How to "un-baptize"/ Withdraw affiliation with RCC?

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's not any different. You can leave the Catholic church, join other churches, etc.

Ads you say, you can apply for (and obtain) citizenship in other countries, but it doesn't result in your Irish birth certificate been deleted, amended or annotated. Siimlarly, if you get divorced,your marriage certificate is not altered. Why, in your own words, should baptism be any different?

More waffle and bullshit.
Divorce doesn't erase a historical record but it does result in a change of your status, the state will no longer regard you as married.
It shouldn't be too much to ask for the RCC to recognise that one no longer wishes to be considered a catholic and entitled to any catholic rituals.

Baptism does result in a palpable change - the entitlement to a christian funeral - and it is this I wish to undo and it is my right to undo, and your walls of evasive text aren't addressing this point at all.

ninja900 wrote: »

More waffle and bull****.
Divorce doesn't erase a historical record but it does result in a change of your status, the state will no longer regard you as married.
It shouldn't be too much to ask for the RCC to recognise that one no longer wishes to be considered a catholic and entitled to any catholic rituals.

Sigh.

Divorce, as you say, doesn’t erase a historical record, but it does result in a change in your status.

Similarly, leaving the church doesn’t erase a historical record but it does result in a change in your status.

You can’t go to the state and say “can I have a certificate that I’m not married, please”? (Well, you can, but you won’t get one.) If your marriage was ended by the order of an Irish court, you’ll have the court order, but all that shows is that are not married to a particular person, not that you are not married at all. And if your marriage was ended by the order of a foreign court, you’ll have no Irish official document recording even that. And if your marriage was ended by the death of your spouse, again you’ll have no Irish document recording your single status. (If your spouse dies in Ireland, you’ll have an Irish death certificate for your spouse, but it won’t say anything about the implications for your marriage to your spouse, and of course it won’t say anything about the possibility that might be married to someone else.)

The Irish state generally won’t take a position on whether you are single or not unless it needs to, for its purposes – e.g. if you apply to marry in Ireland, and have been married before, then you’ll need to satisfy the registrar that your fist marriage has ended, and if he issues the necessary paperwork for your second marriage, it’s implicit that he accepts that your first marriage has ended (though the paperwork won’t actually say so). But that’s as close as you’re going to come to a certificate of not being married, and you’ll only get it in limited circumstances.

In the same way, you can’t make the Catholic church issue you a certificate that says that you are not a Catholic. If you leave the Catholic church by joining some other church, you may have paperwork from that church. But the Catholic church will no more issue you a certificate saying that you are not a Catholic than the Irish state will issue you a certificate saying that you are not married.

And, like the state, the Catholic church generally won’t take any position on the question of whether you are a Catholic or not unless and until it needs to, for its own purposes.

ninja900 wrote: »

Baptism does result in a palpable change - the entitlement to a christian funeral - and it is this I wish to undo and it is my right to undo, and your walls of evasive text aren't addressing this point at all.

I struggle to see being afforded a right that you have no wish to exercise as a dreadful oppression.

You do realise that you are lining up with people who complain that they will be oppressed if they are given the right to enter into same-sex marriages?

As for “undoing” your right, you can undo it yourself, by giving appropriate instructions to those who will have the right and responsibility of making your funeral arrangements. Where your funeral is celebrated is entirely a matter for your and your next of kin. Why you feel the need to present yourself as somehow dependent on a Catholic bishop in order to have your funeral wishes respected is beyond me. If you can’t persuade the people who care about you to respect your wishes in this regard, what on earth makes you think that the responsibility devolves to a Catholic bishop?

Are you also demanding of the Anglican bishop that he should ensure that you do not have an Anglican funeral? You don’t have to ever have been an Anglican to have an Anglican funeral, you know.

And the Humanists! The Humanists will celebrate a humanist funeral whenever asked, without any stipulation that the deceased should ever have professed humanism or requested a humanist funeral. Are you not outraged by this? Yet another right oppressively imposed upon you, without so much as a by-your-leave! Have these people no shame?

Oh, the oppression! Where will it end?

robindch wrote: »

I've been maintaining for years that people should co-opt catholics into some religion that they don't want to belong to and see the reaction.

Am thrilled at last to have somebody who thinks likewise

Well, so far the reaction has been profound indifference.

