Not being able to leave the Catholic Church - Violation of Human Rights?

UglyBolloxFace wrote: »

Hello,

This is my first time posting in this forum, and to be honestly it's my first time actually being on the Atheism and Agnosticism forum. It has been recommended to me to start this thread here.

A while ago in After Hours (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056513606) I started a thread looking to raise awareness of the following: (note that the text in italics is taken directly from my OP in AH).

According to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, humans are entitled to basic human rights, two of which are:

Article 18: The Freedom of Religion

"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

and

Article 20:

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

As you can see from the above, by the catholic church denying me the right to leave their cult, they are violating Articles 18 and 20 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and are therefore violating my human rights.

Like a lot of people in our little country, I was baptised as a child. And I also made communion and confirmation - I only did this for the money.

Looking back on it, they are among the biggest mistakes of my life (although I didn't have any choice in the baptism). I no longer want to be a part of this disgusting organisation, and as such I want to leave.

The reasons are plentiful - but the main ones are the abuse of children and it's cover-up by those in the Vatican, and also the fact that I do not believe in a God or any fairytales like that, and am quite offended by it. I must stress however that I fully respect the rights of people to believe in this if they so wish.

Countmeout.ie, a website dedicated to helping people leave the church, was a great thing for people wishing to leave the church. But no, I am unable to leave because the church changed the 'Canon Law' which governs this stuff (because people were leaving in their droves), and this led to the countmeout website becoming defunct, in a sense. So technically, in their eyes, I am a catholic forever.

Freedom of Religion is a a fundamental human right. But how am I supposed to exercise this right if I am being forced to remain a member of the catholic church against my will? What right do the church have to do this to me and countless others?

I have looked into the possibility of taking this case to the European Court of Human Rights (EUCtHR), and several posters in the AH thread have put their support forward also. However, having looked at the EUCtHR website, it appears that because the Vatican is not party to the Convention on Human Rights, they cannot be taken to court.

Also, before taking cases to EUCtHR, all avenues must be exhausted domestically first. So I may try to figure out what to do here with regard to the Courts, and will attempt to write to the bishops/parish etc to see what I can do.

Basically my case is as follows:

The catholic church is forcing me to remain a member of their sect and therefore infringing on and violating my human rights of freedom of religion and not being compelled to belong to an association.

It is disgusting that the catholic church changed their canon law which stopped us being able to leave. As several posters have mentioned over in the AH thread, if the catholic church had nothing to fear and if people leaving the church was not a problem to them, then they wouldn't have removed the option to leave the church.

Can anyone give me some advice here please? What do other atheists think of this approach?

I look very much forward to hearing your thoughts.

-UBF

The issue is they will argue that they do not keep a membersip record, therefore there is nothing to be removed from.

The baptisimal record is a record of historical fact. Whilst you did not agree to it, and whilst you may not want to be associated with it, the fact is you were baptised and the register is merely record of that.

If the baptisimal record could be shown to be a membership list then there might be a chance for an action of this type to succeed, otherwise I don't think it is likely.

MrP

MrPudding wrote: »

The issue is they will argue that they do not keep a membersip record, therefore there is nothing to be removed from.

The baptisimal record is a record of historical fact. Whilst you did not agree to it, and whilst you may not want to be associated with it, the fact is you were baptised and the register is merely record of that.

If the baptisimal record could be shown to be a membership list then there might be a chance for an action of this type to succeed, otherwise I don't think it is likely.

MrP

By this logic, Ratzinger should still be a member of the Nazi Party.
After all, he was forced to join a society and was able to leave, why should people not be able to do same with the RCC.

Oh that's right, it's because it means they'll have to acknowledge the dwindling numbers they have in Europe and America, and the only places the cult is growing is in the places which are causing insane amounts of political issues world wide, eg Uganda.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Exactly. And just as Ratzinger isn’t a member of the Nazi party, so MrPudding isn’t a member of the Catholic church.

Mr Pudding’s case, should be bring it, will revolve around his being forced to be a member of the Catholic church. To make that case, he will have to show that he is a member of the Catholic church. How is he going to do that?

I never mentioned bringing a case. In fact, I specifically said it would be unlikely to succeed.

MrP

MrPudding wrote: »

I never mentioned bringing a case. In fact, I specifically said it would be unlikely to succeed.

My apologies, MrPudding. I have confused you with UglyBolloxFace.

(Please don't take that the wrong way!)

TheChizler wrote: »

. . . I imagine another reason the ability to formally defect was that the process was too costly to administrate, especially as countmeout got popular.

