Would Jesus Care?

Canada is such a wonderful place to live in. A vast country of bountiful natural beauty and natural resources that most other countries can only dream of. We are a country peopled by individuals from all other areas of the world, who come to this country to live free and valued lifestyles, a kaleidoscope of human types, from various traditions, cultures and landscapes and a varied heritage of human achievement. Religions are practised freely here, and the social environment is fairly discrimination-free.

In too many countries of the world religious differences alone cause conflict of unimaginable intensity between people living in close proximity to one another. In some countries a state-sanctioned religion dominates and all other religions are practised underground because they are forbidden. And in some countries of the world religious factions are constantly at war with one another, engaging in the kind of violence that degrades humankind.

In the news right now, conflict between Turkic Uighurs and Han Chinese in Urumqi has caused many deaths, requiring military security cordons and riot police to forcibly quell further violence between the two peoples. In Somalia, Doctors Without Borders have had to flee Mogadishu because of the conflict between Islamists and the weak government in that unsettled country.

In the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, religious fanatics are wreaking havoc, committing untold atrocities.

And in Canada, Catholics are up in arms whether or not the prime minister of the country offered a scandalous insult to Catholic sensibilities, and Church convention, as a Protestant accepting a Communion wafer. Which had been offered to him by the officiating priest at the funeral of a former Governor-General, and which Stephen Harper declined to decline, perhaps unaware that the body of Christ is never to be offered to Protestants.

If he didn't know, wouldn't the priest have known?

This is the making of a Canadian scandal, that the Prime Minister of Canada has earned the wrath of the vicar general and chancellor in the Diocese of Saint John. "It's worse than a faux pas, it's a scandal from the Catholic point of view", huffed Monsignor Henneberry. Said the prime minister's office: "The priest offered the host to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister accepted the host and he consumed it."

Story finished? Not on your life. "It's not a symbol of the body and blood of Christ, but isin fact the body and blood of Christ", elaborated the director of communications for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto. "The Communion wafer starts as a host and becomes the body of Christ. And that happens in the course of the sacrament we celebrate."

Prime Minister Harper was fine in indulging in the consummation of the sacrament, eating the body of Christ. Take that proverbial pill, please do.