Is there a lesson here?

robindch wrote: »

Need more coverage. Social networking. Make it go viral. That kind of thing.

Uh-huh? Well, be sure to let us know how you get on with that!

Peregrinus wrote: »

That's pretty much exactly what I haven't said. I have already said that if the Catholic church is claiming somebody as a member there may well be a remedy for that under the Data Protection Act.

All I'm saying here is that if the Catholic church has baptised someone, they can reasonably keep a record of the fact, and if that someone leaves the Catholic church, or considers they were never a member, the mere fact that they would prefer never to have been baptised does not seem to give them a right to have the record of their baptism either altered or deleted.

People keep saying in this thread and in previous threads that the Catholic church claims everyone it has baptised as a current member. I have asked again and again for evidence that this is the case. Nothing. Nada. Not a single example.

What I'm saying at this point is that if anyone wishes to bring a case to the Data Protection Commissioner seeking to have his baptismal record deleted or annotated to stop the Catholic church claiming him as a member, he's going to need evidence that the Catholic church is claiming him as a member, and is relying on the baptismal certificate to do so. If anybody has such evidence, I would love to hear about it. If nobody has such evidence, then those who claim to value evidence-based belief will be sceptical of claims that the Catholic church regards anyone it has ever baptised as a current member.

You said it yourself that "baptism is admission to a particular community", so the presence of a baptism record is a record the church has of your admission to that community. The Vatican also seems to base its record of the number of catholics on the number of baptised catholic in each continent (9th paragraph). So, given that can we add to or amend other records to show changes of community (like citizenship or marriage) why can't we do this with baptism?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

You said it yourself that "baptism is admission to a particular community", so the presence of a baptism record is a record the church has of your admission to that community . . . So, given that can we add to or amend other records to show changes of community (like citizenship or marriage) why can't we do this with baptism?

Oh, we can. The question is, do we have to? Is some dreadful injustice perpetrated, some outrageous fraud, if we don’t keep records in this way? I don’t see that it is.

The first thing to note is that registers of events are not normally kept in this way. Registers of births are not annotated to record later emigrations, deaths, renunciations of citizenship, etc Some of these late events generate records of their own, some don’t but none result in any change to the register of births. Likewise registers of marriages are not annotated to reflect later deaths, divorces, etc. So, if this way of keeping records is not inherently outrageous, why does it become outrageous if registers of baptisms are kept in the same way?

One consequence of keeping registers in this way is that no master list exists, or can be compiled, of all Irish citizens, all married couples, all Catholics. But that’s OK; there is no need for such a master list, no attempt to compile one, no pretence that one exists. The state doesn’t need a list of all its citizens. At some point it may need to know whether Mark Hamill is a citizen – e.g. if you apply for a passport, if they are considering charging you with treason – and at that point they can investigate the question, looking at relevant data points such as the register of births, etc, and make a decision. Until they need to do that, they don’t do that. If you believe that you’re not an Irish citizen and want confirmation from the state of that fact, that’s actually quite difficult to get. You could apply for a passport and hope to be refused, and then wave the refusal as proof of you non-citizen status (although, strictly speaking, it isn’t – you might have been refused for some other reason). You could seek a declaration from the High Court that you are not a citizen; that would be conclusive, but you’d have to be very highly motivated to do that.

So it is with the Catholic church. They have no register of current members. They don’t need such a register, and they don’t attempt to compile one. People who demand to be “stricken from the list” are operating under a fundamental misconception. The Catholic church will take a view on whether Mark Hamill is a member if and when they need to know whether he is or not, and not before. You could, I suppose, institute your own proceedings in the church courts seeking a declaration that, canonically, you are not a Catholic though, again, you’d have be very highly motivated.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

The Vatican also seems to base its record of the number of catholics on the number of baptised catholic in each continent (9th paragraph

The document you link to doesn’t say that everyone baptised is treated as a Catholic. It talks about “the total number of baptized Catholics distributed across the continents”, but that wording is consistent with what I have been saying all along; they are talking there of the number of people who are both (a) baptised, and (b) Catholic. This, obviously, is considerably smaller than the total number of people who are baptised. They are not counting all baptised people as Catholics; we know this, because Ian Paisley (and many millions of others).

The total number of baptisms performed in Catholic churches is a data point employed in arriving at estimates of numbers of Catholics, but that does not mean (and it is not in fact the case) that the estimate of the number of Catholics is simply a tot of the number of baptisms in Catholic churches.

