A brouhaha has erupted over an incident at the state funeral of former Governor-general Romeo Leblan c which was attended by many dignitaries including Prime Minister Harper.
At communion time one of the priests approached Mr. Harper in tC
There is some dispute about what happened next. At least one observer told the Catholic authorities that the Prime Minister put the Communion wafer in his pocket therebty committing a sacrilege, a aserious mortal sin.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman, speaking from ItaLY, says that version is absurd. “The preist offered the host to the prime minister, the prime m inister accepted the host in his hands and he then consumed it.” Mr. Harper is not a Catholic but is a member of the Evangelical Christian Alliance church.
One high Catholic official in the diociese of St, John, where the funeral occurred, says the incident was a “scandal”: It’s worse than qa faux pas, it’s a scandal from the Catholic point of view.” Another priest in the same diocese told Radio Canada the incident was “scandalous.” A spkesman for the Archdiocese of Toronto was quoted as saying, It’s almost as if you had Jesus in your hand, or on your tongue. And o to put Jesus in your pocket or drop it on the ground …. it;s the most sacred thing you can have or receive.”
The Speaker of the Senate, Noel Kinsella, also weighed in: “I would l ike to state that I ersonally witnessed Prime Minister Harper consume the host that was given to him by Archbishop Andre Richard.”
Speaker Kinsella added that as a Catholic he was “”"pleased” to see Harper “express his solidarity” and accept communion during the funeral mass.
I am with Speaker Kinsella. I anm pleased the Prime Minister received Communion. Rome has been dckering around for decades about whether there should be intra=communion among some Christian churches. This practice will never come from the top down. It will come from the bottom up. Which is why I usually go to Communion at Protestant services, usually funerals. And I take no scandal when I see non-Catholics receiving communion at mass.
Should a Protestant receive communion?
What do you think?
One Catholic official in the diocese of St. John, where the funeral occurred, said the incident is a “scandal.” “It is worse than a faux pas, it’s a scandal from the Catholic point of view.
Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, Mormon.
Whatever.
I find the whole idea of deicide (i.e. “the act of killing a god”) upon which all Christian faiths are based as “scandalous”. But it’s not just deicide; oh, no, Christianity goes well beyond that. It’s kill the son of god and then eat him (and drink his blood).
Murder God and then consume him.
Oh, actually, make that: Torture God on the cross, murder him, and then consume him.
And if you believe in the above, this will ensure that you are “saved”, will go to heaven for all eternity, and not burn in hell:
http://tinyurl.com/dcyok
Uh, no thanks.
Well, let’s look at it this way. I had been invited to dine at someone’s home after a funeral on a Friday and they had gone to a lot of trouble to drum up a meal (chicken) and I ate it to be polite, as there was nothing else to eat. The next day I trudged through a blistery winter storm to confess my dasterdly act. The day after, at mass, I heard himself say that eating meat on Friday was now OK and that I wouldn’t, some day, get roasted with the chicken. Sin today but no sin tomorrow. I think that the priest should have trudged over to my home to let me know and also to learn that a storm is much harder on the soul than a venial sin.
Many years ago I attended mass with a young lady, God forbid, a protestor, in the throes of being hammered into a Catholic. When it came time for the communion offering, she jumped out of the pew, climbed over several other pews to get to the alter on time for communion. A man by the name of Holy Hank saw this horrible act and summond her to a cubicle to explain to her that that Catholics have to go thru years of indoctrination before they are allowed to partake comminion and that she should restrain herself. Holy Hank made the mistake of asking me my opinion about the situation. I replied that if Jesus were standing here now and visible to us that he would have said to the lady “go for it”. Game over.
With regard to the Harper situation, I don’t like the man, but it seems to me that he was showing due respect to the church and that he would either eat the host out of sight of the cameras, or that he intended to return it to the priest momentarily. In the meantime, as to the jackasses who are screaming sacriligious, why did they hand it to him in the first place.
Jim is right on that one. As for the ritual of Communion stripped of what was grafted onto it by the Church the simple fact is that according to the Gospels, all 4 of them, Jesus himself at the Last Supper asked his disciples to bless the bread and the wine and to eat it as his blood and flesh in memory of him in a fraternal meal that the first christians called an “agapê”, litterally a meal in ancient greek.
What a waste of perfectly good outrage!
“Scandalous?” Or “sacred?” According to whom? And why? And binding upon whom else? By what law?
As an evangelical protestant, Harper would probably have no idea what to do with a cracker he was being handed by a perfect stranger, along with everyone else. It’s not his tradition — why would you expect him to know what to do with it?
I saw the video. I didn’t see him eat it. I didn’t see him pocket it, either. It’s possible he passed it off surreptitiously to someone else to dispose of it.
I’ve a lot of bones to pick with Harper — some of them his own, with any luck, in the next federal election — but dammit, a simple little non-conformance to a ritual with which he is not familiar is nothing to get excited about, folks. Hey, at least he showed up for this one!
Let’s all wish Prime Minister \Harper a good visit with the Pope on Saturday.
First of all, Christians are the only religion who worship a living God.But that’s a discussion that most non-believers do not have the capacity to understand. That’s okay with me. On the subject of Harper. He’s a dufus. He has absolutely no social skills, walks like an old bear, & needs some dental work, but of course he knows what to do with the host (communion wafer/ bread), he’s a Christian, and all serve Communion. I don’t like the idea of being passed the communion wafer/bread/host in someone’s hands>eee-ooo, but that’s just me. It doesn’t matter what he did with the wafer, but the Priest should have checked the protocol BEFORE the service. Even a Priest should be aware of proper protocol when dignitaries are present, but then, that’s the arrogance there! Grrr.