The Carmelites

 A Post Script to the last post:  my dear friend John Wilkins, former editor of the high quality, thoughtful Catholic magazine the Tablet has allowed me to publish here the email he wrote to me:

"Very interesting and intriguing post, Sophie. I like the way you develop the dilemma. You mention the Armenian genocide, but you could also come right up to date with the many Christian martyrs killed by Daesh who refused to renounce their faith. I am amazed at them.  The Copts are a prime example of this.

I see what your friend Kathy says. I think Catholic tradition holds that a forced oath does not bind. But the person concerned has an obligation to recant publicly once the source of the compulsion is removed.

Then I think of Georges Bernanos’s play, The Carmelites, featuring a convent of Carmelite nuns at the time of the French Revolution. Do you know it? The nuns are sentenced to death on trumped-up charges, but really for their Christian faith which the revolutionaries wish to obliterate. As they face the guillotine, the conversations between them are reminiscent of your reflections in your blog. After being imprisoned, they go to the scaffold singing the Veni Creator. But one of them, Sr Blanche of the Agony of Christ, is afraid and does not join them. At the last minute, she does.

Because of your blog, I shall read the play again.

 I expect we will talk further about it at some point. But please do everything you can to take care of yourself in Timbuktu."

David,  do you remember the wonderful performance of  Poulenc's opera 'The Carmelites' we went to together some years ago? I remember it has a most spectacular and exciting end: also from a musical point of view.

And dear Giulietta was with me last night and she was of the following opinion:

 " thinking about the apostate business of a Christian converting to Islam if held hostage by Isis and the like.  Technically - I don't think he/she would apostate.  Apostate means: a person who renounces a religious or political belief or principle: example 'after 50 years an apostate, he returned to the faith." So if one only 'pretends', it does not count according to her. Yes, perhaps... Well, we may never quite get to the bottom of it. It doesn't harm to talk about it though?