I think it was Chesterton who said something along the lines that "the greatest sin of the modern world is that it has lost the sense of sin". He should be living at this hour.

Thus it was that when the bishops of Malta and Gozo released a statement correcting a priest's public declaration that he found no difficulty with giving Holy Communion to cohabitants, I was not dumbfounded when letters appeared with remarks like 'the Church does not have the right to deprive any person from receiving Holy Communion'; if the guardian of a doctrine has not got that right, who has?

A correspondent from Texas indulged in any number of platitudes and not once did he make reference to the sacrament of reconciliation; or, perhaps more to the point, to the efficacy of cohabitants, or anybody else for that matter, making a spiritual communion. Nobody can be denied this form of communion; anybody, everybody, is encouraged to participate in it.

And a contributor to Talking Point remarking that the Bishops' statement was "a perfect reminder of where the Church stands on the issue" wondered, "whether it was either tactful, charitable or timely for the Maltese Church to make such a clunking (sic) statement of the obvious at such a point in time"; meaning, of course, that it was neither tactful nor timely nor charitable.

I do not see, once it was a 'statement of the obvious,' how tact comes into it, let alone the 'clunking' bit, but that it was timely 'at such a point in time' can hardly be gainsaid. Presumably the bishops are free to speak out any time a matter that falls within their jurisdiction crops up, without one of them being accused of seemingly losing his 'political touch' (whatever that may mean in this context) and judged to have been "presumably under pressure from his more fundamentalist colleague". Given its jihadist genesis, I wish people would stop bandying this word about quite so glibly.

And surely, in the same way that it would be reasonable for anybody in authority, say a political leader for the sake of argument, publicly to correct a member of his parliamentary group who openly broadcasts a policy contrary to the party's belief; incumbent on the CEO of a corporation to admonish or even sack a divisional manager who opposes publicly the corporation's mission statement; and judicious for the head of the BBC to deny the airwaves to a newscaster who is criminally offensive on the subject of, say, race; in the same way, it was manifestly prudent and expedient for the bishops to issue a statement correcting a priest who declared on television that he was ready to act, and I understand does, in a manner contrary to what the Church teaches.

I hope we have not reached a stage where the constitutional right of the Church to speak out on matters falling within its sphere is being questioned by those who correctly call for freedom of expression but apparently challenge the Church's right to that same freedom.

Which brings me seamlessly, if parenthetically, to Nancy Pelosi, a pro-abortion politician and the Speaker in the US House of Representatives. She has pursued the separation of Church and State angle with evangelical fervour; so what happened to her ardour for this separation when she made the gratuitous assertion that she's had cardinals and bishops going up to her, asking her to pass an Immigrations Bill - and her reaction to that? I paraphrase. 'I tell them to say this to the American people, to say this from their pulpit'; to hell with the separation of Church and State?

Illegal immigration? Demonstrate your loyalty to the Democratic party on this issue from the pulpit. Abortion? Do not manifest any disloyalty on this subject by going against the concept of the separation of Church and State. This is vintage Pelosian murkiness; the bishops were in favour of a fair and equitable Immigration Bill well before she started to bang that gavel.

Thank you, Joseph

But, as a passenger on that Emirates flight must have said to himself as he was kept waiting for 50 minutes on the tarmac after the aircraft was scheduled to take off, no thank you. When I read the report last Sunday, I had this picture in my mind of Muscat grinning broadly as he publicly apologised to passengers never before submitted to an indignity heaped on them by someone who should have known better and does not.

Mind you, the image was only a fleeting one. It is more probably the case that any shameless grinning from the Leader of the Opposition would have been countered by far more scowling from the entrapped and not intrepid voyagers. Muscat continues to give the strong impression that he suffers from an almost dysfunctional sense of proper behaviour when it comes to an 'occasion', an innate incomprehension of good manners.

Still, if he can keep the Prime Minister waiting for three-quarters-of-an-hour before turning up for a debate on television, and the Spanish King clicking his heels for a while during the latter's state visit to Malta, mere mortals sweating on a tarmac can thank their lucky stars His Republicanship turned up at all.

His gauche behaviour was reflected in his party's explanation to this newspaper, which was supposed to appreciate, God knows why, "that we are not the civil authorities and thus cannot speculate on flight delays"; this was not a particularly civil explanation, either; foolish even. Everybody knows that "they" are not the first, nor were they asked to do the second; but everybody expected that "they" could have had the nous to extend a simple apology and quote some "unforeseen circumstance," like a running tummy, that prevented the running tummier, whoever that may have been, from making it on time. Anything would have done but this bland, almost contemptuous, refusal to come up with some rationale for such irrational behaviour.

It may be the case that this absence of decorum goes down well with some of Muscat's supporters; that, too, would be cause for concern. The sooner the man realises, or is made aware of this by anybody around him who can distinguish good manners from bad, the better for him, the party he leads and the country. Perhaps his manners will improve in Australia.

Falling and the fallen in the US

Every year on May 31, the Americans hold a Memorial Day for the fallen and, as you would expect, they do so with great respect for the thousands of men and women who gave up their lives fighting for their country in foreign lands. Why am I mentioning this?

Well, let me start at the beginning, which was yesterday week at an excellent lunch party in a hamlet outside Dingli. Wine duly settled on top of a couple of pre-prandial drinks and for some reason I cannot for the life of me remember, by four o'clock when we were still knocking back the Chateau Lafite Rothschild (1993, of course) the conversation turned to Barack Obama, that articulate politician who, for all his charm, seems to be getting into deeper and deeper trouble.

I only had to murmur this opinion for 20 pairs of eyes to fasten on to me and for 20 tongues to cluck inarticulate disapproval in unison. So, here's the thing. Last Friday's Rasmussen polls showed his ratings down at 42 per cent - one in 10 who voted for him in 2008 had trailed away (which does not necessarily mean then will not trail back). And for why? The oil spill had landed, for one. It was there, out there three, four weeks ago, but now it was visible, ugly and tangible on Florida's and Louisiana's beaches. Commentators, even friendly ones, are muttering Katrina, so Obama flew to Louisiana last Friday before going off on holiday; the oil stayed behind.

But the general feeling one gets from reading sections of the American press, partisan and non-partisan, is that the glitter and excitement of yesteryear has diminished considerably. The dynamics of change have not kept up with expectations. I won't go into detail on finance and the deficit hanging around the neck of the richest nation in the world, a deficit that may yet reach Greek proportions and Moody's are said to be toying with the idea of tinkering with America's credit rating. That's one for the books.

Then there is his meandering over illegal immigration, an amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, and his row with Arizona. And now there is a cloud hanging over the White House, well not quite over it but moving that way. The story so far is that attempts are being made to persuade Congressman Joe Sestak (quite what these attempts amounted to, remains to be seen, but Obama's opponents talk in loud whispers of skulduggery) to withdraw from the Pennsylvania Senate primary and leave the field to Senator Arlen Specter. The latter switched from the Republican party to the Democrats last year. A carrot has been dangled, unsuccessfully, before Sestak.

But perhaps worse than all this for lower, middle and upper America, emotively and patriotically, was the news that he would not be visiting Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day. US Vice-President Joe Biden would be taking his place while he holidayed or visited Chicago. Is he losing his touch? November beckons, so does a no-no to the Democrats. I could have said most of this at that lunch but my hearers were not in a state to listen so fluidly was the wine flowing.