But Natalie is suddenly spazzing because she's still upset about this "hell is a state" business and can't believe no one else is upset by this, and let me say, with the authority of someone schooled in fine Catholic institutions, I am more surprised that someone could be at all surprised that the Vatican might change its mind on whatever it arbitrarily decides to, unless it has to do with really important matters, such as birth control. Furthermore, I don't see this being any major revelation, since I always figured it was common understanding that hell was no more a physical place than heaven is, but Natalie is acting like she really thought if you dug a hole deep enough you would enter hell with its lakes of fire and blankets of maggots and all that stuff. Since Kim wasn't in the bar the night before, Natalie has to explain that there's no hell, which isn't even really what the Vatican said, but whatever, Natalie. "There's no hell? Cool!" says Kim. She smiles. I for one cannot wait to see what Kim does with no fear of having to pay penance for her sins. Natalie whines about the sisters who used to beat her at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. "They beat you?" says Jeremy. Natalie admits that they only yelled at her. "Why?" I can take a wild guess. "So I wouldn't go to hell!" she says. Man, Catholic school apparently messed up Natalie more than it did me. Even as a kid I knew that getting into trouble for fighting or talking back or whatever didn't absolve me of my sins. I had to go to confession and say Hail Marys for that, and I found it kind of cool that no matter what I did, I could confess it and be forgiven for it, and once I even hit someone who was bugging a friend of mine, largely because I was aware we were going to confession that afternoon, which I guess was an eight-year-old's version of the same thought process that allows the Mafia to be so devoutly Catholic. Jeremy suggests that Natalie wasn't taught by the world's happiest nuns, but concedes that the "Perpetual Sorrow" ought to have been a giveaway.