Growing up in the catholic church in the 1950's certainly had its challenges. There were rules for everything, and the rules that weren't contained in the Baltimore catechism came out of the mouths of the nuns who taught us. Under pain of mortal sin, we had to attend mass every Sunday and on all holy days of obligation. And, we had to pray...lots...all the time. When we weren't saying the rosary or the Angelus or making novenas to the saints to get souls out of purgatory, we were encouraged to stop at any time during the day and say a short prayer, and then continue with whatever we were doing. These short prayers were called ejaculations. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul", would be an example of a short ejaculation.
Keeping that in mind, back in the day, there was an incident that occurred in the small, working-class neighbourhood where I grew up, that would lend some levity to our prayer life. Part of that neighbourhood was made up of Italian families, and Edith Sicoli was the matriarch. The Trans-Canada highway passed through our little town back then, and the Sicoli home which contained a small grocery store at the front, stood on the north side of it. At any time of the day, Edith Sicoli could be heard shouting at the neighbourhood children to watch for cars as they crossed the highway on their way to Riverside Park. And tragically, Edith Sicoli was killed crossing that same highway one afternoon when she stepped into the second section of a double-decker log truck. Edith, and her husband, Joe, were well-known far and wide, and when the news got out about Edith Sicoli's death, sympathy cards and letters of condolence started to come in from all over the country.
There was one old man in our town, an insurance agent, who was very close to Edith and Joe Sicoli, but at the time of her death, he was too ill to attend the wake or the funeral. So, like so many others, he sent a sympathy card to Joe and the family, and inside the card he placed a note expressing his grief, and apologizing for being unable to attend. And at the end of the note, he wrote, in his own shakey hand, "Dear Joe, please be assured that I remember dear Edith every night before I fall asleep, with a small ejaculation".
Needless to say, since the sexual revolution of the 1960's, Roman Catholics no longer ejaculate.
Edith Spadafore Sicoli...Requiescant in Pace.