I have long held that a Constitutional case on freedom of DIS-association would be very interesting in this regard.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

The originals may not get changed, but more up-to-date documents are generated as life changes are made and those documents can be presented or acquired as needed. So don't directly change the baptism record, but why, exactly, should there not be a record of people who reject their baptism?

There can be. What is to stop you creating such a record? If the record of baptism is created by the people who baptise, cannot – indeed, should not – the record of rejection be created by those who reject? Why should you be dependent on the church to create such a record for you? Have they more authority than you do to say whether you have rejected your baptism?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

If I get married and then get divorced, and someone inquires about my marriage status they will get information from the most recent and relevant document (divorce certificate). If I get baptised but then reject religion?

If your marriage is ended by divorce, there’ll be a divorce decree to reflect that. But the divorce decree will not be issued by the people who married you, but by the people who divorce you, who may of course be the authorities of a different country. The registrar who recorded your marriage has no obligation to create a record of your divorce. Why should he? He had no part in it, and indeed no awareness of it unless you tell him about it. Likewise, the parish priest who married you has no obligation to create a record of your rejection of your baptism. What record of it could he possibly create that would not be better created by yourself?

And, of course, the event which ends your marriage is not necessarily reflected in a record somewhere. A marriage is ended by the death of one of the spouses. That death will probably be registered, depending on where the spouse dies and whether there is a death registration law there and whether people comply with it, but its the death, not the registration of the death, which ends the marriage. Even if the death is unregistered, the marriage is still over.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

There is a baptism cert but nothing to show that the baptism cert is not a currently valid document.

That’s because the baptism cert remains valid; the facts to which it attests are still facts. You were baptised at the stated place on the stated date; this will never change. In the same way a birth certificate is not invalidated by a later death, and marriage certificate is not invalidated by later death or divorce.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Surely if it was important enough to record some entering the catholic community, it's important enough to record them leaving?

If it’s important to you to record it, then record it. What is stopping you?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Firstly, the article does not distinguish between a baptised person and a catholic, so I fail to see why we should.

The article talks about “baptised Catholics”. If all baptised people were Catholics, that phrase would be tautologous. The Catholic church does distinguish between baptised persons and Catholics; a glance at the Code of Canon Law will confirm this. There are specific provisions about, e.g.,marriages involving baptised people who are not Catholics.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Secondly, I don't see how the total of baptised catholics is obviously, considerably smaller than the total number of baptised people when the act of baptism makes you a catholic and there is way to reverse it.

The act of baptism does not make you a Catholic. We’ve covered this ground before. In the Catholic view, a Catholic is a baptised Christian who is in communion with the Catholic church.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Lastly, do you have any actual evidence that they do not count the likes of Ian Paisley as a catholic? You didn't the last time we had this discussion.

Seriously? You want evidence that the Catholic church does not consider Presbyterians to be Catholics?

Oh, all right. The article to which you yourself have linked says that the Catholic church claims that there are 1.2 billion Christians in the world.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members) suggests that there are 1.2 billion Catholics, plus a further 600-800 million Protestants (one of whom would be Ian Paisley), 225-300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, 86 million Orthodox Christians, 85 million Anglicans and about 44 million Restorationist Christians. Nearly all of them are baptised, apart from a proporition of the Restorationists. If the Catholic church considered all baptised people to be Catholics, it would be claiming more like 2.2 billion members, not 1.2 billion. We conclude that it is not claiming all baptised people as Christians.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Do you have any actual evidence to support this assertion? You've made it several times and I've yet to see you present anything beyond your own assertion.

What I say is self-evidently true. The great majority of people who have ever been baptised are dead, but this fact is not recorded in their baptismal registrations. If the Catholic church simply totted up all the baptisms in its registers, and claimed that as the total number of Catholics in the world, it would be claiming a number substantially in excess of 1.2 billion. It isn’t claiming such a number. We can therefore say with complete confidence that the number of Catholics claimed is not a simple tot of all the baptisms registered.

