I was highly amused by Mgr Joseph Farrugia’s reply (October 13) seeking to justify why he had not spoken out at The Times debate on the Church on October 2, when he had had every opportunity to do so.

My amusement was two-fold. First, he spent a third of the article castigating me for using the phrase “speaking truth to power” without attributing it to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I can assure Mgr Farrugia that the phrase pre-dates Archbishop Tutu by several decades. He didn’t coin it himself, but he was recently given an award of a million dollars by the Mo Ibraham Foundation “for a life-long commitment to speaking truth to power”.

I personally was taught it at the Civil Service Staff College in Sunningdale more than 40 years ago and it was instilled into me as the mantra of the British civil service, which is trained to give impartial and objective advice to ministers, hence speaking truth to power.

The phrase was of course coined in 1955 – well before Archbishop Tutu was anywhere near the scene – in a pamphlet proposing a new approach to the Cold War. It was inspired by a Quaker.

Secondly, I have rarely heard a more feeble reason for not having the courage to speak up at a debate than the one put forward by Mgr Farrugia: “there were others”... out of “deference”...to “allow him (me) time, and offer him ease, to absorb what I wrote about”. Really!

What a pity he felt unable to take a leaf out of Cardinal Martini’s book whose motto was “For the sake of Truth, dare to confront difficulties”. Had he done so, he might have come out of this with his dignity intact.