Why unbelieving Catholics must see themselves
as no longer Catholic
and stop ticking the Roman Catholic Box?
Don't tick any Catholic boxes, on the parish record, on the census form or
whatever, if you see that Catholic no longer describes you.
Census forms should never ask, "What is your religion?" It should ask, "Do you
practice a religion?" This would help work out more reliable statistics so that
the government departments can make plans far better. For example, funding will
be cut back on humanist chaplains in hospitals if too many people identify
themselves as Catholics when they think or know the religion is false and do not
practice it. Also, the huge number of people revering the religious label -
though not the religion - and thus taking that label on the census form is the
prime reason religion gets unfair and special privileges such as tax exemption.
The claim that Catholicism is globally 1.2 billion is the prime reason it gets
disproportionate airtime in the news and on television in general. The Church
says that it is a communion of faith and love meaning that the cherry-picker
member is really only a part-member if a true member at all. It is possible to
imagine devout Protestants who are more in communion with Catholic belief than
those who profess to be Catholics. The Church says you excommunicate yourself
from it by heresy and grave sin so that in your heresy and sin you have no right
to claim to be acting as a Catholic.
REASON ONE
Valid Baptism is supposed to make you a member of the Church and give you
supernatural power to accept the Catholic faith. So, if you find that you have
always been unable to do so fully then you have the right to take that as a sign
that your baptism was null and void. If it works, experience will tell you.
Nobody has any business assuming you are Catholic just because you were put
through a baptism ceremony - it Is not that simple.
REASON TWO
By merely being listed as a member or listing oneself as a member, is to tacitly
support the Church and to say that if you dissent from the Church that your
views are not representative of the faith. To tick the box and support the
Church by declaring membership is immoral when you don't believe in it - it is
promoting a structure of deceit that damages people. If you know the Church is
nonsense, then that is far worse. If you protest against the teachings that are
essential, you are not much of an asset to your causes. You are just coming
across as a disobedient hypocrite. A hypocrite actually supports the teachings
he undermines for hypocrisy is paying homage to the virtues simulated.
REASON THREE
Ticking the 'Roman Catholic' box as a non-believer demeans yourself for you are
not being true to you. And more so if you know the Church is not the only
authorised Church of God that it claims to be. A person who takes a census form
and declares themselves to be a member of a faith and Church they have fallen
away from is not being true to themselves.
Religion is not a gathering of individuals. It is not a social club for
individuals. In fact, you have to give up your liberties to be part of the
religion. But you may say that say Mormons and Catholics for example have a lot
of freedom to do what they want. Yes but they are doing these things primarily
because they are permitted so they are still not free. The only freedom the
religious person has is the freedom to obey.
A religion is not the people who comprise it. It is a system. It is ultimately
the system of Roman Catholicism that is the problem not the Catholic people. The
system is what must be rejected. It is not worth more than the people who compose
its membership. To change the system is to make a new one. To say you can be
part of it while rejecting anything it stands for is to misrepresent it and to
deceive. If you want to see Church teaching on gay people changed why stop
there? If you start to find the notion of God offensive which you may do should
you lose a loved one in a horrible manner, why not try and get it the progress
of the belief stopped too? The point is, refusing to admit that opposition to
gay sex is part of Catholic doctrine and Catholic identity is absurd and
dishonest. To repudiate one official Catholic doctrine is by implication to
invite Catholics to repudiate the rest and to pretend that they are a Church.
REASON FOUR
An unbelieving person ticking Catholic implies that Catholicism is a mere label
- it is not. Catholicism claims that the Catholic religion is the most important
business of all. It says there is no salvation outside the Church. It adds that
there is just everlasting torment for those who do not join the religion they
believe to be of God. It says the Church is not a human organisation but is set
up and revealed by God. It is warped to think it is disrespectful to a religion to
fail to put the label it gave you down on a census form, and not disrespectful
to see it as a mere label.
If religious belief and practice do not matter, then why not declare yourself
any religion at random? There is no difference between a unbelieving person who
rejects the Church and its faith declaring themselves Mormon on the census form
or Catholic. One is just as untrue as the other.
If belief, or at least refusing to accept beliefs contrary to the religion, is
not needed to be a true member then there is no real criteria to make one a real
member of any religion and religion becomes must a pretence and a label. To deny
one doctrine that the religion says God has revealed is to say the others may be
denied or doubted as well. Why should we believe your statement? Would we
believe somebody who said "I checked the Catholic box on the census because I
identify as a Catholic. I also identify as an atheist"? Or "I checked the
Catholic box on the census because I identify as a Catholic. I also identify as
a Muslim"? Just admit it you are a hypocrite. If as you seem to think, one can
believe it is right to be gay despite the official teaching of the Church and be
a true Catholic, then there is no criteria for telling who is a hypocrite or
not. If you can be a Catholic, then surely the embezzler who believes he has to
steal for his children can justly appropriate and take the good Catholic label
if he wants it? I am not saying that embezzlers and gay people are to be
compared by the way.
Anybody can call themselves a Christian or Muslim if picking and choosing out of
a faith is acceptable. There is no place to draw the line at where a picker and
chooser can stop before he or she loses the right to claim to be a member of her
or his religion. For example, would you consider a priest to be a real Catholic
who stood for the notion that the Mass was barbaric idolatry and the Pope was
not the head teacher appointed by Christ to be his voice in the world?
Any religious affiliation can be changed and changing does not make you more or
less of a person. You can be fully human and have no religion.
REASON FIVE
It is Catholic teaching that God makes laws we do not understand because he
alone has all knowledge and can see the benefits of these laws. Both religious
liberals and fundamentalists believe that God knows best and that kind of
thinking is to blame for much of the harm done in the name of God. Do not become
complicit it in it by supporting the religious system in any sense.
REASON SIX
It makes no sense for people to expect the Church to change its teaching for
them. Such a move would basically be the Church showing it is a human
organisation, not a divine one, if it could change doctrine. It can't do that
without becoming a new religion and it would not be the Church anymore. To
support the Church - actively or passively - is to damage the human right to
truth and transparency. If you think the Church is merely human then you should
not be in it. A God would want you to worship him in the true religion.
The Church says the true Church has four marks - one, holy, Catholic and
apostolic. It is one in faith - all members agree that the Catholic faith with
its doctrines and ethics is true and that the Church cannot contradict its
teaching but may grow in understanding it. It is holy which refers primarily to
the doctrine and ethics of the Church. Even if Catholics are all bad, the
principles at least are holy and the Church is called to be holy. Holy means to
be separate and different. A Church that is a close match for the values of the
secular world is not holy in any sense. The Church claims to be a church of
sinners so the holiness refers principally to the teaching and the sacraments
the Church provides. It is Catholic - Catholic means universal or meant for all
people. It is apostolic - meaning it accepts the teaching of the apostles and
cannot change it for it was given once for all in the past. The Church may
increase in understanding the faith but it cannot change it or contradict it.
The unbeliever is not Catholic for none of the marks apply to him or her.