THE fact that you devote no less than a two-page spread, (The Church, the police and the bitter row engulfing one of Scotland's top clergymen, News, December 10) to the sorry treatment of Marie Lindsay shows just how serious you consider this matter to be. The idea that morality flows from religion has received a major set-back in the public perception in recent years with the well-documented incidence of paedophilia and child molestation among Catholic priests. More evidence comes to light with each passing year, suggesting that even the devoutly religious are far from immune from immoral behaviour. In the past few weeks we learned that there are allegations against 40 monks and teachers of sexually abusing boys at Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire, and that a witness told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry that a nun had thrown a child to the floor and kicked him repeatedly in the head at the Smyllum orphanage, near Lanark, run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul (the child died soon after). Now we learn of the shocking treatment of Marie Lindsay by clergy of the Catholic Church. Surely the time has come for a completely independent judge-led inquiry – in particular, independent of the Archbishop of Glasgow, Philip Tartaglia – into the Catholic Church's role and influence in our country.

Doug Clark, Currie