Rumours

Industrial action on the part of Royal Mail employees here in the UK has prompted the folks down at The Tablet to allow free online access to the entirety of this week's edition.

I read purloined, free or week-old copies of the Tablet more than I read it when I've actually gotten up on my hind legs and subscribed. Once I've gotten my own subscription they end up staying in their little plastic pouches and my wife complains about the expense.

She's Scottish. She notices these things. It's true what they say.

Two stories in this week's free and therefore infinitely juicier-than-normal Tablet speak to the power of rumour to damage and destroy. I've lived and worked in communities where rumours circulate. The communities I live and work in right now are actually quite free of this sort of sub rosa manipulation of the many by the few - something for which I find myself very thankful.

In the Tablet this week, as their main story, is a rumour quite intentionally circulated in order to provoke outrage and violence: that two pages of the Qu'ran were allegedly destroyed at at Christian wedding in the Eastern Punjab in Pakistan.

What, as part of the liturgy? After the rings but just before the declaration?

The resulting violence has claimed the lives of 8 people (six of them burnt alive) and many more injured. Property and livelihoods were destroyed and church buildings were razed to the ground.
I remember the first time I ever fired an old Lee Enfield .303 when I was about 16, marvelling at the sort of shoulder-kicking power which could be unleased by applying a couple of pounds of pressure to the trigger. This is that sort of story. The rumour-monger knows that it takes just a word or two and he's unleashed an earthquake. It happened just as he intended.

The second story seems a bit more pedestrian. It concerns an apology printed on the front page of a newspaper in New Brunswick, Canada with reference to what they'd printed on an earlier front page: that Stephen Harper the Prime Minister of Canada had gone to a Roman Catholic funeral and had slipped a wafer from Mass into his coat pocket.

Some outrage ensued. Damage was done.

What was he doing going up for Communion in the first place since he's not a Roman Catholic? Did he just get up when everyone else did and was he then given something and then did he not know what to do with it? Did he figure he'd pocket it and then give it to his PA, Sabrina, to deal with like he passes so many of his problems on to her?

Well sir, the whole thing apparently was hooey (see the article at the bottom of page 31)

According to Canada's CTV News, members of the opposition Liberal Party told the story of the Communion host to the Newspaper's publisher, who then passed the unverified allegation on to his editor.

At least in this latter case the retraction got the same coverage as the original story and the originators of the rumour have been identified - as should always happen in families and in congregations where rumours start. One needs to slavishly follow them back to the source and make people accountable for what they've whispered in alleys.

Notwithstanding a number of official apologies from governmental officials in Pakistan one assumes that the originator of the rumours there which have now cost lives and livelihoods will never be properly identified.