Roamer's column

We have had a number of ambassadors from the US since 1964; some good, others poor, some remembered with fondness - John Getz and his wife Libby in the early 1970s for example. The lady you replace has also left the island well thought of, not least for her help in the repatriation of immigrants from our country to yours (far more than we have been offered by many of our friends in the EU) and for the spanking new embassy she started work on and which you will inherit next year.

Readers may not know of your formidable academic background. I am particularly impressed that you were Dean and St Thomas More Professor of the law school at The Catholic University in Washington. I say impressed because you, far more than I, will know that Catholics always have hard choices to make when it comes to politics and government; as Thomas More had.

St Thomas More, you may recall, opted to be beheaded rather than compromise on his Catholic belief that there was a higher law than the King's and he would not transgress it, even as he wriggled to give Henry VIII no reason to charge him with treason; I may be quoting less accurately than I should, perhaps, his famous declaration that he would die "the King's loyal subject, but God's first", a sentiment the King had been quite ready to share before his eyes fell on Anne Boleyn.

For your part you have been quoted as answering when asked what it meant "to teach in a Catholic framework":

"Consider the first year course in contracts. The Catholic emphasis of the study of this course explores not just how contracts are formed or what remedies exist for breach, but also the justice of keeping one's promises and paying a just or family wage, for example. By contrast, most law schools have become entirely utilitarian and consequentialist - believing that ends justify means - and they've cast aside first principles, the most prominent of which is the belief that moral reality can be known and understood by men and women..." (The last score of words I have italicised but the editor of this newspaper harbours a horror for italics that verges on the gothic; I suspect he will straighten the letters up again).

A part of your political reputation, your switch from the Republican to the Democrat camp, to take one example, precedes you. Your being Catholic, pro-life and pro-Obama was also well-known, unlike other American politicians - Arnold Schwarzenegger, George McGovern, Nancy Pelosi, Mario Cuomo, the gaffe-prone Joe Biden, Kathleen Sebelius, to name but six, who claim to be Catholic, are pro-choice (aggressively so in the case of Sebelius, whom Barack Obama appointed as your country's Secretary of Health and Human Services; there is a special irony there, a hint of euphemism) and pro-Obama.

I made reference, I now believe an incorrect one, to your position in this column some weeks back. I intimated that you had been suggested for the post of ambassador to the Holy See, and were turned down. You say this was an idea that took on a life of its own after it was floated by a journalist you referred to as John Allen (Jnr), the National Catholic Reporter's Vatican correspondent. Other sources name another. Be all that as it may, there were opinions you expressed in your interview carried in this newspaper last Sunday with which I could not help disagreeing.

Your declaration that you are "an imperfect human person" but "a good and faithful servant of the Church" echoed what the late Edward Kennedy (vigorously pro-life turned as vigorously pro-choice) wrote in a letter to Pope Benedict and passed on by Obama himself, last July. Truth be told I was not too impressed by the Kennedy letter; after all, we are all imperfect humans, that much is a given; but none of us feels the need, or assumes the luxury, to address admissions of imperfection alongside proclamations of self-praise in one and the same letter to the Pope. But as you well know, the Kennedys did everything in style, not all of it wholesome.

God's partners in life and in death

Where I would like to take issue with you is on the matter of abortion, to which you are unreservedly opposed. You once asked Obama how he could "allow someone to terminate another person's life"; his response was that "Methodists see it differently" and "the Jewish faith in part" (what part?) "sees it differently". Last month he called a thousand rabbis or so in a telephone conference and, among other lines he threw at them was this: "We are God's partners in matters of life and death."

This was a baffling assertion in the context of his own extremely pro-abortion stance; as somebody later pointed out, it would have been different had the President said, "We are God's partners in preserving life and delaying death", but this was distinctly not what Obama did say. I wonder what God made of that droll partnership claim.

Obama sees abortion, so he told you, as a "moral tragedy" and there were two ways of tackling it - the law, but "The Supreme Court has put paid to that"; or doing something about it, look at what causes people to have an abortion, like poverty, or "a woman without shelter, without insurance, without the next meal on the table". The answer, then, and surely, is to provide shelter and the next meal on the table.

If you will allow me to be blunt, there is about the President's position a mental, I cannot call it intellectual, legerdemain. For one thing, Roe v Wade can be overturned in the same way that what many consider to have been a court judgment, translated itself into constitutional law; for another, the President, for all he says that abortion is "a moral tragedy", remains unreservedly pro-abortion to the point that he even voted against the partial birth abortion ban act.

Obama has shown a great deal of bounce during the healthcare debate, describing as a "fabrication" the accusation that the bill would use taxpayer funds to pay for abortions. In his address to a joint session of Congress earlier this month, he claimed that "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place".

Pro-life organisations counter this by saying that language in the bill in its current stage does not exclude abortion coverage in the public plan, nor taxpayer subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortions.

At a meeting with White House officials (named) the President of Americans United for Life called for clarification of the President's statement; according to the organisation's CEO they "remained non-committal on explicit language excluding abortion from the healthcare bill". What the right hand does not specifically exclude, the left hand has a funny habit of insinuating. Listen. All that is needed to empty the healthcare debate off its current, controversial rails is simply to exclude abortion coverage - formally.

I thought it naïve to argue that the President's way of "doing something about it" is an attempt to find common ground. To me it looks very much like those law schools you mentioned earlier who "cast aside first principles, the most prominent of which is the belief that moral reality can be known and understood by men and women". I think Obama does not subscribe to that belief; I may be wrong.

What, I cannot help asking myself, would the patron saint of politicians St Thomas More have done? Followed the President down his present path? Shaken his head at the "moral tragedy" and gone along with its perpetuation? Or opted for the "moral reality" that "can be known and understood by men and women" as you once so clearly stated? In the non-beheading context of the American scene only political castration would have presented itself before the patron saint of politicians as a possible outcome of not going along with certain ideologies. I doubt that would have troubled him much. After all, a moral tragedy is a human tragedy.

Partners in a troubled world

Interesting to read that you see part of your assignment in Malta to bring people together and explore bonds that can be formed among people of different faith traditions. "If a hot spot erupts" you said, "we might be able to call upon these faith-based organisations to help diffuse a situation". Quite how this idea will run will be interesting to follow.

Your hope and wish to strengthen ties between our two countries are clear. They are ours, too; no reason why a minuscule island with its own problems and a mighty continent battling with the enormous problems that being mighty brings with it, cannot complement one another in areas beneficial to both.

We would like to see more Americans include Malta when they 'do' Europe. And you will discover for yourself what a lot there is about us and our history that Americans will love. You will meet, too, an educated and skilled workforce as well as professional management teams capable of offering American entrepreneurs a wide range of services.

Like you, your fellow countrymen will enjoy visiting and working in Malta.