long and others did not?  Sure, things happen, and sure, some people seem to have good luck and others less so.  If existence halts at death, however, we watch Priebke go to his grave (if he ever finds one:  no one seems to want to bury him), guilty beyond a doubt, but outliving almost everyone who brought him to justice.  And what happens to him now?  Absolutely nothing.  In a very real sense, he's forever free.
     If there are absolutes, however, we have hope that Priebke's actions will reverberate beyond his earthly grave, that standards that we, relativistic creatures that we are, cannot possibly devise, prevail, now and into eternity.
     The song is just beginning.