Posted on 08/28/2007 10:03:34 PM PDT by Ottofire
Back in June, USA Today ran an article [(http://www.usatoday.com/news/2007-06-24-ex-catholics_N.htm)] which questioned official U.S. membership numbers given by the Roman Catholic Church. According to the 2007 Official Catholic Directory, there are 64 million Catholics in the United States.
As the article notes, however, this is likely an inflated number due to the way that Rome determines membership statistics. The numbers do not adequately account for members who are double-counted, die or just drift off into who-knows-what. If you were baptized Roman Catholic, then you are most likely still on the list; and I've met many ex-Catholics in the evangelical world.
I'm one of that number that has likely been considered merely lapsed or inactive. But it has irked me for years that I didn't have a means to formally separate myself from Rome. As it turns out, as of last year there is now a procedure in place for removing oneself from membership in the Roman Catholic Church. While this procedure essentially results in the defector being regarded as "apostate" rather than an "ex-Catholic," it is the most forceful way to formally declare one's voluntary separation from Rome.
Information about the declaration can be found here, [ http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/ciltformaldefect.HTM ] but I had some difficulty finding out the exact procedure required for executing it. After calling the diocese of the church where I was baptized, I was ultimately directed to the diocese of Knoxville where I now reside. I was put in touch with a deacon there who was able to outline the steps needed to complete my personal exodus. As he has described it, there are 3 steps required:
(1) A written letter expressing my desire to leave the RC Church of my own accord. (2) An in-person meeting where I will sign a document in the presence of two witnesses. (3) That document will be notarized and placed with my baptismal records.
I have now completed step 1, and the following is a copy of the letter I mailed today. As soon as I have completed the next steps, that information will also be posted here.
******
Dear Deacon xxxx, Per our recent telephone conversation, I am writing to state my intention of completing a Formal Act of Defection (Actus Formalis Defectionis ab Ecclesia Catholica) from the Roman Catholic Church. I understand that this will require signing a document in the presence of two witnesses to formalize the process and I am prepared to do so. I wish to emphasize that this decision of mine is personal and without external compulsion of any kind. I fully understand the implications of my choice. I was baptized at the St. Peter Catholic Church in Deland, Florida as an infant, most likely between July and September of 1971. I did my first penance and received the sacrament of First Communion at the Holy Redeemer Parish (now defunct) in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. While I attended catechism classes for many years, through the age of 15, my class was past due for Confirmation when I voluntarily left the church in mid-1987. Thus I was never confirmed. Since that time I have earned an undergraduate degree in Bible and Theology from Lee College (1994, now Lee University) and have been accepted into an M.A. program at Reformed Theological Seminary. My reasons for leaving the church 21 years ago, and for remaining thus absent, are theological in nature. In particular, I continue to object to a number of distinctive Roman Catholic doctrines: the immaculate conception, bodily assumption and function of the virgin Mary as mediator; the doctrine of transubstantiation; prayers for and to the dead, the “treasury of merit” and purgatory; the primacy of the Pope, the infallibility of the Church and its claim to apostolic succession generally. Above all, I most strongly protest the Roman Catholic system's failure to recognize the sufficiency (versus the mere necessity) of grace in saving sinful men. I stand with the Protestant Reformers whose rediscovery of sola gratia was proclaimed “anathema” by the Council of Trent. Thank you for your kind attention to this matter. ******
GRPL ping! Tell all the thousands of people that came home to the Gospel in your home church.
I know I am going to spread this article around.
Baptist ping!
Just in case you are interested.
BTW, does it also cost $$$$ to complete the separation from the Catholic church? As divorce does?
It better not.
Or I will just nail my letter to the nearest cathedral door. Here I stand, I can do no other!
My reasons for leaving the church 21 years ago, and for remaining thus absent, are theological in nature. In particular, I continue to object to a number of distinctive Roman Catholic doctrines: the immaculate conception, bodily assumption and function of the virgin Mary as mediator; the doctrine of transubstantiation; prayers for and to the dead, the "treasury of merit" and purgatory; the primacy of the Pope, the infallibility of the Church and its claim to apostolic succession generally. Above all, I most strongly protest the Roman Catholic system's failure to recognize the sufficiency (versus the mere necessity) of grace in saving sinful men. I stand with the Protestant Reformers whose rediscovery of sola gratia was proclaimed "anathema" by the Council of Trent.
Amen.
The letter is as Luther said - it is the doctrine.
Whither all the Protestants?
It’s the mainline Protestant churches which are all dying out; If “90%” of the attendees are ex-Catholic, can it be said that Catholics become Protestant, Protestants quit religion altogether?
Incidentally, the author is very misleading. The Catholic church conducts censuses. They membership tallies probably do include millions of inactive church members, but most do something within every couple years to be counted (send in a check, etc.). However, there is something he says whch is true: most ex-Catholics would be welcome back to the sacraments with a simple confession. Anyone who does what he says, however, is declaring themselves apostate, and (I believe) would have a very hard time coming back.
Incidentally, most Catholics I know went through a Protestant phase.
I was told that every year a Catholic has to renew his/her registration at their parish. If they don’t they are dropped from the rolls of that parish. I assume the official numbers come from Dioceses, which in turn come from registered parishioners. So the national numbers should be close to accurate.
So the Southron Baptists aren’t the only ones with an inflated membership list.
I’m not sure that the diocesan census is merely the tallying of each parish census... but yes, that’show parish censuses (censi? :^) ) are conducted.