We can in fact say a bit more than this. The article you link to refers to the Pontifical Yearbook. The raw figures from the pontifical yearbook can be found at the website catholic-hierarchy.org. If you take the trouble to visit there you’ll see that the 1.2 billion figure claimed for Catholics worldwide isn’t a single estimate; it’s the sum of individual estimates made in each diocese around the world. In each diocese, of course, the number of Catholics is not just affected by deaths, but also by migration. Many people who were baptised as Catholics in a particular diocese are still Catholics, but are no longer living in the diocese. Conversely, many Catholics now living in the diocese were not baptised there. Immigration of Catholics may exceed emigration or vice versa but, either way, you need to allow for it. On the level of the individual diocese, therefore, a simple tot of baptism registered would produce an even more meaningless result.

Common sense suggests that if you want an estimate of Catholics in any diocese at any point in time, you can’t just tot up the baptisms registered. Even if you start with that, you have to make a number of adjustments

- Deduct Catholics dying
- Deduct Catholics migrating out of the diocese
- Deduct Catholics leaving the church
- Add Catholics migrating into the diocese
- Add Christians baptised in other church who enter the Catholic church

And no doubt we could think of other additions and deduction that should be made. Some of these deductions will have to be estimates, obviously, and they all realte to events which are not recorded in baptismal registers, but you still have to make the adjustements if you want a useful result.

And in a previous thread we have noted that the Catholic Church’s estimate of its numbers in Ireland tallies pretty closely with people’s self-identification in the census, which suggest that the methodology adopted by the church in Ireland is reasonably robust.

Given all that, I think if anybody wants to claim that the Catholic Church’s methodology for estimating its own numbers doesn’t include any allowance for people defecting from the church, the onus is really on those people to produce some evidence that no such allowance is made.

sunshine and showers wrote: »

I have long held that a Constitutional case on freedom of DIS-association would be very interesting in this regard.

Unless someone can produce some evidence that the Catholic church is preventing people from dis-associating, the case will be brief and uninteresting.

Peregrinus wrote: »

There can be. What is to stop you creating such a record? If the record of baptism is created by the people who baptise, cannot – indeed, should not – the record of rejection be created by those who reject? Why should you be dependent on the church to create such a record for you? Have they more authority than you do to say whether you have rejected your baptism?

Would you put this argument to a transgender person looking to officially change their sex? "Why should you be dependent on the state to create such a record for you? Have they more authority than you do to say what sex you are?".
Why should I have to create the record myself when the original document wasn't created by me?

Peregrinus wrote: »

If your marriage is ended by divorce, there’ll be a divorce decree to reflect that. But the divorce decree will not be issued by the people who married you, but by the people who divorce you, who may of course be the authorities of a different country. The registrar who recorded your marriage has no obligation to create a record of your divorce. Why should he? He had no part in it, and indeed no awareness of it unless you tell him about it. Likewise, the parish priest who married you has no obligation to create a record of your rejection of your baptism. What record of it could he possibly create that would not be better created by yourself?

And, of course, the event which ends your marriage is not necessarily reflected in a record somewhere. A marriage is ended by the death of one of the spouses. That death will probably be registered, depending on where the spouse dies and whether there is a death registration law there and whether people comply with it, but its the death, not the registration of the death, which ends the marriage. Even if the death is unregistered, the marriage is still over.

What difference does it make that a different department generates a divorce decree than generates a marriage certificate? A divorce decree is still generated.

Peregrinus wrote: »

That’s because the baptism cert remains valid; the facts to which it attests are still facts. You were baptised at the stated place on the stated date; this will never change. In the same way a birth certificate is not invalidated by a later death, and marriage certificate is not invalidated by later death or divorce.

A birth cert just says that you where born, not that you are a baby forever, so a death wouldn't validate anything (yet a death cert is still generated). However, a baptism cert says that you are a member of the catholic community. Without any way to change that, it means that you are a catholic forever.

Peregrinus wrote: »

The article talks about “baptised Catholics”. If all baptised people were Catholics, that phrase would be tautologous. The Catholic church does distinguish between baptised persons and Catholics; a glance at the Code of Canon Law will confirm this. There are specific provisions about, e.g.,marriages involving baptised people who are not Catholics.

:rolleyes: Oh come on Peregrinus, do better than this. The only people who are baptised but not catholics are those who were not baptised into the catholic church. The article is about the number of catholics in the world and the use of the phrase "baptised catholics" indicates how they define a catholic - someone who was baptised into catholicism.

