Apparently people are getting all wound up over whether or not Stephen Harper pocketed a piece of the Eucharist while at Romeo LeBlanc’s funeral. Now, I may not be the most religious guy, but I do go to church, and am probably one of the more religious amongst my group of friends (and Catholic to boot), and I have to say that “I don’t care”.
When I actually first heard the story, I was actually confused as to why the PM was even taking the host in the first place. He’s not Catholic, and shouldn’t take communion in a Catholic church, if he’s following the rules. I think the protocol during commmunion is to approach with your arms crossed over your chest to indicate that you are not to receive communion, but a blessing instead.
It would have been inappropriate for the PM to take the host (as it looks like he did), but I’m going to assume that he either ate it after sitting down again (which is what my grandfather always did, to my recollection) or felt that he was not sufficiently absolved of sin to take communion, which is fine as well.
Either way, the damn economy is still falling apart, we have troops on the ground in Afghanistan, and a US President with crosshairs trained on the oil sands. These things matter. The Wafer Waffle does not.
All very true. But I wouldn’t mind it sticking around for a bit, if only because wafer waffle has a nice ring to it.
To be fair as well, he probably didn’t even realize what was happening entirely until he was handed the wafer.
The really depressing thing this whole affair shows is just how insane the Harper media folks are.
The story could have been spun: “Harper did not consume the wafer because he is not Catholic and it would have been disrespectful for him to have done so.”
Instead it was: “Oh he totally took the wafer! He also drank your milkshake.”
Realistically, he didn’t need to A) trot out a friendly senator to vouch that he took it or B) react in any real way other than to shrug and say he did what was proper.