Nun Must Speak

I pass no comment, nor will I be publishing any, on the choices that individual anti-war leaders have made in relation to Mother Agnes.

Rather amusingly, the boilerplate attack on her has been scarcely less torn to pieces on Harry's Place or on Left Foot Forward than it has been, and is still being, on Coffee House. Things are not as they were.

But The Spectator, ostensibly the house journal of High Toryism, manages to provide blog platforms for both of Nick Cohen and Douglas Murray. Why not for Mother Agnes? Murray is only 34, yet he is already a has-been. Doesn't your heart bleed?

The Catholic Herald provides a blog platform for Daniel Hannan, who is terribly well-connected in a certain subculture, but who is not a Catholic. And why not? But why not also for Mother Agnes, who is a Catholic, and who is a witness (there is a Greek word for that) on all sorts of levels as a Melkite of Palestinian and Lebanese origin in the midst of the crisis in Syria?

Telegraph Blogs is edited by the self-appointed arbiter of Catholic orthodoxy in this country and even in the English-speaking world, whom the British media, at least, take entirely at face value in those terms. All manner of persons are given platforms there from which to demand the genocide of Christian Syria.

How about a bit of balance in the form of Mother Agnes? If not, then that editor will have demonstrated that he was not fit to present himself as a Catholic voice, but that he was in reality the Church's worst enemy writing in English today.

If confidence in English is a problem, then blog posts in French or Arabic could be published along with translations.

The BBC is hopeless on Syria. But Mother Agnes ought to be on Channel 4 News or on Sky News.

And which MP or Peer will invite Mother Agnes to the Palace of Westminster? Let her enemies demonstrate against her there. That would show them up well and truly for what they were.