To all readers in the Boston area - tell me this isn’t so….

Church Nixes Hot Dogs on Red Sox Opening Day

Friday, March 12, 2004, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) - Opening Day ticket holders at Boston's Fenway Park this year who are Catholic face a dilemma: the Boston Archdiocese said since the Red Sox's afternoon game against the Toronto Blue Jays falls on Good Friday, they must refrain from eating meat, including hot dogs, sausages and pepperoni pizza.

"We're already getting all kinds of requests for dispensation to eat meat," said the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, a spokesman for the archdiocese. However Coyne said that after a meeting to discuss the requests, Boston church leaders decided a baseball game was too weak an excuse to duck the no-meat rule.

"I would hope it was just an oversight when they were doing the schedule," Coyne told the Boston Herald. "I think it's very insensitive to the huge number of people who are Christians and fans."

In 1995 and 2000, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, then the head of the archdiocese, allowed local Catholics to eat meat when St. Patrick's Day fell on a Friday during Lent.

I get it.  Saint Patrick’s Day is not a weak excuse.  You can have your corned beef and cabbage on that day.  He was a saint, after all.  This Good Friday thing is baseball, however, and these guys aren’t driving the snakes out of Ireland or anything miraculous.  They’re just playing baseball.  And the religious folks worry about us, the non-believers? 

Well, one friend, still thinking about Mel Gibson and anti-Semitism, wrote –

I can't believe this blatant anti-Semitism again!  Doesn't anyone see it?  Hebrew National Hotdogs?  All part of Mel Gibson's grand scheme.  When will it ever end?

And Ric in Paris, back from a sort of recent trip to New York, added –

Hebrew National are pretty good wieners, but the chicken ones aren't meat.  They are bird.  At Nathan's out at Coney Island, they are not even hotdogs, no matter what they're made of.  The nearby Cyclones are real though.  New ballpark; nice view of Portugal.  

Ric is so… European!  (And the Cyclones are minor league - not likely to raise the ire of the church,) 

And as for hot dogs, sausages and pepperoni pizza being banned?

Since when are any of these things 'meat?'  I dare anybody to find any meat in any of these inedible items.  Half the time, they forget to put on even one smidgen of pepperoni.  Italians don't, even though the Pope lives there.

As for Boston church leaders deciding a baseball game was too weak an excuse to duck the no-meat rule - and one of them dissenting saying, "I think it's very insensitive to the huge number of people who are Christians and fans."

Since when are all Christians Catholics?  I know it's universal, but this is outrageous overreach.  A lot of Christians aren't even Christian.

And as for the religious folks always worrying about the non-believers like me and Ric?  They should worry!

Especially about us.  We are getting off scot-free - eating our cake and keeping it too.

The Christians are guilty of envy.  The ballplayers are supposing to be driving evil balls out of Fenway Park. 'Evil' - balls, pitched by the Blue Jays, from Toronto-the-Good.

Yep, I missed that.  The visiting team at Fenway is from CANADA!  Those are the folks from up north who wouldn’t join our war on “all evil in the world” starting in Iraq.