3/8/24 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

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Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

Last Friday, my wife was in Cincinnati until very late in the evening. In considering my solo dinner options for the evening, and knowing that it was a Friday in Lent, I had a multitude of fish fry options from Catholic parishes in the city. The annual Lenten fish fries are a staple of Catholic churches and a good way to raise some funds for consecutive Fridays in the late winter and early spring.

As a young man, I remember that meatless Fridays were the mandate of Mother Church 52 weeks a year. Our family planned accordingly. Fish was not always the alternative to meat, but it was a common weekly fare. Mostly it ended up being some sort of frozen fish stick, covered liberally in ketchup. Because this restriction was year-round, we stopped paying much attention as to the reason why we were doing it. I suppose that is why the Church switched to Ash Wednesday and Fridays in Lent only as a way of making it more of an emphasis on our Lenten preparation.

On a Friday one summer in 1964, my mom and her sister took my siblings and cousins and me to the New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. This is the Fair that introduced the world to Disney’s It’s a Small World song with dancing dolls from around the world. We had a great time seeing exhibits from many different countries and corporations until my cousin Maureen got lost and we had to spend the end of the day looking for her.

Food item choices were limited to large families on a budget. We ended up eating hot dogs, with the full knowledge that it was a prohibited Friday item. My mother, as staunchly Catholic as anyone I have ever met and her sister Mary Jean, who rivaled her younger sister in her devotion of the faith, made the maternal decision that dispensation would surely be granted on such an occasion had they asked a priest. And so we broke our meatless fast for once.

This was the sixties. Catholics went to Confession on a regular basis back then, including little boys and girls. Confessions were held on Saturday mornings at St. Philip Neri Church in Northport, New York and it was not unusual to start my weekend walking down the to the parish to confess my 4th grade sins. Shortly after our excursion to the Fair, I found myself in the darkened box stating, “Bless me Father, I have sinned. It’s been two weeks since my last confession.” One of the transgressions I admitted to was eating meat on Friday at the New York World’s Fair.

Father Sardi, one of the assistant priests at St. Philip, was one of our favorites. He was always in the school interacting with us. That morning through the screen, I heard a different side to the man. He told me that the sin was not mine but my parents, specifically my mother, for taking us to the World’s Fair on a Friday without a plan for abstaining from meat. My mother, who could do no wrong in my eyes, was a sinner? How could that be?

After saying my Hail Marys and Our Fathers, I decided that I would never speak to my mom or anyone about what he had said because Father Sardi was wrong about the fault being my mother’s. I should have had the 4th grade fortitude to go without my hot dog lunch. You can bet that I held Fridays without benefit of beef and pork and fowl from that day forward!

Bishop Fernandes has recently asked that we forgo meat every Friday moving forward as a way of praying for the sanctity of life. At Our Lady of Peace, we will not serve meat on Fridays in the Café. This abstinence is not demanded of Columbus Catholics, just recommended. But for me, the memory of Father Sardi’s voice of disapproval will keep me on the straight and narrow.

Jim Silcott