My girlfriend lived with me. For years. Years of sinning. But, like most couples, we had times when the sexual coupling was less frequent.

She told me after a visit with her mother that her mother had said what we were doing was a sin.

“Tell your mother that maybe we aren’t sinning as much in reality as we are in her imagination,” I replied.

After a time we stopped coupling and she moved out, and the sinning stopped.

At least with her.

I went to a Catholic elementary school for nine years where “I’m telling Ma!” was replaced with “That’s a sin!” The moral code was spelled out pretty clearly in the Baltimore Catechism that I studied in Saint Gregory’s Grammar School.

So…I’ve heard the word before. I understand the concept. Acts can be sins, thoughts can be sins.