With all due respect, Dr., I'd like to hear how *you* would count numbers of Catholics worldwide given what we believe about Baptism.
As you are no doubt aware, the sacramental aspect of our ecclesiology means baptized a Catholic, always a Catholic. One can apostasize and formally defect, as this article correctly observes, but one can never be de-Baptized. So we are being utterly consistent there.
One could as easily ask if all the denominations folks drift into and out of over the course of their lives have resulted in their currently being listed in multiple rolls simultaneously (UMC, PCUSA, etc. etc.), thereby inflating those numbers.
To give you some inside information, having worked at a Chancery at a larger Archdiocese.
Only a very good administrator would be able to get everyone to register each year.
It would be very difficult in some larger Parishes.
Also, immigrants are very reluctant to put names on anything...just that way.
That said the numbers do come from the Parishes, Sacramental index, and a head count on three consecutive Sundays. Those numbers are then submitted to the Diocesan authority.
At least here, if the Parish does not report the numbers are put in for the last year reporting.
Having worked for a Lutheran Church body, which did likewise, I would suspect many other ecclesiastical bodies do likewise.
I know I read an article recently about the directory of Churchese that explained a huge drop in the number of Orthodox to years of “estimating” rather than an actual census.
Thanks, I recently changed parishes and when I asked the lady if I needed to notify the other parish. She said no that when I didn’t renew at the end of the year they would drop me from their rolls.
I don’t know whether parishes are consistent about this, but I know that if my own parish doesn’t get something from a parishioner indicating some activity - an envelope in the basket occasionally, participation in parish activities - the parishioner will be eventually dropped from the parish rolls.
sitetest
Fascinating article, indeed. In many ways. Including all the hoops one must jump through to get off the roster. Not surprising though at all. Good thing God looks at the heart. It is obvious that church rosters cannot. :)
I can’t speak for other parishes but keeping our active list is something we do weekly. We ask that people register in the parish and a lot don’t and aren’t on our roles. We purge the lists regularly.
We have a small parish but it keeps growing, we have 21 new enrollments in Catechism this year and that is pre-registration, we will have more on the first day.
Every year we have an RCIC program for those families who are converting or reverting and have older children and this year is no different.
I agree with what you said about Baptism but they don’t make the registration roles when they are baptized. It is recorded and if their families are registered in our parish then they will be there.
We have a lot of baptisms where the families come from their home parishes to the parish of their youth or to the parish of the children’s Godparents. They aren’t put on the roles here because they won’t be attending Mass at our parish.
Absolutely!
When it comes to census the three sundays a month, as well as baptism records are ways to inflate numbers. Just as in business, the need to make a group seem more prosperous is rampant, and epidemic.
Of course when your Church teaches that in order to be saved you gotta go, that will bring the sheeple to your cult out of fear.
Well, ol’ Lance has quite a chip on his shoulder. I wonder if , despite his rather flippant dismissal of his apostasy, he realizes the true significance of his choice. The reason he is considered apostate is that, to the extent that he was truly formed as a Catholic, to give up the fullness of revelation for a mere percentage of it is to give up Christ, who is Truth itself. If the Catholic Church contains the fullness of revelation, it contains the fullness of the Word as He revealed Himself to us. To deny even a portion of His Word is to deny all of Him. Therefore, as even Vatican II affirms, in Lumen Gentium #14, such a man cannot be saved: “Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it.”
This situation Lance is in is quite different from the situation of non-Catholics reared outside of the Faith. God respects the sincere seeker, even if such a person is armed with only a portion of the Truth, because such a person is not intentionally denying a part (or the entirety) of His revelation. As the same Vatican II document Lumen Gentium also says: “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their consciences—those too may achieve eternal salvation.” (LG 16) This presumably includes non-Catholic Christians, who know only in part the full revelation of Christ, to the extent that they may be able to die in a state of grace without the benefit of the Sacraments. But a person who knows enough about Catholic teaching to be able to dispute it on “theological grounds,” as Lance claims he can do, is not in such a position. Out of his own mouth he condemns himself, barring future repentance.
His take on number “padding” is somewhat disingenuous as well. The Catholic Church has claimed a slowly growing membership, taking 20 years or more to grow from 60 to 70 million members in the US. If record keeping were as lax as Lance claims, the Church would have much larger figures over this interval. Deaths, for one, have kept the numbers in the 60 million range, yet the Church should not, according to Lance, be making much headway in keeping up with them. No. Catholic membership figures are based on diocesan census tallies. True, many respondents are not highly pious and active Catholics, but they make some sort of affirmation that they are “Catholic” on the census form. Most Catholics affirming their membership on the census give evidence of some “real” affiliation, by attending at least sporadically, writing a check or two, or in some other way that provides tangible indication. That a fairly large percentage are not zealous in their faith is beside the point. Approximately 70 million people in this country self-identify as “Catholic,” and are not, therefore, among the “legions” of people who have left to join non-Catholic Christian bodies. I don’t deny that there are millions of people involved here, but they do *not* diminish the 70 million figure.
If one wants to dispute the 70 million figure as not reflecting “serious” Catholics, well, that’s another matter. No one can possibly claim that much more than a third of American Catholics are really paying attention in our day. But that percentage is probably in-line with the serious adherents of pretty much any denomination in the US. So, other than Lance finding a forum to beat his chest and crow about his “non serviam,” what is the point to the rest of his article?
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