REMOVE YOUR PARISH RECORD

Be careful to have the right reasons for getting your name removed from the parish record and church membership rolls.

The right reasons for leaving follow.

# EVEN IF THERE IS NO GOD, THINKING THERE IS AND VIOLATING HIM MAKES YOU INTEND TO BE BAD

Using a person who does not exist is still using. It is immoral because of the kind of person it makes you or shows you to be.

Nobody should be in a manmade religion for only a god can have the right to set up a religion. How bad it is depends on the religion. The worse it is the more you should leave. The more demanding it is in principle, practice or both then the fast you should unlock the door. But it is worse to be in Catholicism should it be manmade than to be in say Buddhism.

It is religious culture and fear of what family and the community will say that keeps people in a religion and thus leading to its spread. Thus when you know you should and can go without being beaten to death then you should for it is not just about you. The culture will entangle other innocents as well as you.

Cardinal George Pell said on “Q. & A.” on ABC T.V. on 19.4.2012 that “God loves everyone except those who turn their back on him through evil acts”. This is accurate Catholic doctrine. It is man proclaiming hate not God if there is no God and man is speaking for a manmade religion. A manmade religion speaks for man not God.

#MEMBERSHIP IS SUPPORT FOR THE RELIGION

Merely having your name on the membership rolls of the Church is supporting the Church. As long as you are listed as a member you are supporting the Church network of teaching and information.

Suppose you have an area which is full of lapsed Catholics. The Church will reach them and be able to make use of them in its campaigns and that is because it has a channel of information through their continuing to be part of the network. If the network breaks off and becomes Anglican the bigoted teachings of a pope will not be fed to them. The feeding tubes are dislodged.

As long as your name is on the membership list whether this is a literal list or a more informal one, you consent to the authority of the Church and are doing wrong if you disparage or ignore that authority. It is supporting the Church whether you like it or not because to keep things simple the Church has to count you a member until you defect officially or get into another religion. What can you expect?

Avoid being part of the head count the Church does - the Church counts baptisms. Two people baptised in the Church counts as two Catholics. It then uses the numbers to make governments believe that it is more powerful than it actually is and the result is that the governments think it has great influence and should be taken seriously and maybe even allowed to influence or guide the law. 1.2 billion alleged members! This counts the baptised - would be better to estimate the number of those who may really believe. It is not right to honour a list of Catholics instead of looking to count those who are Catholic in their lives and attitudes and beliefs. It is making the list more important than the people. The Church uses the membership figures to get political clout and influence. The state would regard the Church as having less significance if the membership figures were not so high. Even though most members will be lukewarm and lapsed their name in the books gives the impression the Church wants it to give!

To be a member of a religion is by default to try to be the evidence and testimony for the religion. By refusing to at least discretely sever membership you are implying that the Church's evil is being supported by you though you may hate the evil. Tacit approval is showing you are willing to be silent and let something bad happen. Being a member of the Church to any level is more than tacit approval. It is active approval. You are saying yes to the rubbish even if you say you do not.
 
You should not be in an immoral religion in any sense when there are better systems of belief or knowledge out there.

If everybody were sufficiently Catholic, there would be no pubs, no brothels, no sex on television, no condoms, no abortion, no critiques of Catholicism by freethinkers, no facelifts, no interesting soaps, no violent movies, no practicing homosexuals, no divorce, no Madonna and no Lady Gaga. That is naming a few things we take for granted! Involvement in Catholicism is an insult to our civil liberties.

Leave Catholicism for you must avoid giving bad example. It is a bad example if you stay. It is tacit support at the least.

#ITS PRINCIPLED

If I go to mass and it is against my principle but I do it for my mother what then? I am putting a person's feelings before a principle. That is not right. But what if going to mass is against my principles but pleasing my mother is another principle? What if I have to sacrifice a principle? But my principle to be true to myself comes first. It is my life. I am insulting my mother's love by treating her as if she will never respect my duty to myself!
 
