"Wafergate" resurrects in the Catholic Register

Michael Higgins has an interesting essay on the so-called "wafergate" scandal over at the Catholic Register. He writes:

Some politicos see the event as a carefully managed strategy to nationally embarrass Harper. You plant a complaint, in part based on speculation coupled with a perceived canonical breach, whip up the outrage and pain, maximize the damage and then retreat into the corridors and enjoy the mayhem.

Others attribute the whole mess to an overly hospitable archbishop who threw caution to the winds and approached the Prime Minister and gave him communion himself, thereby compounding Harper’s discomfiture.

Protocol officers, prime ministerial staff and a handsome complement of Catholic politicians have all been hauled before the court of public opinion and remonstrated for not having done their respective duty.

We are left with the lingering question why in a country like Canada, where religion has been largely excluded from the political realm, and where the politicizing of a religious ceremony is unheard of, the nation could find itself mired in weeks of controversy over the prime minister’s receiving communion.

In the end it is about more than misplaced zeal on the part of the presiding prelate, unfamiliarity with Catholic liturgical rubrics and a dull news day in the St. John River Valley. It is about the ethics of journalism, of news manipulation, of a nasty interface of religion and politics.

Read the whole thing and see where Higgins thinks the real scandal lies. He has a point.

It will be interesting to see if this story grows legs again for any reason down the road.

I think there are a lot of questions left unanswered. One question is who posted the YouTube videos under the name Catholicregister? The Catholic Register, of course, had nothing to do with it and asked to have them taken down. One was in Italian, no less. (Couldn't find that one in a cursory search.)

Make sure you read the SoCon's forensic analysis of the original Telegraph Journal story.