Further to Bartholomew Zammit’s letter (‘Smoke in the church’, November 26), there’s more to add regarding pollution by the Church. What about noise pollution, of which the Church is another perpetrator? Why are many church clocks, in this day and age, allowed to pollute the night’s silence with their quarterly chimes? For the record, church clocks strike 210 times from 10pm to 6am.

What about those who live in close proximity of a church? Why are church bells, especially on Sundays, allowed to peal as early as 5.45am to invite the faithful for the first Sunday Mass? Why should they wake up one and all indiscriminately?

I doubt that all priests in Malta wake up that early on Sunday. So, in this case, what’s good for the goose must also be good for the gander. The fact is that those who want to go to church so early don’t need any church bells to act as alarms while those who want to sleep on have every right to do so without being disturbed by early morning peals.

Doesn’t all this contribute to noise pollution, which I sincerely believe no one wants to tackle, precisely because it’s being orchestrated by the Church itself? I wonder whether the new noise pollution law, which has still to be enacted, would cater for such a ‘holy’ inconvenience. From Mario de Marco’s answer (May 2, 2012) to my White Paper suggestions regarding church clocks, I have my doubts about whether such ‘holy’ noises could ever be done away with.

However, if things remain as they are, then I would also ask the same pertinent question as Zammit. Isn’t the Church – during the night and so early in the day – breaking noise pollution laws or does it think, as happened in mediaeval times, that it is above the law?

To readers, their judgement!