Count Me Out
This morning, two letters. One is from the Pope to the people of Ireland. You can read about that vacuity elsewhere. The other is from me to the Diocese of Westminster, formally declaring my defection from the Catholic Church. The timing is entirely coincidental, but I like it.
It’s a very long time since I was anything other than a relaxed, contented atheist. I avoid religious ceremonies of all kinds as much as I can, and have tried to be ecumenical in my anti-religious thinking. But, I’m Irish. I was baptised into the Catholic Church. I was educated at a Jesuit school from the age of 8 to the age of 18. I received communion and was confirmed into the Catholic Church. I went to a Catholic University. It’s hardly surprising if most of my atheism is, so to speak, Catholic atheism.
While I haven’t claimed the Catholic Church as mine since I was a teenager, the Catholic Church continues to claim me. And you, if you received a Catholic baptism. The superb and straightforward website www.CountMeOut.ie explains how the Church continues to count us, the baptised but long gone, amongst its congregation. And it helpfully provides the resources for putting an end to this by formally ‘defecting’ from the Church. Though focussed on people in Ireland, it will be useful to Catholics anywhere who don’t want to be counted as Catholic any more. In my own case for example I printed off a PDF they supply, and addressed it to the diocesan office where I am resident along with a cover letter I wrote myself. In due course, I expect, some poor, miserable priest whose job it is to deal with the hell-bound, will write to me with a confirmation that I am no longer a Catholic.
I probably would never have bothered doing this if it wasn’t for my unfocussed feeling of disgust and anger over the recent child abuse scandals. Defection is a small but practical stand against what would otherwise be a detached, distant horror. And I can’t really think of a better word for the widespread rape and sexual abuse of children by priests of the Catholic Church, which has been, over generations, systematically covered up by the hierarchy of the church, up to and including the current Pope, Joseph Ratzinger. (For a decent summary of just how entangled Ratzinger is in this, have a read of Christopher Hitchens. ) This cover up involved moving rapists and abusers around rather than reporting them to the civil authorities. As a result it led to the creation of more and more victims, and more and more suffering. This litany of facts, which reads at first like the berserk plot of a particularly distasteful Dan Brown novel, is now so well established and documented that I frankly, honestly, cannot understand how little has been done about it. I cannot understand why many bishops in Ireland remain in their jobs. I cannot understand why they, and others, including Sean Brady, have not been arrested on suspicion of, at the very least, not reporting a crime. I am baffled as to why an international police investigation has not been launched. I genuinely don’t understand it. The Catholic Church hierarchy is morally vacuous. As Johann Hari has pointed out , if it it were any other sort of organisation, it would not be tolerated. It would have been shut down.
If you received a Catholic baptism and are now an atheist, or a person of no religious beliefs, or a ‘lapsed Catholic’, I hope you’ll think about defecting via www.CountMeOut.ie . If you remain a Catholic, please, at the next mass you attend, when you recite the Nicene Creed, consider the line We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church and consider the implications of your personal solemn endorsement, given what the Church has been involved with in your lifetime. If you still wish to stand up and proclaim your faith in it, then shame on you.
