On Thursday's Times, there was a lengthy letter, responding to a piece by Kenneth Zammit Tabona, in which the letter writer, whose name I forget but it's not important (I trust you see what I mean) made his case for wanting to leave the Catholic Church and for this to be given effect, something on the lines of when one de-registers for VAT, I imagine.

The letter, as already pointed out, was lengthy and it tended to flit from point to point, making it a less than snappy read, but my opening question stands: why? To which I could add a corollary, namely " and who cares?" As far as I am concerned, whether young what's his name is, was, doesn't want to be, no longer considers himself as, a Catholic (or a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Seventh Day Adventist or whatever) is a matter of supreme indifference.

You might ask why, then, I am dedicating a few words this fine morning (it's a beautiful day with a North Westerly blowing) to asking this youth to keep his religious or non-religious activities to himself.

Well, it's simple really: religious or anti-religious activism impinges on our lives in so many ways if taken too far, and I'm thinking that the next step said youth is going to take will be to invoke the majesty of the Courts of Justice, which will cost me money (you think the Courts run themselves for free or something?)

Either that or he's going to whip a few like-minded souls up into a frenzy and march on the Curia (hopefully not to sack it, as Labour's shock-troops had done once, just minutes after Dr KMB had removed himself from the parade) requiring the deployment of Malta's finest to keep order (a feat they had not managed to carry out the other time) and generally messing around with traffic, all of which will cost me and you money and cause us inconvenience.

That's not to say, of course, that the chap didn't have a valid point buried within his epistle: it's about time religion, any religion and all religion, was taken off centre stage and made a matter of personal choice not to be imposed on anyone.

And by not imposing, I mean everything from removing references to religion from the Constitution, through letting people regulate their lives without reference to the Sacra Rota to conducting religious festivities with a tad more consideration for the rest of us than most parishes demonstrate. I'm not advocating the dry and totalitarian secularisation of the world, just a bit of liberalism which allows me to live my life without having to endure a re-enactment of the Blitz to celebrate a saint. Let off some fireworks, by all means, and process around the streets all you like, but do bear in mind that there are some of us for whose life would be complete without all that.

And if you want to leave your religion, be my guest, but please don't mess me or my taxes around while you're at it - just leave.