Douglas Kmiec, the former US ambassador to Malta, who was unceremoniously called back to his country last year probably because someone in the State Department believed he was giving more time to his faith commitment than to his ambassadorial role, is back in the news.
Why not walk down a path that would have led to common ground?
The well-known Pepperdine has a chequered history of principle-driven political involvement. The pro-life law professor had originally been a Republican and had supported Mitt Romney for the 2008 presidential election.
Following Romney’s withdrawal from the contest, Kmiec changed his support to Barack Obama. His decision was criticised heavily, particularly by conservative Catholics who believed Catholics should not support Obama because of his pro-abortion stances.
Kmiec aptly justified his position, campaigned for Obama and suffered for his commitment. He was also denied the Eucharist on one occasion, a happening that made him suffer a lot. Although a supporter of Obama, he has now openly broken ranks with the White House on the Health and Human Services mandate, and indicated that he may not vote for Obama’s re-election.
The controversy that is currently raging in the US is about these regulations on mandatory coverage of contraceptives, sterilisation and abortion-inducing drugs.
The US bishops are objecting that the mandate does not exempt Catholic charities, schools, universities, or hospitals and forces these institutions and others, against their conscience, to pay for things they consider immoral. The mandate forces coverage of sterilisation and abortion-inducing drugs and devices as well as contraception.
In an open letter to the President published through the website Catholic Online, Kmiec asked why the administration had “put the cold calculus of politics above faith and freedom” by requiring Church-related groups to include contraception in health-care coverage: “Where is the common good, sir, in not making room for the great Catholic traditions of education, health care, and meeting the needs of the least among us?” he asked.
Kmiec also sent an e-mail to the Washington, DC newspaper The Hill saying he was “now unhappily without a candidate”, until he could “have an opportunity to speak with the President” about Health and Human Services’ new rules on contraception coverage. He suggested the President was forcing him to choose between “friendship” and his “duty to faith and country”.
“The Barack Obama I knew would never have asked me to make that choice,” he wrote.
In his e-mail to The Hill, Kmiec said he was left wondering, “why exactly did we not walk down a path that would have led to common ground – namely, coverage without ethical objection?
“That’s what I need answered before deciding on 2012,” he wrote.
Since Kmiec took this position the US administration has mellowed its stand and proposed a compromise position. This has been welcomed by several Catholic associations as an improved version of the original mandate, though the bishops are still not happy with the situation.
I do not know whether the new proposals by Obama made a difference to the position of Kmiec. The point I want to make still stands, whether or not Kmiec still feels he is a Catholic without a candidate.
My point is that in today’s pluralistic environments Catholics will more than ever before face difficult decisions in their involvement in politics.
The situation asks for principled people well-versed in Catholic teachings who are savvy enough to know when to compromise and when to refuse to compromise; when to hold a position or when to change it; when to support one party or when to change sides.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt