It all began at the funeral Mass for the former governor-general and one-time Trudeau cabinet minister Romeo LeBlanc, whose obsequies, suitably arranged in his native Memramcook, were attended by numerous political notables as well as many other worthies. The presiding celebrant was the Archbishop Metropolitan of Moncton, Andre Richard, assisted by several other clerics including the other three Catholic bishops of the province.

LeBlanc was a much loved Acadian and esteemed by many for his gentleness, tolerance, affability and integrity.  He seemed to have few if any enemies. It is all the more surprising, then, that a sacred ceremony would morph into a cause celebre.

The  Telegraph-Journal reported that Harper was offered the communion host and there was conjecture over what he had done with it and why he apparently failed to consume it. No one was quite sure what happened and so the many conflicting accounts took on a life of their own. Did he ingest the host immediately? Why was he offered communion in the first place given that he does not share the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on the Eucharist? And what motivated this level of reportage on a matter that is not generally perceived by Canadians as either incendiary or politically relevant?

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.

Stephen Harper follows a long line of Roman Catholic prime ministers: Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney, John Turner, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, with a brief interval for the ill-fated first woman PM and a non-Catholic, Kim Campbell. Many of the Catholic prime ministers were/are engaged intellectually and spiritually with their tradition, some observant but not demonstrably pious, and others cultural in their attachment. The usual spectrum.

Harper is a reflective and serious Christian and he gives every evidence of being not only sympathetic to the religious sensibility but respectful of its “appropriate” space in the national consciousness. And he is not the only politician who has found himself at the centre of a communion imbroglio, whether non-Catholic or Catholic, Canadian or otherwise.

That the intersection of faith, private belief and political credo around the eucharistic table has become a scandal is itself the scandal.