“Here’s some good news you may have missed: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1453642″ - Whiskeyjack (4/2/2009 9:40:21 AM )

Thanks, Whiskeyjack!

I hope everyone enjoys that story as much as I did:

—– Apostasy Move Stirs Emotions In Quebec (Graeme Hamilton/National Post; April 1)

MONTREAL: Like most Quebecers of her generation, Sylvie Drouin was born into a Catholic family but stopped practising her religion years ago. “I was neither for nor against the Catholic Church,” said the interior designer, now in her 50s.

That was until a few weeks ago, when she and her husband were driving to the ski hills and heard a report on the Pope’s comments discouraging condom use in Africa.

“It was the final straw,” Ms. Drouin said, and in a letter to Le Devoir yesterday, she and her husband joined 24 others in seeking to be declared apostate by the Church. They are part of a nascent movement among Quebec Catholics to formally break off from the province’s dominant religion.

The letter’s signatories were mostly from Montreal, but Church officials are reporting a similar push in the Quebec City region. The diocese there reported 50 requests for apostasy — the renunciation of one’s faith — in the past month; usually it receives about 20 such requests in an entire year.

Two issues appear to have spurred the reaction.

The first was the excommunication last month of the family of a nine-year-old Brazilian girl who had an abortion after being raped by her stepfather. A high-ranking Vatican official initially supported the excommunications — which also covered the doctors who performed the abortion, but not the stepfather. The Vatican’s top bioethics official later criticized the excommunications.

["Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said the excommunication not only of the medical team but also of the girl's mother had been a mistake" is how The Times put it in a story it posted on March 16. But his comments came only after Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re - whom the BBC calls "a senior Vatican cleric" in a March 7 story - defended all the excommunications. Apparently "absolute morality" depends upon which Catholic cleric one consults.]

The second spur was Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Africa last month, when he said abstinence was the answer to the AIDS epidemic ravaging the continent. Condoms, he said, “can even increase the problem,” adding that traditional Catholic teachings were “the only failsafe way” to prevent the disease’s spread.

“These types of dogmatic attitudes anger and disgust us, and we no longer wish to have anything to do with positions that reflect a tendency toward fundamentalism and contempt for human rights,” the signatories of the letter to Le Devoir wrote.

The actions in Quebec follow recent campaigns in Argentina and Spain to encourage Roman Catholics to renounce their faith. In Argentina, the “Not in My Name” Internet campaign attracted 700 signatories when it was launched in early March. Organizers there said they hoped to reduce the Church’s political clout by reducing its membership.

Michel Foti, Ms. Drouin’s husband, said he hopes his small group’s action will catch on among other Quebecers. But he acknowledged that a number of people contacted to sign the letter refused even though they are not practising Catholics.

Ms. Drouin said it is time for Quebecers to question their almost automatic identification as Catholics. “Religion in Quebec is cultural. We are Catholic by culture,” she said. “The Catholic religion has led our society. We don’t question it. It’s like having white skin.”

Bill Steinburg, spokesman for the Catholic archdiocese of Toronto, said officials there have seen no noticeable increase in the number of calls inquiring about apostasy. Records of official requests are maintained at individual parishes in Ontario, he said.

The Catholic archdiocese of Montreal does not disclose the number of apostasy requests it receives but Lucie Martineau, a spokeswoman, confirmed that there has been an increase in line with what was seen in Quebec City. She called the requests “disappointing” but noted that about 150 adults are to be baptized at a service in Montreal on April 11. “There are people who leave, but there are people who enter as well,” she said.

Douglas Farrow, associate professor of Christian thought at McGill University, said one can become apostate simply by denying Catholic faith and morals, he said. A formal request for ex-communication is not necessary.

“Frankly this strikes me as very gimmicky,” he said. “Most people don’t bother (writing a letter). They just go away.”

[And the Catholic Church often continues to count them as members long after they've gone away.]

He also questioned whether any movement of the type could have an impact on the Vatican.

“Popes don’t resign like CEOs because their customers or creditors are unhappy with them. They’re not there to make people happy,” he said.

[How many dictators and mob leaders could be defended using these very same terms?]

Ms. Drouin, however, said she no longer wishes to be counted as a Roman Catholic.

“We are not trying to turn the planet upside down, just to say loud and clear what we think,” she said. “(The Church) does not respond to our aspirations at all, and what’s more it is embarrassing. Currently we are ashamed to be part of that.”

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Comments?

Are YOU an ex-Catholic?

Did you do anything special to sever your ties to the Catholic Church?

Are you tempted to do so now?

Share with us so that we may all be wiser in the end. :-)