Peregrinus wrote: »

The act of baptism does not make you a Catholic. We’ve covered this ground before. In the Catholic view, a Catholic is a baptised Christian who is in communion with the Catholic church.

Link for this, with an explanation of what "communion with the Catholic church" actually entails? Because, to me, the baptism record is probably the only physical record they have of people who have been in communion with the catholic church in any way. Also, in threads on the irish census results you, and other posters, have argued that to be a catholic all you need do is consider yourself catholic. Which is it?

Peregrinus wrote: »

Seriously? You want evidence that the Catholic church does not consider Presbyterians to be Catholics?

Oh, all right. The article to which you yourself have linked says that the Catholic church claims that there are 1.2 billion Christians in the world.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members) suggests that there are 1.2 billion Catholics, plus a further 600-800 million Protestants (one of whom would be Ian Paisley), 225-300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, 86 million Orthodox Christians, 85 million Anglicans and about 44 million Restorationist Christians. Nearly all of them are baptised, apart from a proporition of the Restorationists. If the Catholic church considered all baptised people to be Catholics, it would be claiming more like 2.2 billion members, not 1.2 billion. We conclude that it is not claiming all baptised people as Christians.

Again, the catholic church considers all people baptised into catholicism to be catholics, not people baptised into other christian religion. As this thread is talking about "un-baptising" from the RCC, its pretty clear that we have always been talking about "catholic baptism", even if we just say baptism.

Peregrinus wrote: »

What I say is self-evidently true. The great majority of people who have ever been baptised are dead, but this fact is not recorded in their baptismal registrations. If the Catholic church simply totted up all the baptisms in its registers, and claimed that as the total number of Catholics in the world, it would be claiming a number substantially in excess of 1.2 billion. It isn’t claiming such a number. We can therefore say with complete confidence that the number of Catholics claimed is not a simple tot of all the baptisms registered.

We can in fact say a bit more than this. The article you link to refers to the Pontifical Yearbook. The raw figures from the pontifical yearbook can be found at the website catholic-hierarchy.org. If you take the trouble to visit there you’ll see that the 1.2 billion figure claimed for Catholics worldwide isn’t a single estimate; it’s the sum of individual estimates made in each diocese around the world. In each diocese, of course, the number of Catholics is not just affected by deaths, but also by migration. Many people who were baptised as Catholics in a particular diocese are still Catholics, but are no longer living in the diocese. Conversely, many Catholics now living in the diocese were not baptised there. Immigration of Catholics may exceed emigration or vice versa but, either way, you need to allow for it. On the level of the individual diocese, therefore, a simple tot of baptism registered would produce an even more meaningless result.

Common sense suggests that if you want an estimate of Catholics in any diocese at any point in time, you can’t just tot up the baptisms registered. Even if you start with that, you have to make a number of adjustments

- Deduct Catholics dying
- Deduct Catholics migrating out of the diocese
- Deduct Catholics leaving the church
- Add Catholics migrating into the diocese
- Add Christians baptised in other church who enter the Catholic church

And no doubt we could think of other additions and deduction that should be made. Some of these deductions will have to be estimates, obviously, and they all realte to events which are not recorded in baptismal registers, but you still have to make the adjustements if you want a useful result.

And in a previous thread we have noted that the Catholic Church’s estimate of its numbers in Ireland tallies pretty closely with people’s self-identification in the census, which suggest that the methodology adopted by the church in Ireland is reasonably robust.

Given all that, I think if anybody wants to claim that the Catholic Church’s methodology for estimating its own numbers doesn’t include any allowance for people defecting from the church, the onus is really on those people to produce some evidence that no such allowance is made.

All this proves is that the RCC do keep updated records on their baptism records. They can see that even though such-a-such person was baptised, he died and so should no longer be counted (possibly a funeral record to account for that). Similar records may be generated for migration (although maybe not, as in the absence of death or defection no overall change is made). But, if no record is generated when someone defects, how exactly can the RCC allow for those numbers?

Peregrinus wrote: »

Unless someone can produce some evidence that the Catholic church is preventing people from dis-associating, the case will be brief and uninteresting.

They closed off the method of formally removing oneself from association with the Catholic church. Just because the RCC refers to their register as a "historical document" doesn't mean it's true or that a good lawyer could have fun with it.

c

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Would you put this argument to a transgender person looking to officially change their sex? "Why should you be dependent on the state to create such a record for you? Have they more authority than you do to say what sex you are?".

