All Dead Mormons Are Now Gay

Go make some conversions. (Tipped by JMG reader Rick)

FRANCE: Catholic Church Fights Court Battle To Prevent De-Baptisms

A French man is suing the Catholic Church with a demand that his name be stricken from their baptismal records. The church has refused, fearing a national wave of such demands.

LeBouvier grew up in that world and says his mother once hoped he'd become a priest. But his views began to change in the 1970s, when he was introduced to free thinkers. As he didn't believe in God anymore, he thought it would be more honest to leave the church. So he wrote to his diocese and asked to be un-baptized. "They sent me a copy of my records, and in the margins next to my name, they wrote that I had chosen to leave the church," he says. That was in the year 2000. A decade later, LeBouvier wanted to go further. In between were the pedophile scandals and the pope preaching against condoms in AIDS-racked Africa, a position that LeBouvier calls "criminal." Again, he asked the church to strike him from baptismal records. When the priest told him it wasn't possible, he took the church to court. Last October, a judge in Normandy ruled in his favor. The diocese has since appealed, and the case is pending.

Back in 2009 I blogged about a similar battle in Britain, where the Church of England refuses debaptismal requests because "you can't remove something from the record that actually happened." (Tipped by JMG reader Don)

Debaptize Me

Some atheists are trying have their baptism records expunged from official church records. From the UK:

The National Secular Society would like the Church of England to devise a formal procedure for cancelling baptisms, with a change in the baptismal roll as part of it. In the face of resistance from the Church, the society has come up with a document of its own. The "Certificate of Debaptism" has a deliberately home-made look, with its mock-official decoration and quasi-official language. Sitting on a bench in the grounds of St Jude's Church, John Hunt intoned the opening lines. "I, John Jeffrey Hunt, having been subjected to the rite of Christian baptism in infancy... hereby publicly revoke any implications of that rite. I reject all its creeds and other such superstitions in particular the perfidious belief that any baby needs to be cleansed of original sin." The society's president, Terry Sanderson, says the certificate is not designed to be taken too seriously, and he suggests displaying it in the loo. However, he says, it has now been downloaded more that 60,000 times, and has taken on a life of its own. "The debaptism certificate started out as a kind of satirical comment on the idea that you could be enrolled in a church before you could talk, but it seems to have taken off from there. People are beginning to take it seriously."

According to the story, British churches will not remove your name from the rolls of the baptized, because "you can't remove something from the record that actually happened." Therefore, the names of those who wish to renounce their baptisms will forever bloat the official count of church members. Hmm, I once registered as an Independent. That actually happened and I undid it without a problem.