If you’re complacent, you’re complicit

[Rev. Rye]

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.

Well, until recently it was majority Catholic (to the extent that the Magdalene Laundries remained in Ireland until 1996, and significant speculation that this only happened because most Irish had finally bought enough washing machines to make the slave labour inherent in such an enterprise financially unsound), but with this speech (given by Taoiseach Enda Kenny of Fine Gael, historically the most traditionalist and pro-conservative of Ireland's major parties):





and Ireland cutting diplomatic ties with the Vatican, and the recent referendum on abortion, it's safe to assume the days of Catholic dominance in Ireland are done. It's only a matter of time before they're not even bothering with those lip service identifications.