A couple of months back, in one of the year 9 (I think it was) classes I was teaching, one lad asked if there was a way to leave being a Catholic. At the time we didn't have time to pursue it. In my mind was to ask further questions about what they thought should happen and why simply not turning up was not sufficient. This was a Roman Catholic school. Well, it turns out that it is possible in RC terms to leave officially and not just in heart and mind and body. And apparently it happens in Italy, though to what extent is hard to determine. "Cyberspace is one of the few places lapsed Catholics can get a copy of the formal letter called 'actus defectionis' that is required by Church officials to leave the faith. "
What I think we should pay more attention to is this:
unwilling to belong to a Church that didn't represent him, Luca made an appointment. He told the priest he had never been a believer, so why belong to the flock? "A flock that included me as soon as I was born without my consent," he said.
There's a lot to be unpacked there, and I'm not going to go into the nature of consent, cultural-formation or modernity vs post-modernity, but it does seem to me to bring about certain considerations about baptism policies in a post-Christendom culture and where, certainly in the UK, one can increasingly find non-church 'christenings' ...
Debaptism 2.0: Fleeing the Flock Via the Net:
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