BIG REASONS FOR PUBLICALLY

REMOVING YOURSELF FROM CHURCH MEMBERSHIP ROLLS

The Christian Church makes false claims and does not line up to science or history.  It has done untold harm with hypocrisy and bad moral guidance.  It cuddles up to politics and divides people.  For a  human organisation, it empowers men by pretending it is more than just an organisation.  In fairness it teaches that if you think its teaching is false and it si not a credible religion then you should leave.

By merely being listed as a member or listing yourself as a member, is the minimal way of supporting the Church. Declaring yourself a member of the Catholic Church is giving the minimum of support for the Church as the Church can't exist without members. Financial support of the Church is giving more support to its anti-rights-when-we-don't-like-the-rights ethos than mere membership is. Paying the Peter's Pence to the pope every year is directly financing a ministry that does all it can to halt and reverse many rights. Moreover it is financing a platform from which the pope speaks to the poor and the poorly educated woman and urges her to do nothing to protect herself from AIDS should she be forced to have sex. The pope urges African women to throw the condoms away though they will catch AIDS from their husbands. That is how most transmissions occur. If you won't divorce the Church at least do not give it money.
 
By passive support, I meant merely allowing your name to be on the membership rolls and ticking the Catholic box. Active would refer to going to Church and/or paying the Church money for its support and promoting the faith of the Church as true and correct. Merely having the name on is saying, "Yes, I support Catholic teaching or believe I should support it. If you don't believe in the teaching you are still saying that you support it. If I do not believe in it, this is not a sin as I am on a journey that I intend to end in belief". Paying money and going to Mass are giving stronger support. Without passive and/or active support there would be no Church. So such support does at least damage many human and unbeliever's rights by taking at least an implicit stance against them.

The Catholic teaching of 'blame the sin, not the sinner' makes no sense as to blame the sin is to blame the sinner. The person is his or her sins for they show his or her character and thus, it is the character that is the problem. So it follows that to wish evil on a sin is to wish evil on a person. The doctrine of 'hate the sin' infers that the Church must do all it can to discourage disobedience to God and often does this by applying social pressure to oppress and silence sceptics.
 
Think about the census.  Ticking the religion box tells the state that you support the Church, which crucially means the State may formulate policies and laws that reflect the teachings of said Church. A country SHOULD be reluctant to legalise anything contrary to essential Church teaching if it looks at the census results and sees that most have declared themselves Roman Catholic. The objective behind all the works of the Church is to bring people to believe in Catholic doctrine. To tick the Roman Catholic box is to is sanction public and official Church doctrine.
 
What about the principle? The principle is that the nation cannot please every faction. So it must at least seriously contemplate legally enforcing the major principles of the majority faith. If the state ignores the Church, that is against the principle.
 
In a democracy the will of the majority must come first. Therefore if most people claim to be Catholic - although that is not the same as really being Catholic - the state should check what Church teaching is and legislate as best as it can to suit that teaching. The fact of the matter is, if a person does not like their Church's teaching, nobody forced them to be confirmed into the membership of the Church. Therefore the state should contemplate the official and real teaching of the Church and implement it through law.

If you consciously abandon your Catholic faith or if it happens naturally, then you are no longer Catholic, as Church law states that apart from being baptised one must consciously embrace the Catholic faith and all its doctrine in order to be a true Catholic. You are not the head of the Church. It is not your job to teach Church doctrine (only to repeat what you have been taught by the authorities). That is the job of the bishops and the Pope who is the head of the Church. Catholics are expected to learn at their feet and pass on what they teach. To differ from them in matters of faith and doctrine is to try and misrepresent the faith. If you don't agree with the faith then go. Find another faith or found your own version of Catholicism. Don't be like a person who claims to be a Muslim but who says the Koran is satanic. Be honest. It is not up to you to make up the rules and laws of the Roman Catholic Church. Period.
 
If a Church lets you believe what you want and be a full member the result is not a Church but a social club. The Church claims to be a voluntary organisation built on faith and held together by faith. That is why anybody that disagrees with the Church on an official teaching is automatically excommunicated.