Um. According to the countmeoutwebsite a total of 531 e-mails were sent to church authorities asking for acknowledgement of a “declaration of defection” over a five-year period. That's a little over a hundred a year. Divide that between the 26 dioceses of Ireland. The administratative burden of recording and acknowledging the e-mails doesn’t look huge to me. And if we think that that led to a change in the universal canon law of the Catholic church, then we have a rather grand conception of the importance of Ireland to the worldwide church.

The straight dope on formal declarations of defection, as far as I can see, is as follows.

What’s a Catholic?

As far as the Catholic church is concerned, a Catholic is

(a) a Christian, who

(b) is in eucharistic communion with the bishop of Rome.

The “eucharistic communion” bit means that you are part of a community - a community constituted by shared eucharistic worship - which is gathered round a bishop, and the bishop is in communion with the Bishop of Rome. In other words, we’re talking about you being in a relationship - a real relationship - with a bunch of other people. And, as all facebook users know, the question of whether someone is, or is not, in a relationship is not always a simple binary. It’s often complicated.

I was baptised a Catholic in infancy. How does the Vatican know if I’m a Catholic now or not?

They mostly don’t. You know more about the state of your relationship with the Catholic community than they do. (The truth is, they’ve probably never heard of you, and they know nothing at all about your relationships.)

How does my bishop know if I’m a Catholic or not?

Again, he mostly doesn’t. He knows, or can find out, whether you participate in the Catholic community - go to mass, participate in the sacraments, etc. But, again, you have better information on that than he does.

So who can say if I’m a Catholic or not?

You can.

Is that the Catholic church’s view?

Yep.

Or, if we’re more accurate, yep, but with nuances. A relationship is a two-way thing, so they do have some perspective on the question. Church authorities will occasionally identify someone who claims they are Catholic as not being Catholic, on the basis that they have no relationship with or participation in the Catholic community. But note that (a) this is rare and (b) it usually involves a dispute which is precisely the opposite of the one that concerns most atheists; an individual insisting that he is a Catholic.

So what’s all this about formal acts of defection?

Good question. Well, while you’re generally the person who can most authoritatively say whether you are a Catholic or not, there are times when someone hasn’t said anything one way or the other and, from a church order point of view, some position has to be taken. The question most often arises in the context of marriage; from a canon law perspective, different rules apply to the validity of marriages by Catholics and marriages by non-Catholics. So if the question of the validity of your marriage arises, it becomes important from a canon law perspective to establish whether you were a Catholic at the time of your marriage.

They need to do this without reference to you, or what you say about it now, because (a) anything you say about it now might be influenced by self-interest - e.g. - you might be looking for an annulment now, and that gives you an interest in saying yes, I was a Catholic at the time of my first marriage - and (b) you might not be involved in the process at all - it might be that the question comes up because your former spouse is seeking an annulment. Or you could just be dead. Or whatever.

So they need some canonical rules to determine, for canonical purposes, whether you will be treated as Catholic or not. (Note that this isn’t a determination that you are or are not a Catholic; just about whether you will be treated as one where the question becomes relevant in a canon law procedure.)

Lawyers being a conservative bunch, the rule is basically a default one; if you were baptized a Catholic, or were received into the Catholic church, the assumption is that you remained a Catholic, unless there is evidence that you didn’t. Simply not coming to mass for a while - even a long while - is not enough evidence, because that could be simple laziness, and the phenomenon of people who don't go to mass but still regard themselves as Catholics is a well-known one.

So how can I show, for canonical purposes, that I have ceased to be a Catholic?

For a long time - like, for centuries - the rule was that the evidence required to show that you had ceased to be a Catholic was “notorious defection”. (“Notorious” here doesn’t mean evil or wicked or depraved; it just means “publicly known”.) If you had a public record of saying or doing things indicating that you were no longer a Catholic, then you were treated has not being a Catholic. So, e.g., if for many years past you attended public worship in the Presbyterian church, and not the Catholic church, then you weren’t a Catholic. Or if you had published and circulated a tract entitled “Why There Absolutely, Definitely, Positively Is No God, So I Can Lie In On Sunday Mornings”.

This worked reasonably well in a society where most people were religious, and the principal way of leaving a particular religion or denomination was to participate in another. But once you have a significant number of people leaving the church for atheism or agnosticism or indifferentism then it doesn’t work so well. Only a small number of such people will helpfully write a pamphlet to evidence their loss of faith.

The other point to note is that the requirement for “notorious defection” requires that whatever you have done is known, and is not private or secret or discreet. Most people who leave the church and do nothing to join another church do nothing public, so this rule resulted in most atheist/agnostic/indifferent ex-Catholics being treated as Catholics for canon law purposes.

So did they change the “notorious defection” rule?”

They added to it. In 1983, they introduced the “formal act of defection”. A new rule (Canon 1117, if we’re being precise) said that people were exempted from certain church laws relating to marriage (NB but only those laws) if they had “defected from the church by a formal act”. But there was no explicit definition of what a “formal act” might be. The significant change was that it had to be “formal” but not necessarily “notorious”, so something you had done privately rather than publicly would be enough, provided your intention was clear. But it was left up to local officials to decide what would be “formal”.

But the “notorious defection” rule still applies?

Yes. The “formal act of defection” is relevant only to the question of whether certain marriage rules apply to you. On the wider question of whether you are treated as a Catholic for other purposes, the “notorious” rule still applies.

Of course, making a formal act of defection, if it becomes known, is also “notorious” once you tell your bishop about it, so the same act might often satisfy both the “formal act” and “notorious defection” requirements.

What happened next?

Matters bumbled along for a couple of decades until an issue arose in Germany. For historical reasons, they have a church tax in Germany; it’s collected along with income tax, and distributed to the church to which the taxpayer belongs. A taxpayer can avoid the church tax by declaring to the tax office that he is no longer, e.g., a Catholic. The tax office (a) stops collecting the church tax, and (b) sends the bishop a copy of the taxpayer’s declaration. (I have no idea why they do the latter, but apparently they do.)

These declarations were treated by the German bishops as “formal acts”, and also as “notorious” (since both church and state knew about them) until it turned out that many people who had made such declarations were still coming to church to be married and have their children baptized, and to participate in other ways. They had made the declarations, it transpired, to save tax, and not because they wished to sever their relationship with the church.

This showed that some of the “formal acts” were formal in the pejorative sense, i.e. they had no substantive content. The fact that someone had made a “formal act” did not, in fact, necessarily mean that they wished to leave the church, or had left the church.

So did they change the rules again?

They did. In 2006, the Vatican introduced new directives, dealing with the interpretation and application of the “formal act” requirement. Under these directives, a “formal act” must reflect a positive decision to leave the church. That decision must be actually implemented. The decision must also be evidenced by a written statement submitted to your parish priest or bishop (NB 2006 was the first time a written statement was mentioned) and accepted by them (and they should accept it if they are satisfied that you have decided to leave the church, and have implemented that decision). If you did all that, then you had satisfied Canon 1117 and you were exempt from certain of the Catholic church’s marriage rules.

Where does countmeout.ie come in?

Here. At around this time they set up a web page to facilitate people taking advantage of these new, very clear, rules. People were told exactly what they had to do to get their formal acts accepted, and the webpage guided them through the process. Of course, the new rules only meant that your declaration was accepted as a “formal act”, which would get you out of some of the marriage rules, but most bishops also treated it as “notorious”, and took the view - explicitly - that you were no longer a Catholic. This suited people who wanted an explicit acknowledgement of the fact. And, so far as the canon lawyers were concerned, it made for clarity about who was, and who was not, subject to the canon law marriage rules.

That seems to satisfy everybody. So why did they stop in 2009? Too many people making formal declarations?

No, the exact opposite problem. Too few.

The great bulk of people who leave the church do not make a formal declaration, but they have - in the church’s view as well as their own - nevertheless left the church. Countmeout says that, while its service was operational (2006-2011) 531 people sent formal declarations using the service. Presumably some sent formal declaration independently of countmeout, but even if we assume that as many again did so, that still sums to less than 1,100 people sending declarations over the five-year period.

Does anybody seriously imagine that only 1,100 left the Catholic church in Ireland during that time? No. And experience in other countries was similar. Clearly, the new, tighter “formal act” rules were just not effective to capture most of the people who in fact leave the church. The great bulk of them never make a formal act, and yet they have undoubtedly left the church.

There was a good deal of comment and even protest about the new rules from canon lawyers and the like - you can google for evidence of it on the web - and a good deal of quieter comments from bishops back to the Vatican. The new rules were producing an unreal picture, and this was having various adverse consequences in the operation of canon law. People who were not Catholics were required to be treated as if they were Catholics in the application of the marriage rules, and some seriously weird results flowed from this.

That’s why they suspended the whole thing in 2009, not because make a formal declaration of defection was too easy, but because it was too difficult. Most people who leave the church are not motivated to make a formal act, and under the 2006-2009 rules they ended up still being treated as Catholics for canon law marriage rules purposes. It wasn’t working, so they suspended it.

So they’ve suspended it. Does this mean I can’t leave the church?

No. Of course you can leave the church.

Can I get an acknowledgement from them that I have left the church?