Many feel that religion, or a religious principle or moral stance, is an ideal or should be. If religion is an ideal then it is welcoming those who are imperfect and who fall short. That does not water down the ideal but is strengthening and emphasising it. So if your religion is wrong or if you feel strongly enough that it is wrong you are a hypocrite if you stay. You demean yourself and those who truly belong in the religion. Take a stand for religious conscience and go.

# IT IS SELF-ASSERTION

If you have serious doctrinal or moral differences with your religion join one that suits you better. You will be supported properly or should be. Staying in a religion and telling yourself that it will reform if there are enough people like you in it is just an excuse. It is logical to support the community that is reformed to your mind instead of staying out of it to reform another. If you who are not a religious expert know or are convinced that your priests and theologians are wrong then you are as good as saying your religion is corrupt and the leaders and teachers know fine well it is absurd. So what are you staying for?

Caring about what other people think about me is bad for me. That is why separating from religion and engaging in my DIY Faith - faith is not necessarily religion - is so important. When I join a religion I am saying I will care what the leaders and the god and the members will think of me and that I will live as they expect me to. I am telling them to care what I do and telling them what to think about me.

#CHERRYPICKING IS JUST RELIGIOUS CROOKERY

Christianity says that Jesus claimed that many will be called into the faith but that few will be chosen. If you are a Catholic cherry-picker then you will come across not a proper Catholic but as called to be a proper Catholic. No honest or knowledgeable Catholic will take you seriously if you protest against what you see as evil doctrines of the Church.

The word Catholic reflects the doctrine that Christ is the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the Church is how he manifests himself and offers himself to all people on earth as their saviour. Jesus said he accepts no half-commitment - you are for Jesus or against. The same goes for the Church. To respect that doctrine means you have to contemplate leaving the Church should it prove to be a false Church. If you don't follow the true religion you follow man not God.

Nobody who is for or against religion approves when you join a religion to hopefully help change its doctrines while thinking it is half nonsense. So why should you be accepted if you become a member and then start misrepresenting the doctrines and pretending you know better even than the founder of the religion what it should teach??

If good trees bear bad fruit at times imagine what a tree that is in error or lying will produce.

It is obvious that a religion should at least strive to preach the truth. If it does not, then it is corrupt and corruption leads to corruption. And if you give religious leaders authority and they are not entitled to it they may as well be corrupt. People in error often protect themselves from realising it. They may sense they are in error and protect themselves from clearly seeing it. Error leads to corruption and protects corruption by making it harder to weed out.

Corrupt people have to act as if they really believe their nonsense. They may even wrongly think they really believe. That is a tactic for discouraging those who try to get sense into them and is intended to make them give up trying through sheer frustration.

Atheists can agree with God if he exists that idolatry is a bad thing. Man-made religion is idolatry in itself. It does not need to worship statues. It is letting men benefit from speaking for God when they are really just speaking for themselves. A religion that allows cherry-picking is a man-made one and cherry-pickers are advocating man-made religion.

#GUILT BY ASSOCIATION IS REAL AND YOU ALWAYS HAVE MORE OF THAT THAN YOU REALISE

Some say that encouraging people to leave religion because it tells lies or does not take its morals seriously is implying that if they stay they are guilty by association. They are unless the evidence for the religion is very convincing and they understand the evidence. But some things are so mad and bad that no evidence for them counts! Evidence cannot make rubbish acceptable.
 
If serious wrong or untruth is part of a religion, to attend that religion's worship is to become guilty by association. And even more so to be a member of that religion. The Catholics who object when the pope goes and begs the Africans to believe that a rapist who has AIDS and who wears a condom is worse than one who does not are deeper in the sharing of the evil responsibility than the ignorant who don't even realise how evil and dangerous the pope is being. The objectors only make hypocrites of themselves and their lack of credibility only wrecks the cause of human rights. They are not really helping unless they divorce the Church. They have the freedom to do it these days so they are without excuse. The gay person who joins the Church is working against the cause of gay rights and detrimental to the credibility of these rights even if he or she is a militant gay rights activist. His membership says that though the Church causes gay people to commit suicide by condemning their love it's not a huge deal.

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