I have read with interest the various reactions regarding the group Not In Our Name in the Maltese media. I plead guilty to being one of the 41 “noteworthies” caricatured by Kenneth Zammit Tabona in his article Outward Signs Of Inward Grace (August 23). My contribution to this debate will be to spell out, as concisely as possible, my reasons for wanting to leave the Catholic Church.

I do not consider myself a Catholic any longer. I did not choose to be baptised and was still too young to realise the full implications of receiving the sacrament of confirmation. Let it be clear that I harbour no ill feeling towards people endorsing the Catholic faith. My quarrel is with the institution of the Church itself. The Church is not simply a spiritual guide; it competes to affect public policy which in turn affects all citizens. Everyone knows that its reach is far and wide, and it is able to use both direct and indirect methods to influence key decisions.

I do not believe in theocracy and I do not believe the state should be run according to the teachings of a Holy Book and their subsequent interpretation by a religious institution.

But a cursory look at the events of 2010 and 2011 would convince anyone that many important people in the highest reaches of the state would not agree with me. There were a substantial number of episodes in which appointed officials in positions of public trust spoke as if the entire population of these islands was Catholic. I am tired of feeling like a second-class citizen and of the state being used as a tool to impose Catholic morality on everyone.

Considering all this, is it so capricious that I should wish to send a message to the powers that be that there are baptised citizens who are no longer Catholic and who wish for their liberties to be respected?

Am I not free to leave an institution which I did not even choose to join in the first place? And why should I be subject to an interview by the Chancellor? If I were a member of a political party with whose ideas I no longer agreed, would I need the permission of its general secretary to leave it? Would I not have the right to ask them to stop keeping my records?

As a non-believer, I feel bound only by the laws of this republic. Mr Zammit Tabona claims that my baptism cannot be reversed and that I cannot stop being Catholic. Whether my baptism can be reversed or not is an idle question in a metaphysical framework in which I no longer believe. He also claims that we should militate for a change in the Constitution instead, to allow for a secular republic. This, I’m afraid to say, is naïve in the extreme. There is absolutely no political will for such a change; we’re at a stage in which the institutions barely recognise that you can be Maltese and non-Catholic. What Not In Our Name is doing is taking the first steps towards the latter goal. If we succeed, perhaps the idea of a secular state will start to sound like the only option which can ensure that all citizens are respected equally.