Sunday’s pages contained the thoughtful interview by Anthony Manduca of my service in Malta. Tomorrow as you read this with your morning kafé, I will be boarding a flight to Los Angeles (via Munich) and home.
Writing the words “and home” just now prompted a flood of emotion within my heart. With that emotion overflowing into my eyes, I turn away from my daughter Kolleen who thoughtfully came to help her father pack up the household. Kolleen has already returned to Florence and architecture and Italian studies, but I now remember Kolleen asking: “Why the tears?”
Why indeed? After all, I am headed to that geographic place – home – on the other side of the globe where, with the summer-time exception of Kolleen’s travels, my wife and children await, if not anxiously at least curiously, for a father who must seem to them a bit like a brass band marching out of step and unsure of its direction.
So many in Malta have said my ambassadorial service has made a real, truly positive difference between the US and Malta that I should be believing this by now. Unfortunately, the portion of my soul which monitors the truth still feels the profound sadness of my early departure. I resigned. I could have stayed. Somehow I managed to find a way to fire myself.
• Yes, there is honour in a resignation given to protest troubling on-going, bureaucratic interference with the freedom to write, think and speak of prayerful things.
Yes, there is honour in a resignation in the face of the decidedly mean-spirited destruction of my reputation by a US government agency, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), that mischaracterised complete devotion to government duties as a “light schedule” intermixed with “social visits” to government leaders.
What would have made it better? That I would not be leaving at all and my family still be of the size and temperament to be together – together being the word that matters – in the grand Villa Apap Bologna each day savouring its beautifully cared-for lawn and gardens. The residence of the American ambassador overpowers one’s senses in beauty, but when those you love can seldom be there, it hardly compares at all to even a detainee family’s tent or trailer space in Hal Far.
What else would have made it better? That the OIG with its vital function of ensuring the integrity of government programmes not become a witting or unwitting pawn in some Machiavellian effort to either undermine the President’s faith-based initiative or the President’s good servant or both. It was wrong – just wrong – to rewrite its report of my Embassy service in Washington, changing it from the very positive one shown to us in draft in Floriana, but then that was where it was still necessary to look us in the eye. The unfairness is only magnified by the Inspector General ignoring the President’s adviser (who can be heard on You Tube http://www.ipolitics360.com/videos/AmbassadorKmiecsInterfaithMandate-afdlq9laKws.htm ) even memorialising the White House view that there was a “special presidential logic” behind my appointment to Malta to make faith-based inquiries.
• God’s plan. The mind of God remains mostly inaccessible. We know however that He loves us. We do our best to recall that when we feel falsely accused, Jesus stood sinless and wholly innocent before his accusers. We know Jesus was scourged and condemned to die for us. As dedicated as my government service has been (and with the help of many, it accomplished far more than the OIG lets on), it pales in comparison. As accidental as the horrible tragedy which took the lives of my dear friends, and threatened my own (an unusually low heart rate very likely combining with the medication then being taken for Parkinson’s Disease causing me to momentarily black out and lose control on that ill-fated canyon road), I was still driving and had a duty to return all safely.
The point: I am not – we are not –without sin, and unlike our Saviour whose only concern was our well being, our sin keeps pushing to make “me first”. Perhaps there I have located the sadness in my (our) hearts. Perhaps there I have identified the reason why it is less important to know the outcome of the divorce referendum than to avoid divorce in our own lives or judging with disdain those who have divorced. Is there anyone who voted who fails to recognise the ideal of marriage as the equivalent of the unqualified sacrifice and love that exists between the bridegroom Christ and His church?
Husbands of Malta; wives of Malta; children of Malta, love one another. There is no point expounding upon what might have been in my life, or yours. We know neither the day nor the hour – and we must use the time we are given wisely and to love.
Prof. Kmiec is US Ambassador.