MEMBERSHIP OF RELIGION AND HOW IT IS MORE AN EXCUSE FOR LABELLING THAN REAL MEMBERSHIP

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