Sister act.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Unplugged

"We can never be perfectly happy on this Earth. That's why God made heaven," Sister Teresa, my advanced religion and hedonic studies nun, explained in first grade.

I raised my hand, "S'ter?"

"Yes, Kathleen?"

"But I have been perfectly happy on this Earth," I said helpfully, as I rose to stand by my desk to show and tell my apparently miraculous story.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I had been out riding bikes with Margie Millar and Martha Madigan. It was a beautiful, early summer night. I heard my father's whistle calling me home. I stopped. I turned to see my friends stopped behind me, the golden setting sunlight through the rustling poplar leaves backlighting Margie's mass of blonde curls and Martha's wild red hair. I loved my girlfriends, and at that moment they looked like angels. I thought I was sharing some good news.

"Sit down, Miss Clinton."

In fifth grade, Sister Daniel explained eternity so we would know just how long the flames of hell would burn. Bad news for a budding abominator like myself.

"Imagine a ball, bigger than the earth, bigger than the sun, made out of the hardest metal you can imagine," she intoned. "Attached to the ball is a chain. At the end of the chain is a tiny yellow canary flying around the ball. Every million, billion years, the canary's wing lightly flicks the ball. How long do you think it would take that canary to wear away the ball?"

We were bug-eyed in horror.

"And it's not that long," her fingers snapped a thunderclap, "compared to eternity."

Our impressionable pre-Disney brains were forever imprinted.

We pre-Vatican II recovering Catholics have a million stories like these. We love to regale each other while our non-Catholic [aka "other"] friends roll their eyes heavenward. I am sure the Irish Franciscans and Sisters of Charity who taught me were toeing the Pope Pius XII line. I was not a fan. When Pope John XXIII opened the church windows and doors, I walked on out.

So I find it almost a conversion experience to be rooting so rabidly for Sister Margaret Farley, author of Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. The Vatican response has been just hate. The Congregation for the Doctrine...