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www.countmeout.ie

Hi,

I don't know if this is the right place for this, so please feel free to move it.

An Irish website was recently set up to help people who wanted to officially defect from the Catholic Church.

As the the title suggest the website is www.countmeout.ie.

I have no affliation or connection to the site other than having used it to defect.

Although it's primarily designed and aimed at Irish Catholics I can't see how the same process couldn't be applied anywhere in the world. The documents that the site has put together are the official Catholic Church defection documents which I'm sure are not specific to Ireland. So I'm assuming anyone can fill these in and send them to their local bishop/ priest.

If you're disgusted, as I was by the appalling way in which the Catholic Curch has behaved in relation to the sickening child abuse scandals around the world, vote with your feet.

How often do you hear the Catholic Church use its strength in numbers around the world as a way of exerting influence? No longer let them count you as a member. Sign up and sign out!

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Permalink Reply by Dave Rogers on April 26, 2010 at 11:34am

The actual Canon Law regarding defection is here.

Clause 6 only says your defection is noted in the baptismal records.

Clause 7 says:
It remains clear, in any event, that the sacramental bond of belonging to the Body of Christ that is the Church, conferred by the baptismal character, is an ontological and permanent bond which is not lost by reason of any act or fact of defection.

So, although it's a good thing to defect anyway, "once a Catholic, always a Catholic" is still true, at least in their eyes.

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Permalink Reply by Beebub on April 27, 2010 at 5:44am

Yes, but what does it matter what they think. They think I have a soul and that I suppose it's now gonig to hell when I die because I don't beleive in god. I couldn't care less what they think. I do very much care though that up to very recently, they still officially counted me as a member. Not any more!

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Permalink Reply by Jim DePaulo on April 27, 2010 at 10:06am

This is something I never realized. When I was 3 or 4 days old my very Catholic Italian grandmother bundled me off to the local church and had me dunked and baptised Catholic. As that was the only official relationship I every had with the Church I never considered myself a Catholic.
However, I now realize that the swine have been counting me in their club all these years. I'm definitely going to the web site to correct that.
Thanks for the heads up.