If you’re complacent, you’re complicit

[Pat Mustard]

A few years back I tried to formally leave the church.  Because I was baptized as a baby, my name was added to their official rolls at a time when I had no say-so in the matter.

In 2011, the RCC made it impossible to formally leave the church.  You can still stop going, and also submit a form that is symbolic, but once once your parents chose to sign you up, the church will not ever officially let you go.

Blame us Irish, the website countmeout.ie garnered 14,000 defections in a few months and, in a panic, the church hierarchy changed the rules to allow people to apostatise.

That's one of the main reasons why, whenever anybody has the gall to try and tell me Ireland is majority catholic, I forcefully correct them. Only for the baptismal requirements in most schools and mammies filling out the census for their children, catholicism would be a minor religious position, de iure.