Generally not. They won’t make a judgment about this unless it becomes relevant to a real live canon law issue, in which case they’ll make a judgment for the purposes of that issue. Without a canonical issue to decide, they take the view that they don’t need to make a judgment, and you don’t need their acknowledgement to validate your decision.

If it does become relevant to a canonical issue, how will they make a judgment, if the “formal act” process is suspended?

The “notorious defection” rule still applies. They’ll look at whether you have publicly said or done things which are inconsistent with being a Catholic. Your posting record on the A&A forum might even become part of the evidence!

Peregrinus wrote: »

Your posting record on the A&A forum might even become part of the evidence!

Yus!!!!

(I totally read your entire post too!)

Peregrinus wrote: »

So, would a court be interested in the fact that the church refused to add a note to your baptismal record? No, for a number of reasons:

- Your baptismal record is correct. You were baptized. The church is free to record this, and is under no obligation to record other events, such as your defection. You want a record of your defection? The state has a record. If that’s not enough for you, create your own record. How can you impose a record-keeping obligation on a church of which you are not even a member?

So this is pretty much what I said, if you read my posts. If the baptismal record is merely a record of a historic event then there is little that can be done. If, however, this record is also used as a membership list, then that changes matters somewhat. Now, I know you are saying that the list is not used in this way, but I am pretty sure that on another thread discussing this very matter someone was told by one of the diocese that they did use it in this way.

Peregrinus wrote: »

- As noted, from a civil point of view you are not adversely affected in any way by the record the church keeps. For civil purposes you are treated exactly like someone who was never baptized - you avoid the church tax. So the failure of the church to record your defection doesn’t impact you adversely in any way that a court would take notice of.

Again, this is what I pretty much said, and assuming the list is not a membership list then it holds true. Again, as soon as the list is used for anything other than the recording of a historical event then it has the capability of infringing a convention right.

Peregrinus wrote: »

- Separate of church and state cuts both ways. Courts in western democracies are extremely reluctant ever to order churches to do things, or not to do things, particular with respect to their own affairs and their own ordering.

This is something that is a bit of an embarrassment to society as far as I am concerned, and something which I sincerely wish would change.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religious practice benefit the church and the defector alike. If the church maintains that baptism has a continuing supernatural significance, then (a) the civil court is absolutely not going to rule on that one way or the other, and (b) the claimed supernatural justification, and the lack of any civil consequences for the maintenance of the record put this squarely in the field of religious practice, which in most countries is constitutionally guaranteed.

The court is not interested because it is not provable. If you look at some of the recent cases, like the counsellor that went to court to try to protect his god given right to discriminate against people, the judge said, and I am paraphrasing here, you have a legally protected right to be religious, but the contents of that religious belief are not protected.

So again, of course the courts aren't interested in makey uppy mumbo jumbo.

Peregrinus wrote: »

In Ireland, the case would be even clearer, since denominational affiliation, or having been baptized, doesn’t have even the civil consequence of being subject to the church tax. It would be difficult or impossible to show that the maintenance of your baptismal record, with no note of your defection, impacted you adversely in any way that would interest a court or give you any grounds for a legal remedy.

I don't think you would even have to show adverse impact. Again, as I have said repeatedly in this and other posts, this is all predicated on the baptismal record being used for something other than a historical record, and there is some evidence that this is the case. If that is true then it could be a violation of a convention right, and therefore actionable per se, with no requirement to prove an adverse effect.

Peregrinus wrote: »

You could, of course, argue that your freedom of religion is infringed by the Catholic church claiming you as a member. But you’d have two problems here.

First, you’d need to show that, by refusing to record your defection and simply maintaining a record of your baptism, the Catholic church was claiming you as a member. You’d have a problem here since, in Catholic theology, simply having been baptized in the past - which is all that the record shows - is not enough to establish that you are a Catholic today.

Secondly, you’d need to show that, by claiming you as a member, the Catholic church was somehow infringing your freedom of religion. Again, I think you’d have a problem. Which of your practices or beliefs are impeded by the Catholic church’s claim? And if your practice and belief is not impeded by the church’s claim, how is your freedom being infringed? You may be annoyed at the church’s claim, but “annoyed” is not the same as “not free”.

It would be infringing, again subject to the list be used for something other than a historical record, you right to be associated, or not, with a particular religion or organisation.

I understand that it does not impact a person desire to be or not be a particular religion. I understand that even if a catholic decides to change religion he is free to do so, the issue here would be with the catholic church maintaining a record of a persons membership and refusing to remove them from that list.

MrP

koth wrote: »

Thread I started on that subject. And which to date still has had only 1 diocese respond to my enquires.

