Excommuncation app.

March 13, 2013 By 31 Comments

Want to formally request excommunication from the Catholic Church?  There’s an app for that.

Welcome to the Excommunicate App the formal application people can use to express and request a formal Excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. People for differing reasons may wish to be excommunicated; perhaps simply they don’t wish to be counted as being catholic anymore. This App offers simple and easy options under the churches own Canon Law to help you qualify for excommunication.

If only I’d known.  This would’ve been so much easier than 10+ years of blogging about all the ways the Catholic Church is shitting all over decency.

Filed Under: Godlessness 31 Comments
  • Rhubarb The Bear

    Easier, perhaps, but think of all the fun you would have missed…

  • Art Vandelay

    I wrote a real fun letter to our Bishop explaining to him precisely why he needs to take my name off the master list. Never heard back though.

  • neatospiderplant

    My understanding was that excommunication was basically being on the shit list, but that you are still considered Catholic. Defection is the only way to not be counted as Catholic. Also, apparently, they don’t like letting people defect because defection is permanent and you can’t get into heaven even if you later change your mind or something.

    This reminds me I have to send in my request for defection.

    • neatospiderplant

      By the way, if they won’t let me defect, I plan on getting baptized in as many religions as possible. If I can’t remove my name from the Catholic roster, I’ll add it to all the others.

      • Glodson

        You are going to Hell in multiple religions! Man, so many YHWH’s are tots pissed.

        • neatospiderplant

          Well, if I do it right, there will be more than just YHWHs.

    • invivoMark

      That must be a new policy, implemented when they got desperate to not look like their numbers are rapidly dwindling all the time.

      • neatospiderplant

        I believe it is.

    • Kenneth

      Having sought and obtained a defection in 2009, I can tell you something about how it works (and doesn’t). For a few years, they had a formal spelled out procedure. You wrote a letter to your local diocese, or the one you were baptized in, requested that they record your formal defection, and they wanted it notarized or some proof that you were you. In a couple weeks, they sent a return letter saying that your act of defection was filed with your baptism records. In their eyes, it doesn’t un-baptize or “un-Catholic” you entirely. They say that’s out of their jurisdiction after baptism. They did see it as a formal quitting of the Earthly church. Strangely, they still considered you subject to all Canon Law except the provisions regarding marriage.

      In early 2010, they abolished the procedure. They said it was done to eliminate confusion over marriage validity, but really it was because they were embarassed. Count Me Out, a group in Ireland, and others in Europe, were helping tens of thousands to defect, and it was starting to catch on here (I take some blame for that! :) I’m told requests now are sent back, although supposedly they record your wish to defect. I figured I did my part by being honest about where I stand. If they want to play games on their end, that’s on them, not me. Catholic conservatives are always bitching about how the church is full of Cafeteria Catholics and people who don’t really share the core beliefs. I tell them quit holding people hostage.

      • Loqi

        I tell them quit holding people hostage.

        I tell them to quit having stupid beliefs.

    • ButchKitties

      I actus formalis’d just in time. My defection was confirmed just a month before the Omnium in mentem abolished it.

  • http://busterggi@aol.com Bob Jase

    DON’T DO IT!

    The Vatican sells its lists of new excommunicants to the Mormons so they can baptize those listed after they die.

    • baal

      I was thinking about getting a list of Mormons and getting them excommunicated. This could lead to quite the viscous circle.

  • Todd Armstrong

    A guest on NPR tried to get excommunicated. Went to his priest who told him we don’t do that anymore. He then went to his bishop and archbishop. Both turned him done in spite he committed the most excommunicatable sin. Denying the existence of God.

  • Todd Armstrong

    A guest on NPR tried to get excommunicated. Went to his priest who told him we don’t do that anymore. He then went to his bishop and archbishop. Both turned him down in spite of the fact he had committed the most excommunicatable sin. Denying the existence of God.

    • Kenneth

      The RCC really doesn’t formally excommunicate normal people anymore, because of the effort and because it’s seen as a badge of honor, not a penalty. You pretty much only get the formal procedure if you’re a a priest, bishop or nun who publicly flouts teaching by advocating gay marriage, women priests etc. The only other time you see it is when some Latin American bishop excommunicates doctors and nurses for taking part in some high-profile abortion etc. For everyone else, they say excommunication is something you do to yourself. That way they get to keep their numbers up while sort of implying who the “real Catholics” are in their estimation. Excommunication is not worth seeking anyway since you’re still considered a full Catholic, just one in the penalty box and bound for hell. I would tell people to pursue defection. Even though they won’t properly acknowledge it, you let them know where you stand and move on.

  • Emmet

    Excommunication is meant to lead, in the end, to communion – it’s a measure meant to bring a person back into full communion with the Church. It’s not meant to be final, but to be harsh medicine for the good of the person.
    Formal defection is what you’re talking about.

    Always funny to see a bunch of atheists talking about something they have a vague understanding of, and failing spectacularly to say anything much intelligent.
    “Hey guys! I don’t know squat about this Catholic thing but y’know, let’s have a go – anything goes when it comes to the Catholic Church, eh? Claims require evidence – what?”

