Catholic American Paul Constant, a 'confirmed' member of that faith, has written an outspoken letter to the Bishop of Portland asking to be excommunicated. It's a penetrating piece and 
worth reading, here's a snip:
"I demand to be excommunicated because I do not believe women are second-class citizens. I demand to be excommunicated because your missionaries are informing impoverished citizens of third-world countries that birth control is a sin..."It is not all such a rant; here is a clear thinking man asking not to be included in the ranks of such believers. If this is a free world his wish will be granted, it's no different from changing political allegiance, but I wonder what the Bishop will say.
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Via The Freethinker.
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7 comments:
it will be interesting to find out...keep us informed!
Are romancatlicks not just allowed to resign?
Jill - I will be watching out for what happens.
Dave - it seems you can't just resign. Constant has another article where he says "the Catholic Church still considers excommunicated people to be Catholics—albeit of the 'unforgiven' variety", you can't win sometimes.
Andy, does that mean that all humans are RC, just undiscovered or unforgiven or whatever?
Dave - some individuals may think so but it seems that, formally, the Church requires baptism.
"...the baptismal grace is a grace of free, unmerited election and does not need 'ratification' [by a bishop] to become effective".
"The Catholic Church teaches that, like Baptism, Confirmation marks the recipient permanently, making it impossible to receive the sacrament twice".
Wikipedia - confirmation
I remember having an argument with my Mum when I was in my late teens.
She'd seen me putting 'none' in the 'religion' section on a job application form, and was outraged.
The dialogue was something along the lines of....
"You're an independant methodist!"
"No I'm not"
"Yes you are. you were baptised as one"
"I don't remember having a say in the matter"
"You were only 6 months old"
"Well how do i go about not being an independant methodist?"
"You can't. You are one and that's that."
It's all hocus pocus and idle waffle really, isn't it?
As Woody Allen said; "All religion is a bit silly"
I went through a similar thing Nobbly, for a time it was easier just to be CofE but I can't remember a time when I actually 'believed'.
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