Did you spot the news item carried in last Sunday's Times?

The one about how the cops in Mosta, who seem moved to make an effort sometimes to remind us that they too have something to contribute to alleviating the general doom and gloom that afflicts the world, leant on a shop-owner who had chained two unclothed mannequins together, to make a point about sex trafficking.

Apparently, someone of influence had been moved to complain that he (or she) felt that the naked dummies were too explicit, the point being made obviously being lost on her (or him)

The cops were told where to get off, and as at the time of writing this do not seem to have hauled the shop-owner off to jail, though nothing is excluded in Malta in 2009, where fundamentalism is not always necessarily confined to the lunatic fringes.

To the busy-body who complained, and to the silly senior cop who acted on the complaint and despatched a couple of flat-foots, the world generally extended a couple of fingers arranged in the time-honoured fashion, if the comments section under the story is any evidence.

Mine are also thus arranged, I'm glad to say, but let's move on.

One of the things I find irritating about a certain type of God-botherer is the smug way they cite "facts", for all the world as if the mere fact of such citation renders their utterance, whatever it is about, beyond criticism or question.

You know the sort of thing I mean, it is generally spouted during a "teaching" situation, formal or otherwise, or some sort of discourse on matters moral. You get the pious one saying something like "Father Dobbs wrote" and then some inanity or other is trotted out, sometimes pertinent to the matter being discussed, sometimes perhaps not so much.

This is evidence of nothing except the fact that the speaker is incapable of making a cogent argument for him or herself but has to rely on the reflected erudition that can be gleaned from quoting the authority that for the time being is perceived as useful, even if to the rest of us, said 'authority' is actually nothing more than the utterance of a platitude of monumental proportions (at best) or a totally irrelevant piece of twaddle (at worst)

If this happens during a sermon or on someone's FaceBook page, for example, then it's not really such an issue, because no-one except for the immediate audience is targeted, for all that sometimes I wonder if FaceBook has overtaken reality. You can always delete the person making the silly remark, anyway, on FB, which you can't really do in the non-virtual world, but they're well-meaning, so I don't often succumb to the temptation.

But if the inanity takes on nationally-broadcast proportions, and is potentially influential within the context of a debate on an issue of importance, then it is incumbent on the rest of us, the ones who want to keep the debate on the rails of reason, to have a good laugh, laughter being the best antidote to the earnest, if delusional, tone that is adopted on these occasions.

With this in mind, then, I invite you to fall about laughing at the dictum reported last week, about what a speaker, presumably described to his audience in the tones generally reserved for a "visiting expert", a genus that in small countries is given virtually omniscient status, is reported to have said.

Under a virtual headline last Saturday "Almost all couples want their marriage to succeed - expert", theologian Aldigonde Brenninkmeijer (who?) said that 98 percent of couples wanted to make a success out of their marriage even though the number of those getting a divorce was on the increase.

Leaving aside the fact that I've never heard of this particular visiting fireman, the sheer stupidity of his remark debases the point he was making, whatever it was, to the point of ridicule.

I don't know what irks me more, the fact that he said it all, which must mean that he thinks it was worth saying, or the fact that he must be seen, by the people who invited him to speak, as someone who might make a valid contribution to the debate on divorce, heaven help us.

Think about this particularly dumb remark, why don't you?

It casts doubts, to the point of insult, on the thought processes of everyone who gets married: for Pete's sake, I didn't need this genius to tell me that when I said "I do", I wasn't standing their plotting the destruction of the union.

But I suppose if you describe yourself as a theologian, you can say pretty much what you like and get away with it, especially if what you say is linked to a conclusion that upholds the wisdom that the existence of divorce renders each and every marriage unstable in and of itself.

What is the point this paragon of debating virtues was making? Frankly, I have no idea, but it seems to be that we shouldn't have divorce, because almost all couples want their marriage to succeed. Logical? Not remotely, but when did that ever stop an argument being made?