    • Kenneth

      To be fair, not a hell of a lot of Catholics get the fine points of excommunication and virtually none, including most priests and canon law experts, really knew the ins and outs of defection.

    • Compuholic

      So far pretty much everything I read was correct. You cannot formally leave the CC. You only can get excommunicated. But of course you were only looking for a reason to give atheists some shit. Here is a great idea: Instead of just claiming superior knowledge why don’t you prove it by sharing your infinite wisdom with the poor uneducated atheist community.

      Excommunication is meant to lead, in the end, to communion – it’s a measure meant to bring a person back into full communion with the Church. It’s not meant to be final, but to be harsh medicine for the good of the person.

      Right, it’s so fucking nice of them.

      • Emmet

        Exactly – “pretty much everything” – so when it comes to having a go at the Catholic Church, evidence for claims isn’t required as long as “pretty much everything” is correct? Right.
        Of course you can formally leave the Church – procedures are different in different dioceses, but they’re there.

        Not hard to find a reason to give atheists shit – blogs like this put reasons out there in spades. If I wasn’t a Catholic I’d be an atheist – no middle ground as far as I can see, Nietzche et al have destroyed that I think. More and more I’m happy with my choiuce to be Catholic – more and more it seems like the truth to me.
        I’ve been reading atheist blogs for a year or two now, and if this is the alternate option to being Catholic, I’m even more convinced I’ve made the right choice. The worldview presented on blogs like this one is so often stunted, unimaginative, bilious, bombastic, pompous and pseuodo-intellectual. Nothing I read about the Catholic Church on these blogs engages with the depth and richness of the faith – it’s all half-understood, poorly-researched and even more poorly-reasoned bitching about things the bloggers know little about.
        (I guess, when you want to get several posts up a day, and sate your readers’ desire for angry, provocative reading material, a “writer” both doesn’t have time and doesn’t have the inclination to actually engage with the issues in any depth. A quick skim over the top will suffice – and who needs the evidence to back it up when your readership has already made the decision to believe that any bad thing about the Church is true?

        • Nate Frein

          What has been falsely stated here, then?

          • Emmet

            That a person can “request excommunication from the Church”.

          • Compuholic

            [...] I’m even more convinced I’ve made the right choice. The worldview presented on blogs like this one is so often stunted, unimaginative, bilious, bombastic, pompous and pseuodo-intellectual.

            Ok I give you one thing: Compared to Catholics we are certainly unimaginative: Sacret water, the whole hierarchy of different types of angles or the magic show where a cracker literally turns into jesus are certainly imaginative. If you like living in a fantasy world the CC is certainly the place for you. For us living on planet earth we usually call these kind of things batshit insane.

            And of course you can request excommunication: Just find something that pisses off the CC (should not be too hard) and presto you get excommunicated. And the app JT mentioned does exactly that: It gives you suggestions on how to piss off the church.

          • Nate Frein

            Exactly how do you stop a person from “requesting excommunication” from the church?

            You can’t. Any person is capable of requesting excommunication. To object to that fact is ridiculous. As people stated here, the church simply does not honor excommunication requests.

            But you cannot stop people from requesting it.

        • Loqi

          A Catholic demands evidence. My day is made.

        • Loqi

          Nothing I read about the Catholic Church on these blogs engages with the depth and richness of the faith

          Hello there, Courtesan’s Reply. How are you this fine day?

  • Sam Grover

    I don’t know much about the procedure because I stopped attending any type of church when I was 12 or 13. I did write an e-mail to my hometown diocese. I told them I was an apostate and asked to be taken off their list. I know I am in infinitesimal statistic, but I don’t want to be counted as a catholic. Now that I’ve read this, I guess I’ve gone about it wrong. So, I need to ask for something other than excommunication? Defection was what I should have asked for? Do I need to send some sort of formal letter? I had only ever known one person that was excommunicated. He was a Father somewhere, he got a nun (or ex-nun, she’d already gotten free) pregnant.

    • Compuholic

      As it was stated before. Once you are in the club they don’t allow you to leave. As for excommunication, probably the easiest way is to deny them their money. That pisses them off very quickly. I’m not sure how the catholic church collects their money in the U.S. so the procedure might be different.

      Since the CC in Germany collects their money via your taxes you simply go to the town hall and let them erase your religious beliefs from the records. Then the taxes are no longer collected, they submit that to the CC and they will excommunicate you. Something similar must exist in the U.S. as well.

      Although this works I’m still not really satisfied because it means they still have you somewhere in their records. It is really outrageous that you cannot demand that they erase your personal information from their system.

  • Pingback: Thanks for the feedback, Emmet.

  • IslandBrewer

    A while back, an ex-catholic friend of mine did some research and found that the surest way to get excommunicated is to declare yourself pope (see the popes in Avignon). So, for several years, he has sent letters to the Vatican declaring himself pope, demanding the false pope (whomever at the time) step down and recognize my friend’s authority. Hasn’t worked so far, but there’s always hope.

  • http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com Alf

    This APP works. The church only needs the parish and the approximate date.