A transgender person might need the state’s acknowledgement of their new gender when, e.g, they get a passport. They have a continuing relationship of citizenship with the state and, in the context of that relationship, they need the state to accept their new gender.

But that’s not analagous to the situation of someone who isn’t a Catholic. If a transgender person is not an Irish citizen, it doesn’t seem to me that they need an acknowledgement from the Irish state of their new gender. It makes no difference, as far as I can see, if they used to be an Irish citizen. If they’re not looking for an Irish passport now, the context in which the Irish state needs to take a view as to what gender they are doesn’t arise.

A non-Catholic is not a Catholic. Absent special circumstances, I don’t see that they have a relationship with the Catholic church in which they are in any way in need of an acknowledgement that they are not a Catholic.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Why should I have to create the record myself when the original document wasn't created by me?

Because what we’re recording here is a different event.

The celebrant/registrar who marries you creates your marriage certificate. But if your marriage is ended by divorce, it’s the court that divorces you which issues your divorce order, not the celebrant/registrar who married you. And if your marriage is ended by death (which is how most marriages in Ireland are ended) it’s the doctor who examines your corpse that signs your death certificate – again, not your wedding celebrant/registrar. In general, it’s the person who does an act who can most authoritatively certify that the act has been done. That’s the person whose certificate you should want, if you want the best evidence that the act has been done.

Following that model, the church that baptises you creates your baptismal certificate. But f you renounce your participation in the church and leave the church, the person who has done that act is you. Who better to certify that you have done that? If you look to someone else to certify that – if you assert that someone else needs to certify that - you are denying your own responsibility, agency and authority in the assertion of your status as an unbeliever. Why would you want to do that?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

A birth cert just says that you where born, not that you are a baby forever, so a death wouldn't validate anything (yet a death cert is still generated). However, a baptism cert says that you are a member of the catholic community. Without any way to change that, it means that you are a catholic forever.

No. A baptism certificate shows that you were admitted to the Catholic community on a given date. It doesn’t show, or purport to show, that you are a member today. Whether you are still a member is a question of fact which depends on events that have unfolded since your baptism. At most, your baptismal certificate shows that you could be a Catholic now, not that you are.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Oh come on Peregrinus, do better than this. The only people who are baptised but not catholics are those who were not baptised into the catholic church. The article is about the number of catholics in the world and the use of the phrase "baptised catholics" indicates how they define a catholic - someone who was baptised into catholicism.

You’re arguing in circles here, Mark. Your opening claim here (“The only people who are baptised but not catholics are those who were not baptised into the catholic church”) is in fact what you are trying to prove.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Link for this, with an explanation of what "communion with the Catholic church" actually entails? Because, to me, the baptism record is probably the only physical record they have of people who have been in communion with the catholic church in any way. Also, in threads on the irish census results you, and other posters, have argued that to be a catholic all you need do is consider yourself catholic. Which is it?

A quick google has not found me a link offering a concise account of the role a relationship of communion plays in determining whether a particular baptised Christian is, or is not, a Catholic but, I promise, I’ll look further and get back to you. Since I’m travelling this weekend, it may be next week before I get back to you.

The baptism register isn’t the only physical record of people’s relationship with the church. There could also be a record of first eucharist, of confirmation of marriage, of reception into the church (for Christians baptised in other denominations who elect to become Catholic). But there’s nothing to say that only facts which are evidenced by such physical records are relevant to establishing whether someone is a Catholic or not. If they need for some purpose to establish whether a particular individual was, or was not, a Catholic at a particular time, they’lll consider any relevant facts or evidence, whether or not it takes the form of a certificate – what someone said about their status at the time, what they say about their status now, whether there’s evidence that they went to mass, whether there’s evidence that they attended a non-Catholic church, whether there’s evidence of hostility to the church, etc. Anything that builds up a picture of what kind of relationship someone had with the church will be taken into account.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Again, the catholic church considers all people baptised into catholicism to be catholics, not people baptised into other christian religion. As this thread is talking about "un-baptising" from the RCC, its pretty clear that we have always been talking about "catholic baptism", even if we just say baptism.

