Flouncing out of your faith

I never thought I’d say it but even in a subject like clerical child abuse there’s laughter to be found.  Thanks to a website called  Countmeout,  Catholics who want to leave their Church because 5% of its priests have been guilty of child abuse can now do so officially…   What’s that – you didn’t think you needed to go to a website,  you could just stop?  Well yes, but that’s so …undramatic.  Sign up at the Countmedownandout site and you’ll get to exit with a flourish.  Don’t worry if you  left the Catholic Church years ago – as far as I can figure, that makes no difference. You just go back and do a retake.  If you don’t, the Catholic Church will go on counting you as a member.   ‘Haven’t seen Mickey  Doherty for, ooh, twenty-three years now but  here,  he’s still one of our congregation, don’t I send him collection envelopes every month?’ Another reason for signing up with the Itsaknockout site is, they say, if you believe in the separation of Church and State in Ireland.  You thought you could believe in the separation of Church and State and still remain a Catholic?  Well silly you.  According to  CountthebeadsImeanclicks , you've been labouring under a serious misapprehension.  But the best bit is that the site lets you formally renounce your Catholic faith and still check in for the key bits!  If you were baptized a Catholic – and you’d have to be if you were going to renounce your faith, wouldn’t you? –  that doesn’t change -  indelible mark on the soul and all that.  Marriage? No problem  either -  renouncers can get married in the Catholic Church as well.  Best of all,  they can  get buried alongside people who, unlike them,  went on being Catholics throughout their dull,  undramatic  and un-site-signing-up lives.  Or even those dreary people who left the Church and didn't announce their actions online.  All gain and no pain, then, eh?  For God's sake, get  thee to an I-am-no-longer-a-Catholic site quickly, before you get knocked down by a lorry or something.