Excommunicate Mother Agnes

Mother Agnes Mariam de La Croix is a Syrian nun who is visiting the United States presently to deny Assad has gassed his own people in Ghouta on August 21. Her objective and credible critics are questioning almost every word she utters as well as her motives; this besides the fact that the UN, the US and many EU Intelligence services, including the French, have already confirmed through satellite photos and by other means, that Assad was the perpetrator of the gas attack. No one has been able to show that any rebel forces have access to CW’s let alone use them against their own people. If Mother Agnes has any concrete proof other than her lying, she needs to step forward with that proof or stay quiet.

Just look at who is promoting her tour in the US to realize that the Vatican has become a tool in Assad’s quiver.

Now that the UN has condemned Assad for crimes against humanity, Mother Agnes becomes important for Assad as a way to cast doubt on the veracity of the UN’s claims. There is one problem though: She has been caught lying so many times, it is, in my humble opinion, an embarrassment to the Catholic faith and to the Vatican. Has she not violated the Ninth Commandment already?

The Syrian Christian communities have generally supported the Assad regime in spite of the tyranny and the oppression Assad exploits to enrich himself and his family and which they have mostly ignored for over 43 years. The Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, both strong in Syria, have come to believe that the alternative to Assad is a monster who will destroy their communities, as the Islamists in Egypt demonstrated. However, since Syria is not Egypt, this theory is questionable at best.

In my opinion, Assad, with Hezbollah’s help, killed Rafik Hariri because he represented an Arab Sunni leader who embraced all religions equally and who showed a keen ability to protect Christians and the minorities in Lebanon without looking weak or un-Islamic. Hariri demolished the Assad drumbeat of his alternative, which would have rallied the minorities against Assad’s tyrannical rule.

While we may disagree with the Christian communities’a support of Assad, whether silently or by bearing arms, Many Muslims like myself can understand their rationale. But it’s quite another thing for a Catholic nun to be touring the US on a propaganda campaign to whitewash Assad’s sins. Assad is a mass murderer who deserves the guillotine and when a Catholic nun attempts to spare his life, she is in fact denying justice to the 9 million Syrians who find themselves displaced or refugees, to the over 126,000 Syrians killed because of Assad, and to the 426 children Assad gassed in Ghouta. What is so motherly about Mother Agnes when she excuses a killer of 11,000 Syrian children so far? 

The Marist Brothers in Champville, just outside Beirut, gave me the best education possible. Part of it was to understand the compassionate and benevolent Catholic faith I, a Muslim, have been so welcomed in its bosom and have come to appreciate deeply. The Bible tells us “that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. (1 Corinthians 12:25-26)”. Assad is dismembering Syria and Catholicism has an opportunity to lead by example instead of letting Mother Agnes divide us by playing the role of a king’s jester.

When Mother Agnes tours the US wearing her catholic dress, she is representing the Vatican, not just herself. Regardless of how other Christians perceive her tour, as a Muslim who has an affinity for the Catholic faith, I urge the Vatican to excommunicate Mother Agnes. Not only a mass murderer is using her, and indirectly the Vatican, to wash him clean, she is also impregnating Muslim extremists with ideas that would command more violence against the Catholic Church without any benefits. The one she is assisting is not even a Catholic, nor is he a human being worthy of our humanity.

The last thing we all want is for the Islamists to target the compassionate Catholic Christians any further. Already, Jabhat al-Nusra has kidnapped nuns in Maaloula to exchange them for 1,000 Syrian women Assad has jailed.

By denouncing and dismissing Mother Agnes, the Vatican would be sending a signal that it will not tolerate that its faith becomes a tool in the hands of a mass murderer who is using the whole faith to clean himself from his crimes against humanity. Eventually, Mother Agnes would appear before the International Court at The Hague to embarrass the Vatican and His Holiness may need to nip it at the bud today to spare the Church, ever so graceful and kind, any further embarrassment.