Well, in exchange for my digging further to find you a cite for what I say about the role of communion in determining whether someone is a Catholic or not, how about you dig a bit further and find a cite for your claim that the Catholic church regards non-Catholic baptism as fundamentally different from Catholic baptism? ‘Cause, just saying, this is not the case; the Catholic church is very clear that baptism administered by a non-Catholic minister – by anyone at all, in fact – is every bit as valid and effective as baptism administered by a Catholic priest, to the point that if you have been baptised by, e.g., and Anglican or a Presbyterian minister the Catholic church absolutely will not baptise you again, even in the context of your becoming a Catholic. If baptism is enough to make you a Catholic, and if all baptisms are equally valid, then everyone baptised is a Catholic. Which, plainly, is not what the Catholic church thinks.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

All this proves is that the RCC do keep updated records on their baptism records. They can see that even though such-a-such person was baptised, he died and so should no longer be counted (possibly a funeral record to account for that). Similar records may be generated for migration (although maybe not, as in the absence of death or defection no overall change is made). But, if no record is generated when someone defects, how exactly can the RCC allow for those numbers?

They don’t update their baptism records, because the facts of baptism don’t change. If you’ve died, they don’t know about this unless you had a Catholic funeral. But, even if they have, unless you had a Catholic funeral from the same church in which you were baptised, which is not the usual arrangement, SFAIK they have no mechanism for linking the record of your baptism with the record of your burial. And, even if they did have such a mechanism, if they had no record of your burial, they would have no way of knowing whether this meant (a) you weren’t dead, or (b) you were dead, but had not had a Catholic funeral.

You ask, if no record is generated when someone defects, how exactly can the RCC allow for those numbers? The answer is that there’s a huge distinction between keeping track of every individual Catholic, and estimating the total number of Catholics. The church’s claim that there are 1.2 billion Catholics is an estimate of the latter kind, not a count of iindividual baptisms, adjusted by recorded deaths, conversions, defections, etc. The church’s records of deaths conversions, defections etc are simply not comprehensive enough to make such a calculation meaningful.

Compare the situation of the Irish government attempting to estimate the total number of people living in Ireland. Individual births and deaths are recorded in Ireland, and can be counted, but individual immigrations and emigrations are not recorded. They can be estimated but an estimate, however accurate, may tell you the number of people entering or leaving Ireland, but it absolutely cannot tell you who they are. So, even if the register of births is a significant data point in estimating the Irish population (and it is), any estimate of current residents has to involve an adjustment for net migration, which does not involve identifying the migrants. This means that the figure for total current Irish residents, however accurate it may be, is not the same thing as a list or register of Irish residents; the fact that we may be correct in saying that such-and-such a number of people reside in Ireland does not mean that we know who they are, and in fact we don’t. And anyone who claims that, because his birth is registered in Ireland, he is therefore counted as a current Irish resident because the state has no record of his emigration is flat-out wrong; the estimate of current Irish residents assumes that a certain proportion of people born in Ireland still lives here, but it makes no attempt to identify which of them do and which do not. It does not identify any particular person as a resident of Ireland.

The same goes for the estimate of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. We know (or can know) the names of all the people who have been baptised in the Catholic church, and we know (or can know) the names of all the people who have been baptised in other churches and later formally received into the Catholic church. But we know the names of only some of those people who have since died, and we know the names of only a tiny fraction of those people who have left the church. (Even when there was a process for recording this, most defectors did not bother to do so, so even in those years a count of registered defections was not an accurate record of total defections.) This means that we can’t list all the current Catholics, but that’s OK because we have no desire to and are not trying to. But the doesn’t mean we can’t estimate how many Catholics there are. We can, and we do. The fact that we can’t name them all doesn’t mean that our estimate is wrong.

It is the epitome of arrogance on behalf of the Catholic Church to assume that everyone who was baptised by their church as infants incapable of consent, are forever Catholics. If you don't want to be a Catholic then you are not a Catholic. You guys who were baptised just need to look at this as another extension of the RCC's complex world of fantasy. Specify in your wills where and how you want to be disposed and make your arrangements, plus the fact they documented in your will, known to all and sundry who may be involved in funeral arrangements. That way any stray 'Popette' who tries to go against your wishes will look like a right pillock in the eyes of the rest of your family/friends.

topcatcbr wrote: »

If you open a bank account you can close it at any time. There will always be a record of you having been a customer. I think it's the same with baptism.

Not the same thing as there will also be a record that the bank account was closed.