From the linked post:

So that would indicate that the register is being used as more than a mere record of historical events and therefore a possible convention breach.

MrP

Does anyone actually read the posts? We know they can't stop us from. It believing, we know it is all makey uppy rubbish. The point is we don't want the church using the fact that we were baptised as justification for their standing in society. We don't want to be counted as a member of this despicable organisation when they are telling the government or the eu or the un how many members they have.

I could not give a flying fcuk at a rolling doughnut if they think I will metaphysically a member for eternity ecause some idiot in a frock carried out a retarded fantasy ritual when I was too you to object.

MrP

MrP

MrPudding wrote: »

So this is pretty much what I said, if you read my posts . . .

Sure. I was agreeing with you here, not correcting you. I’m sorry if this came across wrongly.

MrPudding wrote: »

If the baptismal record is merely a record of a historic event then there is little that can be done. If, however, this record is also used as a membership list, then that changes matters somewhat. Now, I know you are saying that the list is not used in this way, but I am pretty sure that on another thread discussing this very matter someone was told by one of the diocese that they did use it in this way.

In the other thread (if we’re thinking of the same one) someone reported that a diocese (Cork, I think) had told him that they used the baptismal records in compiling their estimate of Catholics in the diocese. But that’s not the same as “assuming everyone on the register is still a Catholic”; they couldn’t possibly use it that way and get a meaningful result, for the reasons already pointed out. And yet the results they get do seem to be at least plausibly meaningful.

MrPudding wrote: »

This [separation of church and state] is something that is a bit of an embarrassment to society as far as I am concerned, and something which I sincerely wish would change.

Good luck with that! It’s a fairly fundamental feature of most western democratic constitutions and of liberal political thinking generally, and the atheist/sceptical community is generall quite supportive of the notion. They see it as protecting the state from church influence. So you have your work cut out.

MrPudding wrote: »

The court is not interested because it is not provable. If you look at some of the recent cases, like the counsellor that went to court to try to protect his god given right to discriminate against people, the judge said, and I am paraphrasing here, you have a legally protected right to be religious, but the contents of that religious belief are not protected.

No, it’s more than that. Courts are often interested in things that aren’t provable, at least in the sense that scientific propositions are provable. The state of someone’s mind, for example, is often an issue in a court case, or a question like whether a particular instance of discrimination is “invidious” or meets some other test that depends on the application of ethical values rather than on anything measurable and quantifiable.

And, in Germany, the courts are interested in whether you are a church member, because it has tax consequences. So it is provable, at least in that context.

The courts in Ireland aren’t interested in whether the Catholic church claims you as a member, or whether it is right to claim you as a member, because, even if it wrongly claims you as a member, that doesn’t injure you any way that gives rise to a legal remedy. If a finding that you were wrongly claimed as a member gave you no right to any legal remedy, then the court has no reason to make the finding, one way or the other – even if, in fact the finding might be quite easy to make.

MrPudding wrote: »

I don't think you would even have to show adverse impact. Again, as I have said repeatedly in this and other posts, this is all predicated on the baptismal record being used for something other than a historical record, and there is some evidence that this is the case. If that is true then it could be a violation of a convention right, and therefore actionable per se, with no requirement to prove an adverse effect . . .

I disagree. “It could be a violation of a convention right” is not the same as “it is a violation of a convention right”. If they are using the record to claim anything other than that you were baptised on a certain date, that is not enough to show that your rights are being violated. Even you could show that the claim was untrue or unwarranted, hat still wouldn’t be enough. You need that the way in which they use the record amounts to an actual violation of your convention rights. “He says I’m a Catholic, and I’m not!” doesn’t seem to me to be quite enough. The right of free association is your right to enter into the associations that you want and not the one’s you don’t want, but I don’t think it extends to not having people claim an association with you that doesn’t exist.

(Besides, if the association that the Catholic church claims is “he was baptised by us X years ago, and that gets him in”, that association does exist. Whatever rights/advantages/participation you get in the Catholic church from having been baptised as a Catholic, you have, and it is not untrue of the Catholic church to say this. To show that they were wrongly claiming an association, you’d have to show more than that they claimed the connection of your having been baptised.)

This isn’t a uniquely Catholic problem. Jews consider you to be Jewish (and subject to the moral claims that that implies) if you are born of a Jewish mother, regardless of your beliefs, self-identification or practise (and regardless, equally, of the beliefs, etc, of your mother). And some will say that you are not a “good Jew” (because you do not observe the Law which, as a Jew, you should). Understandably, some people are annoyed by this, but I have never heard it seriously suggested that they have any legal remedy, either under the European Convention or under analogous instruments in other parts of the world.