I terminated membership of Catholicism because I am a secularist. This would not be for political reasons so much as social. The decline of the Church means the decline of its influence. The social influence of the Church does unbelieving people infinitely more harm than the influence of the Church on politics. The Church claims to be a family thus it opposes the individualism of today. To be part of a religion means you are repudiating individualism and complete independence and are making it other people's business what you do. The Catholic's duty is to help others live by the official teaching of the Church. If you don't want the duty, then leave the Church.
 
Religion thrives on irrational thinking and is based on feelings and has no real regard for plausibility - the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is appalling. Though the gospels do not eliminate the possibility that Jesus could have been taken out of the tomb before the stone was rolled over the entrance to his tomb, we are expected to think his body vanished from the tomb for he rose again. If you are irrational and support an irrational religion even in the census form, you can't complain then if irrational Catholics keep trying to wreck your rights. If you want to be irrational then why condemn others who do the same just because you don't like their irrationality?
 
It is bad enough to stay in a deliberately harmful or ignorant organisation when you really think that that organisation is God's Church. But to stay in it for sentimental or emotional reasons is disgraceful. It is really using the Church when the Church is not about having people who style themselves as members because of emotional or social reasons. Besides, the Church is not about using doctrine to make people feel good. It is about helping them to believe and remain believing doctrines that are said to be the truth. Your support of the Church is a hypocritical promotion of the Church. If a person properly supports an organisation, that person will not work against or protest against its official teaching and especially when that organisation claims to be an infallible teacher guided by God. All the person that does this is really trying to do is go apply pressure so that it will give up its identity. He or she by claiming to be a member is really misrepresenting the meaning and teaching of that religion.
 
Nobody should be in a religion that contains official teaching that is not right for them. It is not fair on the religion or them. They are not exercising honesty. They are undermining the right of the religion to set standards of membership and devotion.
 
The main question about the Catholic Church is, "Is the religion really true and revealed by God?" The gay person who is alarmed at Catholic teaching, instead of trying to change the Church in its official teaching, should investigate it and look at the evidence for Catholicism. If it is wanting then he or she should do the right thing and quit. Revelation necessarily implies that you cannot figure out the truth on your own. It will collide with your intellect and experience. But that collision does not mean that it is necessarily wrong. Revelation necessarily excludes private judgement ie, I judge that part of God's word true and that other part false. If you want to exercise private judgment and pretend that being a good Catholic means you can be actively gay as well then you are in the wrong religion. Protestantism is the religion of private judgment. And Protestant is what you are.
 
It is not up to any religion to belong to you but to you to belong to it. Do you really belong to the Spiritualists if you deny that anybody can communicate with the dead? If you say you do, it is the religious label and the trappings you want not the religion. It is that what belongs to you. Same with Catholicism. Don't be a hypocrite. You just want to use the Church for your own ends - community and the occasional feel-good factor.
 
You think you have the right to obscure and dissent from the Catholic faith and misrepresent it. You do not - as long as you hold on to the Catholic label. People exposed to Catholicism have the right to know the real teaching of the Church a teaching you oppose. You oppose their right. The word religion after all means to bind. Many confuse their beliefs with their religion. Your beliefs could be seen as your own business. But if you are part of a religion, then it is incorrect to speak of your beliefs. You are part of a group united in faith that means the beliefs you have are not yours but the group's. What you must speak of is the religion's beliefs.
 
There is no excuse for somebody being in a religion when they reject that religion's beliefs. Your beliefs are not about you. They are about the world. Your religion is not about you. It is about the universe and the world and the supernatural. It is not up to your religion to belong to you but you to belong to it. If you can't, use the door. The Catholic Church makes very big and serious claims. The bigger the claim the more evidence is required. Unless you have evidence that the Catholic Church is a supernatural entity set up by God to teach on his behalf, you should not be setting your face against many human and social rights - in particular the right of people to know the truth - by upholding Church membership.
 
Your critical voice of the Church is a small voice against a huge organisation. Staying in the Church to change it is as delusional as a flea challenging an elephant.  If your "membership" is that power then why are you not able to wield that power by leaving and working against it from outside?