Every Catholic in our clan is currently training to deny non-catholic tenets under duress and even torture. They’re not going to change us from unleavened to leavened bread. No sir.
Schismatic sects–think Mel Gibson here–are another possibility. A fair number of Catholics believe the papacy has been vacant since the death of Pius XII in 1958, and that John XXIII and all his successors embraced the Heresy of Modernism by adopting Vatican II. The private underground Latin Mass scene is, if not huge, quite fervent. But for most of us, just dropping out or going to our Protestant spouses’ church instead is a more attractive choice.
If you wanna call “a group about the size of one of those American microchurches” “a fair number”, I guess.
The reason for that is that the Catholic Church still considers them Catholic. If Lutherans or Methodists stop going to church, those churches will just consider them not Lutheran or not Methodist (though both still agree of the eternal seal of baptism, they don’t consider them as part of those individual denominations - this is also related to differing Protestant v. Catholic viewpoints on these things).
It’s more that being a Methodist is kind of self-defined. We have membership roles, but they don’t really mean much. If you stopped coming to church, eventually they’d probably get around to taking your name off the roles, but it wouldn’t be some sort of big thing, just “Bob hasn’t been here in 20 years, might be time to take his name off the register.” You can always request your membership be rescinded, though I’m not sure why you would unless you just like making dramatic statements. It’s not like a request to remove your name results in the pastor saying, “Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God! Thou shalt enjoy the eternal flames of a Devil’s Hell for this betrayal!” She’ll probably just say, “Sure, you won’t be able to vote in next year’s election though. Is that OK?”
There’s also a reality that people rarely leave United Methodism out of anger or betrayal. Generally, we lose people in two ways. They just kind of drift away and become secular or atheist or they think that we’re too milquetoast and become Evangelicals. Sometimes the Evangelical leavers get mad I guess, but they probably didn’t belong in the UMC in the first place and they’re generally mad that we don’t dislike gay people or preach about hellfire for sinners and that the whole church is going to hell or something like that. I think that atheists that leave are usually just kind of disappointed that they don’t have good stories about being oppressed and sometimes get uncomfortable when we ask them to come back and speak about their experiences so we can better understand their belief systems. Usually their ‘Jesus Camp’ stories are “We went rock-climbing and whitewater rafting and then for 15 minutes every evening, they asked us to think about how Jesus wants us to help other people.” It just doesn’t hold up to ex-Pentecostal stories.
The most Jesus-y thing I remember encountering in Methodist Youth Fellowship was a program to encourage us to substitute Christian music for secular rock. I remember the youth leaders handing out a worksheet for comparable Christian music: “If you like Boz Scaggs*, you might like [some bland-ass Christian singer whose name I can’t recall]. If you like AC/DC, you might like Petra.” I look back now in awe at the courage of the one punk-ish girl who was gutsy enough to tell the youth leaders she preferred “Highway To Hell” to whatever ersatz metal they played as an acceptable substitute.
The whole thing was cheesy as hell, but it’s pretty Velveeta, compared to the bullshit the Baptists spoon-feed into their kids.
*Because red-blooded teenagers in the early 80s were all agog for soft rock and blue-eyed soul
My sister is one of the Catholicist people I know, and in light of the most recent Catholic Rape Bullshit she’s been checking out Protestant services. This would blow the minds of my grandparents, as my Grandfather had to convert from Protestant to Catholic before my Grandmother would marry him. No thought whatsoever was put by my sister into checking out an Orthodox service.
I had this brainstorm recently, where it occurred to me that the current crisis in the RCC is an opportunity for the creation of RCC 2.0. One could pronounce that they were forming a new Catholic Church, with the exact same dogma, theology, forms and rituals, but with (a) more liberalized views on social issues like birth control and divorce; and (b) an all new clergy, open to women and married, thoroughly vetted (transferring Catholic priests would be welcome).
And then I realized that I’d just invented Episcopalianism.
Or the opposite, saying you’re still whatever even if you don’t go to church. There’s no requirement that you must go and take communion X number of times per year or anything.
I know quite a few people who call themselves Baptists but never go to church. The idea of being a Lapsed Baptist makes no sense to them.
We’ve got one such Greek Orthodox church in Melbourne. They explicitly believe that they have something to offer to non-Christians. They are “Evangelical”: they believe that part of their role is communicating the “good news”.
Most of the Greek Orthodox church is Melbourne is/was Greek first. The natural method of joining would be to become Greek. Perhaps by marriage. “Greek” orthodox from Egypt was more open, perhaps because they aren’t part of the “Greek” community. The Russian Orthodox church near us was even more private. Outsiders were viewed with frank suspicion.
If I were a disillusioned but still basically believing Catholic looking for an alternative & didn’t have a nearby Orthodox Church, I’d look for one of the conservative Anglican (non-Episcopalian) congregations.
Every church, as every institution religious & secular that works with a dependent population, has a pedophile problem. Generally about 4%. What makes the RCC one so egregious is the hierarchical silence as (often with good but misguided & naive intentions) they got offenders into therapy & shuffled them around parishes quietly until it just exploded. De-centralized Evangelical churches, often critical of the Catholic problem, found that their lack of central authorities & no tracking mechanisms led to traveling pedos being able to move around congregations with little problem.
Ironically, I find this on the day that I, as a baby-baptized Catholic who had a college flirtation with returning due to my fascination with Fatima, but otherwise I’ve been in the Assembly of God for over 30 years, am now considering a return to the RCC.