There is a difference between: 1. Lapsing as a Roman Catholic i.e. stop attending mass and practicing their rules etc. 2. Formally removing yourself as a member of the organisation.
The first is what most non-believers do.
The second is a proactive step and a matter of principle, one of the most powerful ways that any person can say they fundamentally and wholeheartedly disagree with the Catholic Church.
The fact that you CAN'T legally leave once you are initiated as a CHILD, does that not strike you as wrong?
Tried posting this in AskReddit to no avail. I don't think most people understood the question I was asking, so I thought I'd try /r/atheism.
I've not gone to church for years. I don't want to be considered Catholic in the eyes of the Catholic church anymore. Are there any other ways of leaving the church?
From: Jehovah's Witnesses, Blacks and Discrimination
Jerry Bergman, Ph. D
"Even up to a hundred years ago the Catholic Church held the view that blacks were cursed by God. ... this view "apparently survived until 1873 when Pope Pius IX attached an indulgence to a prayer for the 'wretched Ethiopians in Central Africa that almighty God may at length remove the curse of Cham [Ham] from their hearts (Awake!, October 8, 1977:29. See also the 2/8/82 issue). The Watchtower taught that the curse of Ham applied to the black "race" as late as 1929!
Changes came about only because of outside "worldly" social and legal forces:
The appeal and the need to belong, are so great it makes it impossible for black Witnesses to question the monolithically white nature of their leadership; it allows them to defend the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses were among the last of all religious groups to be integrated in the South. They waited until integration became law; they did not question the segregation laws that had kept them apart until then, nor did they protest them in the name of God. When nuns and priests and ministers and students marched to protest against what the Watchtower Society believed was Caesar's business, the Society called them "crazed mobs." (Harrison, 1978:261)"
This is just a snippet of the paper. I encourage you all to read it. Just Google it, its a PDF.
https://preview.redd.it/34ge1q3vyg671.jpg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e19f77071056d72e8a95b74b266347f11b7cad1
All that outrage over transfolks using the bathroom...when the real danger came from churches covering up decades of child sexual abuse.
Whereβs the Goddamn proposed law banning priests from bathrooms? Since, you know, priests are the real danger.
Somehow I doubt weβll ever see that proposed law... because those folks never cared about protecting children.. they only cared about demonizing transgender people.
If they cared about protecting children, theyβd be banning sex offenders and priests.. you know, the real threat... from bathrooms.
EDIT: Apparently it wasnβt clear that I am not seriously calling for a law to ban clergy from public bathrooms. I am demonstrating how ridiculous the whole βban people from pissingβ argument is. Lighten up.
The only paper on the subject I found was an unproven theory that he wasn't actually a Mexican citizen and the church had proof he was an illegal president. The reason for this was that the church required proof of birth for a baptism, and likely would have been handed a foreign birth certificate. Due to the lack of administrators in rural Mexico, only the church would have a copy of his birth certificate.
But how likely is this theory, and what other explanations exist for this massive hatred?
