Your “ordinary, lay Catholic man-in-the-street” (Martin Scicluna, October 17) who accepts that the Church deals with absolute truths and that the Church and the Maltese Church in particular “is capable of change and has already changed…”, at the same time takes it upon himself to assume to be the champion for change in the Church, as if the current synod of bishops in Rome has somehow from that distance heard his small voice in the wilderness calling for change and is following it. And this while turning up his nose at what he refers to as “the so-called magisterium of the Church”.

The contradictions and intellectual arrogance of “our ordinary lay Catholic” are worrying.

He seeks in one stroke to erase the diocese of Gozo, to want a married priesthood, gay families, unregulated artificial human fertilisation, euthanasia, etc., in fact, everything that a well-trained Sunningdale civil servant versed in “speaking truth to power” could ask for.

This may be in keeping with liberal thinking in the UK but it is foreign to our Maltese way of life.