Thousands click to leave catholic church
My Sunday Mirror and NOTW piece, today
THOUSANDS of young people have officially left the Catholic Church in recent weeks despite pleas from the Archibishop of Dublin not to “abandon” the church.
A new website offering information for people considering leaving the Roman Catholic Church has seen a leap in users in the last month with an estimated 2000 people opting out of the church.
The Countmeout.ie website is designed for people who no wish to be officially removed from the Church and renounce their baptism.
Over 5000 users have used the site to defect from the church this year, with many citing the abuse scandal as their main motivation.
However, Archbishop Martin, during his sermon at St Teresa’s Church in Grafton Street on Sunday called on people to retain their faith.
“I say especially to young people: do not abandon the Church. Your Church lies in the future,” he declared.
“You will provide something special so that the arrogance of the past can be replaced.”
So far 5095 people have completed a Declaration of Defection on the popular website with many more choosing to send letter of protest to their local parish.
Users are urged to consider that “countless scandals involving physical, sexual and emotional abuse of mostly young children” that have rocked the church.
The recent Ryan Report, which stated that children lived in “a climate of fear” and that “sexual abuse was endemic in boys institutions”, is highlighted as a motivator to abandon the church.
Users are warned that if they were baptised as a Catholic they are still counted among the congregation of the church, regardless of what beliefs you currently hold.
“Formally defecting from the Catholic church is one way of letting church authorities know how you feel about these scandals,” the site declares.
The site is run by three, young defected former-Catholics - Cormac Flynn, Paul Dunbar and Gráinne O’Sullivan.
They say they each had their own personal reasons for defecting, but together discovered that it was remarkably difficult to find information on the process and decided to start the website.
They run the site on a voluntary basis, do not accept donations and are not affiliated with any organisation.
Users are provided with a ready to print “formal act of Defection” or “Actus formalis defectionis ab Ecclesia Catholica” in the original Latin, which must be completed and handed in to the relevant church authorities.
The site explained that for a defection to be valid, it must fulfill three conditions; the internal decision to leave the Catholic Church, the realization and external manifestation of that decision; and the reception of that decision by the competent ecclesiastical authority.
In a reply letter to a recent defection Archbishop Martin declared that he respected the decision but was saddened at the loss.
The group running the site stress that it is not an atheist initiative, though some of them do confess to being athiests.
They say the site is aimed at all people who no longer identify as Catholic - be they atheist, agnostic, lapsed Catholic or simply Christian.
In a shock move an anonymous web user registered the Catholic.ie domain last July and set it to redirect to the site.
The Countmeout team have stated that while they did not register it they consider it a legitimate use of the domain and will continue to allow the address to lead unsuspecting web users to their site.
