Your excellent editorial, “Church still lags behind Newman” (19 October), highlights the “continued absence of any systematic consultation among bishops, priests and laity on the many challenges the Church now faces”.

To be reminded of the wonderful and inspiring National Pastoral Congress in Liverpool in 1980, in which I was involved in the planning and execution, still hurts. It was a week attended by enthused delegates from all over the country who left for home full of hope for change and dialogue. Easter People was the book published afterwards setting out the future. I remember how Archbishop Derek Worlock was personally crushed by the reactions from Rome.

Forty years later we still have no structures for dialogue and consultation. The laity are asked for their views which are then ignored. Meanwhile the lay folk who continue to fund their Church become steadily fewer in number.