MEMBERSHIP OF RELIGION
Un-Initiate Yourself from Religion and the truth shall set you free!
It is obvious that you can be an ex-member of your religion without having made
it official.
Despite that, these are the days of cafeteria Christianity. These are the days
where people create a counterfeit Christianity and of course call it
Christianity.
A la carte Catholicism is the largest religion in the world not Roman
Catholicism. It is just picking out the elements in the theology that one likes
and discarding all the rest ignoring the fact that this amounts to saying you
believe in what God has revealed and God is always right but you don’t believe
all he said!
Father Michael in The Universe, Sunday March 7, 2010 states that there are
certain doctrines of the Catholic Church that one must hold in order to be a
true Catholic. He specified that you cannot call yourself a Catholic if you
think that Jesus was not the Son of God. The heading of this article runs,
“Catholicism is not a pick ‘n’ mix”.
The Wanderer August 28 1980 stated that “For a true Catholic, dissent from the
Magisterium is impossible. There is only one approach to the Magisterium by
sincere, intelligent, dedicated Catholics. That is to believe, to submit, to
accept as true all that she teaches. If one cannot do so, the sincere,
intelligent and dedicated thing is to cease claiming Catholicity - to remove
one’s self from allegiance to Holy Mother Church.”
Epiphanius in his Heresies stated that those who contradict the Catholic
believers are considered aliens (Chapter 73).
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, 1441: “The Holy Roman Church condemns,
reproves, anathematizes and declares to be outside the Body of Christ, which is
the Church, the heretic for he holds opposing or contrary views.”
According to Catholicism, "The Lord Jesus did say that whoever was not for him
was against him. He said that if you are his disciple you will lift up your
cross and follow him. This means that whoever is a disciple and does not do this
ceases to be a disciple. Christian means follower of Christ or disciple."
A religion is a grouping of people with the same supernatural beliefs.
You cannot have a religion without an authority, some person or book or thing to
tell you what to believe. In Roman Catholicism, it is the teaching authority of
the Church. Protestantism has made the Bible the only teacher and they are
supposed to examine what they hear in the pulpit to make sure that it fits the
Bible but it is obvious that scarcely any do that for they would all be one
Church if they did. Anyway, if you question or deny outright one doctrine taught
by the authority you are accusing the whole authority of being a liar and
unreliable with whatever it teaches. Every religion bases its dogmas on a source
that is held to be infallible so to doubt one dogma is to doubt all for they are
all from the same revelation.
The religionists who know that their cult is wrong even in one foundational
doctrine has a duty to cut all ties with their doctrinal system and to cease to
be a member. It is faith not doing good that makes you a member of a religion.
Therefore, once you deny or doubt a revealed or divinely inspired doctrine of a
religion you no longer have a right to consider yourself a member of it. If the
religion does not recognise you as an outsider then it is deceitful. If it is
the true Church, then it ceases to be when it holds communion with heretics and
schismatics for it is casting out the attribute of unity that the true Church
must have. Some Catholics think that though they cannot believe in everything
the Church of Rome says they are still Catholics by virtue of their desire to be
Catholics. You can’t sincerely want to be a member of a religion you don’t agree
with. You can’t want to agree with it when you want to agree with the truth as
you see it. My sycophantic spiritual director told me when I as a seminarian
that I was still a Catholic because I wanted to be one. Such is the manipulation
that is exercised by the Church.
A person who claims to be a Catholic while he or she does not believe in major
Catholic doctrines and is not trying to believe might argue, "I know I ought to
believe those doctrines but I refuse to. I am a Catholic because I know I should
believe." But how can you really believe you ought to believe anything unless it
is true or probable? You are still and unbeliever and not a Catholic.
When a person disagrees with their religion on one of its revealed doctrines
they should leave it publicly for they are no longer members of it anyway. For
example, if the Catholic denies doctrine A then she cannot consider the Catholic
Church to be the true Church. A Church the same as the Catholic Church but which
denies doctrine A would then be the real true Church.
You are regarded as a Muslim or a Catholic or whatever even when you sin. If
being “good” made you a member of a religion you would automatically be a member
of every other good religion too so it must be belief that makes you a member.
The desire to believe without belief cannot make you a member of a religion. You
cannot really want to believe in a religion while you are unacquainted with all
its teaching and ignorant of whether it is the truth or not. To really want
something you have to understand it all first. Any religion that does not
declare heretics excommunicated should be fled from like it was on hellfire for
it is being openly hypocritical and is interested only in head-counting and not
in sincerity and therefore its crave is for power over lives.
It is also irrational to consider people and children who don’t know if the
Church is true or not to be members. They cannot really want to be part of it.
You cannot truly want what you don’t understand. It is abusive to ask children
to be true to the faith when it will bring on them scorn and attract the
attention of the bullies. And religion does that.
To fake devotion to a religion is wrong. It is living a lie and it is
encouraging others by your example to deepen their ties with fictitious
doctrines which will cause them to suffer for nothing. Every religion is a
religion of sacrifice for it asks for sacrifice.
The Catholic Church says that when you are baptised you receive a mark on your
soul that cannot be taken away. It is called an indelible character. This shows
that we belong to Christ and his Church forever. So, disbelief and changing
religion is stealing from the Church which is yourself away from her. We who are
baptised are marked as Christian forever.
I find this doctrine offensive for I wish I was not a Catholic and I resent God
who won’t take the mark off even though he says I have free will and respects my
freedom! Perhaps you can have the character like a tattoo marking you forever as
a member of a tribe and when you put the tribe behind you and become an outsider
you are not though the mark is still there. But God can remove the mark from the
soul. It is not like us putting up with tattoos because we have to and should
not be.
How could I possibly belong to God if I renounce him by mortal sin? Mortal sin
is an act of infinite hate because it insults God who is infinitely good and
therefore infinitely repelled by it. How could I belong to the Church if I do
the same for there is an unlimited gulf between me and God and therefore between
me and the Church? It is the Church who is trying to steal me. You can be a
member of his Church if you love him but otherwise you are your own Church. The
Church lies saying that she owns me or that God owns me which amounts to the
same thing but she cannot. If I put my name on a book and sell that book that
does not mean that the book is mine forever.
If the Church really believed the doctrine she would not preach to the
unbaptised but to the baptised who have gone astray. It is more important to get
her property back. She is stealing from herself.
Such a doctrine would condition people to steal and rob banks and kidnap for it
tells you that you do worse when you commit a sin that puts you outside God’s
friendship.
Why I Became an Atheist, John Loftus, Prometheus Books, New York, 2008