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.