Mark Carney will soon be sworn in as Canada’s prime minister based on 129,000 votes cast by 100 per cent Liberal party delegates who represent .322 per cent of Canadians.

He deserves our heartiest congratulations. Also, a serious word of warning.

For while he exults in his leadership sweepstakes triumph (“a landslide” crowed the Globe and Mail oblivious to the oxymoron of a .322 per cent avalanche), Carney also bears a potentially fatal flaw. He is a Catholic. More worrisome still from a media comms/influencer/narrative shaper’s perspective, he is a devout (whoa!!!!) Catholic.

As the Register’s Anna Farrow reported recently, Carney  “goes to (Mass) at least once a week, meditates, and is a fan of Benedictine monk Laurence Freeman, the director of the World Community of Christian Meditation.” 

Facing that minefield of a papist pedigree, it is imperative the new prime minister have stalwart defensive lines ready to protect him from ferocious media assaults about his  foundational religious beliefs. Once he is sworn in, the risk of battering rises about his stand on issues such as, oh, let’s take a wild guess, abortion and, let’s reach with reckless abandon for another, medical assistance in dying.

It’s entirely credible to predict that during the swearing in ceremony itself, the media’s leather-lunged provocateurs will be booming questions past his ears about, say, whether his fealty to the Romish pope puts every Canadian woman at risk of losing control over her own body. 

An onslaught of cleverly disguised “just askin’” journalistic inquiries might follow as to how soon citizens will lose their Supreme Court guaranteed right to public health care lethal injections.

True, such questions appear to have gone unuttered during the leadership, errr, contest. Separately, and only coincidentally all at once, the media horde seemed to go mum on matters of potential Catholic fanaticism. Tongues were held at least until Carney cashed in the Liberal party’s guarantee that his win was in the bag. But maybe that was merely a matter of every journalist in Canada making a simultaneously independent resolution to be polite to Canada’s incoming top statesman. They were possibly, and we salute them if this is true, just being nice.

Like the snows of winter and the best intentions of the flesh, however, such gracious respect for personal belief can soon dissolve. It is historical fact, not just optimistic opinion. Recall, for example, the fate of the most recent prominent Catholic federal political leader, Andrew Scheer.

In his days as mere Conservative Party Leader of the Opposition, Scheer was battered at every available media opportunity about his opposition to abortion because of his Catholic faith. Did his perpetual vow that he would never limit abortion if he became PM – meaning he would not let creedal obligations dictate public policy – satisfy the ravening mob? 

Not one whit. He was harassed repeatedly to justify his belief even as a purely personal matter. His incapacity to justify what had a priori been deemed unjustifiable led, as we remember only too well, to his loss of the leadership and perma-relegation to the political doghouse. Is it imprudent to assume a similar fate awaits Mark Carney as a devout (whoa!!!) Catholic who has actually ascended to the top of the greasy democratic pole?

In the interest of strict predictive accuracy, it must be noted there is a chance of Carney being spared the anti-dogan acrimony that normally afflicts authentically faithful Catholic politicians. For as Anna Farrow also pointed out in her Register report, he is a Catholic man, but also a Davos man. He is a product and devotee of the World Economic Forum, and the global corridors of power to which it leads. 

Unlike those of Andrew Scheer’s perceived hillbilly ilk, he is not just another political suit. His suits are of expensive cut. His shoes, to borrow a metaphor, will let their wearer glide softly and carry a big stick. 

He is equally intellectually enriched, with degrees from Oxford and Harvard and an old school “master of the universe” career path, as bona fide evidence. For Canadian journalists in particular, the magic mix of financial pre-eminence and uber cerebral authority is a precondition for intimidation.

So, our self-styled guardians of democracy might  just collectively and independently agree  to ignore the whacky Catholic stuff and simply cheer unabashedly for the latest Liberal prime minister. It’s possible. As fellow Catholics, though, we thought it important he be warned to treat the prospect conservatively.