LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian
April 10, 2020
By Sebastian Tesoriero
The church has tried to make it so it can’t be divorced. Yet people do want to leave. In droves
“Are you a Catholic?”
The question eventually surfaces over dinner or drinks in so many conversations: about the child sex abuse royal commission, marriage equality, religious freedom, legalising abortion and euthanasia. About George Pell.
Many of us baptised Catholic have drifted – through boredom, scepticism, disbelief or outright disgust with the Roman church – from Christmas Catholic to census Catholic to lapsed Catholic. Over the decades I’ve been outside the church I’ve also used ex-Catholic, non-practising Catholic and mis-Catholic.
In his statement after being acquitted of child sexual abuse charges by the high court, Pell said his trial was not a referendum on the church. But when you’ve come to realise you’re not identifiably any sort of Catholic and that the church running the show has made itself contemptible to you, how do you cast your vote? How do you become, formally, not-a-Catholic?
The answer isn’t in the help menu of the Vatican’s website.
In fact, the church has moved to close the few openings by which the disaffected could officially register having renounced the faith. In 2006 the Vatican established rules to accommodate the growing number of defectors – as they call them there. Oddly for such a slow-moving institution, the rules were aborted just three years later. Unlike a state with its citizens or a football club with its members, the Vatican would no longer facilitate the initiated leaving its ranks.
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