This issue concerns the interpretation of intellectual concepts and arguments in a world which is rapidly losing the ability to analyse words rationally.
I suppose we in the media would be likely to get any blame that was going around over this because of the modern habit of using soundbites and very short reports.
Television and radio are more responsible for this than newspapers, and now we have the Internet as well, where a quick two or three paragraphs is reckoned to be enough for people continually surfing for news, or poised in waiting for their news alerts.
There is no denying a certain amount of truth in the accusation – how could anyone convey what the archbishop was saying or trying to say, etc, in three or four sentences.
It's just impossible and there seems to me to be no value in either end of the communication chain – no point in trying to report it in that way, and no point in reading the report produced to those criteria.
However, the media, as I constantly tell people who blame us for all the ills of the world, merely reflect the taste and requirements of the public.
Sadly, it does seem as if people are happy to make do with limited information and jump to conclusions.
This results in a familiar chain of events – statement, misinterpretation, clarification (ie, repeating the statement in detail) and clearer interpretation claiming to constitute a backtracking on the original statement.
Now this is all very well when it comes to Government announcements, which frequently prove not to have been thought through properly.
I am less sure that the archbishop had not thought through what he was saying.
Where he fell down was in not realising how prevalent this sort of casual misinterpretation is nowadays, especially when it comes to figures like him.
People love the idea that a bigwig in a large part of the Establishment, whether it be Government, business or the Church, has put his foot in it.
People want to misinterpret, so the media provides them with every opportunity to do so.
The Church is particularly subject to this sort of reaction, mainly because its job is to preach at us and we don't like that nowadays, from anyone.
I was amused to hear, soon after the report of archbishop's speech, all the usual bleating about how he should stick to his job of preaching the Gospel and keep his nose out of matters that don't concern him, like the problems of everyday life in this country.
The irony is that if he did get up and preach what the Church which he heads is supposed to believe in, most people would find it far more offensive than what they thought he said this time.
There have been a lot of calls for the Church to be disestablished – that means separated from the governing of the nation.
In fact, there are quite a lot of benefits for the public in having an established church, rather like having a tame Alsatian to bark at everyone else and be sickeningly servile at home.
People want the archbishop to come out strongly against all the things they don't like – which often boil down to young people, foreigners and the fashion of the moment.
They certainly don't want him to turn the searchlight on them and their comfortable lives.
Communication at an intellectual level is a two-way street and, if the archbishop has not been very good at it on this occasion, neither, sadly, has anyone else.