Formal Defection from Roman Catholicism in Canon Law - Social and Legal Implications
As membership in the Roman Catholic Church implies
tacit approval for the lies and damage the Church does it is important for
people of integrity to consider leaving the Church - defecting. Critics of the
Church still tacitly approve in the sense that they don't consider the harm bad
enough or the threat great enough to consider going. Formal defection was
abolished in 2009, but as Church law says religious freedom is a
right it follows that it may still be morally possible to defect.
The current law says you can defect by converting to another
religion.
WHAT IS MEMBERSHIP
Membership of any religion or organisation requires:
1 That you have your name listed as a member.
2 That you believe in what the organisation stands for
or are on a journey to believe. This means you must not deliberately repudiate
what the organisation believes in. It means you know it is at least possible
that the beliefs are true. If Catholicism is false and you know it, you cannot
be a real member of the Catholic Church.
3 That you work for the ideals of the organisation.
Ideals are not about who or how many lives up to them. Being in a religion
that has no ideals or bad ones is an absolute no no. It means you are not
even trying to be good properly in the first place.
If your name is listed that does not necessarily make
you a real member but merely one that is listed as a member. It's legal
membership. It's membership according to the rules. It's nominal membership. But
reality may be different. For example, you can be considered married in the eyes
of the law but for some reason the marriage might not be valid or real. Number 2
is essential for real membership. If you do not fit requirement number 3 then
clearly you may be a member but not a good one.
FORMAL DEFECTION
Defection from a religion is ceasing to be a member of
that religion. A religion that believes in religious freedom will recognise your
departure.
Baptism and confirmation confer membership in the
Roman Catholic Church. If you've been baptised in the Roman Catholic Church the
church counts you as a member for life even if you stop attending and giving it
money. The only way to cancel the membership is by formal defection or by
defecting to another religion. Formal defection involves notifying the bishop of
the diocese you were baptised in that you want to leave the Church and to be
officially regarded as having left. The end goal is to have it recorded that you
are no longer a Roman Catholic. Such a procedure is only valid if the person
leaves freely and without coercion.
Some Catholics say that this formal defection is only
a recognition by the Church that you refuse to obey the Church. Rather than
giving any right to disobey, the Church through Canon Law is just like a parent
letting a rebellious child have it his own way. But what would the Church need
to engage in a formal recognition for? Why not just let the child go? If your
rebel daughter walks out of the house giving her her own way only means you let
her go not that you declare that she has defected from the family.
The recognition of formal defection by Canon Law then
means that you can leave the Church in principle even if current Church law does
not provide for formal defection. It sadly doesn't provide.
Also the Church claimed the abolition of formal
defection was retrospective. This is obviously invalid. It is like the law of
the land decreeing suddenly that marriages are no longer considered valid and
that this applies to marriages that have taken place in the last ten years. This
retrospective law would be unjust for the law recognised such marriages until
recently.
We conclude that formal defection in principle is
still valid. A law letting you leave and remove your Catholic
"citizenship" cannot be retrospectively revoked. You legally leave or you
do not - there is no limbo.
If it is true that if a baptised Catholic becomes say
a Hindu and is still in reality a Catholic no matter what he or she does to try
and become an ex-Catholic, it follows that the conversion should not be taken
seriously by the Church, society, family or state. And the person is to be
judged as one who fights his true identity and is to be judged as devoid of
integrity. It denies the right of the person to suffer no disadvantage due to
religion. Faith should never upset or violate anybody - the case of those using
faith as an excuse for getting upset is a separate one. It denies the right of a
person to take on a new religious identity.
To refuse to facilitate defection opens the door to
forcing a Catholic burial on a defector, It is forcing a person to pay taxes to
the Church in countries which send a cut of the Catholic's taxes to the Church.
Catholics say that it is pointless to defect for it is
not going to do you any obvious harm in this world. For example, it will not
happen that a Catholic who divorces and remarries without annulment will come
home one day to find Church police blocking the doorway and forbidding them
entry because they are living in sin. Or that a Catholic parent who fails to
have their child baptised will come home one day to find that the child has been
dragged to the nearest Church by the local priest and forcibly baptised in their
absence. Thousands of examples could be created. But the fact remains, that if
we claim that baptism binds you to the Church as a member forever these
behaviours are to be required and expected. If you believe baptism binds to the
Church forever that goes a little bit of the way towards legitimising such
behaviour. After all the question arises because of religion and that says
something! The doctrine of people necessarily being Catholics forever is
insulting.
Finally
Formal defection is only making your departure from
the Church official. You do not need a defection decree to depart from the
Catholic faith. But because the Church is an organisation you need with
withdraw from it as in being a part of the organisation.
To allege that baptism makes one irrevocably Catholic
makes a mockery of free conscience and also of the faith of those who choose to
belong. At no point does the Church say when you are subject to its law.
A baby baptised Catholic but raised Muslim is regarded as outside of
canon law. That illustrates the point.
It is important that Catholics who have departed the
Church cease to be registered as a member of their parish.
Dioceses may still be "accepting" formal defection
letters and acting as though canon law still includes such a process. But, it
doesn't. Nevertheless, people are still able to send in such a letter. What can
the diocese do, other than regretfully accept it? I'm not sure what, internally,
the diocese would do after that. Another fact is that dioceses sometimes act a
little behind the times as far as the law goes....
Formal defection results in de facto excommunication
from the Church. Another way to get this excommunication is to renounce or
abjure the faith. Excommunication is based on the concept that even if you are a
member of the Church you are now a semi-member and out of communion with the
Church. Excommunication puts you out of the visible Church structure.