I refer to the challenge by Fr Joe Borg in The Sunday Times of Malta (August 24). He asked me on behalf of my audience (!) to name at least one person who “acted as part of a concerted conspiracy to ensnare the Church in a political quagmire”. While I would have like so much to take up his challenge during this long hot summer of ice-bucket challenges, he would not give me this pleasure.

You see, in my ‘crucifixion’ article I never referred to any ‘concerted conspiracy’, as anyone who read the article would know.

If he would like to know more of what I think about this matter, he may want to read the interview that I gave to Malta Today as well as to my contribution to the television programme Reporter.

Actually, I was amazed by the reaction to my article in the local media. Apart from the reprinting of the 2007 cartoon by The Sunday Times of Malta, and from messages I received, there were media contributions such as that by Joseph Micallef Stafrace on it-Torċa last Sunday.

He referred to a “conspiracy by a handful of clerics and laymen”.

And there are the 800+ persons who participated in an online poll on this matter.

They believe that “Paul Cremona was being undermined by clergymen who want the Church to adopt a political agenda”. Of course, all these should be treated as if they ‘sprouted out’ ‘like a stream of consciousness’.

But I have no doubt what is at least partly and occasionally the agenda of the correspondent in his contributions to the media. I have been reading too many of such contributions over these long years to have any doubt. And it appears that I am not the only one to harbour such a perception.

In any case, I think I should stop here and refrain from referring to the Archbishop’s revealing words that he made during the prayer vigil held in Mellieħa.

Incidentally, I do not intend to continue with this line of written correspondence, unless I am really forced to by circumstances.