Diarmuid Martin has urged lapsed Catholics to have the maturity to leave the Catholic Church. One has to wonder how he expects them to do this considering it is the church who prevents formal abdication in the first place. On one hand I admire his openness and his willing to no longer have cultural Catholics make up the bulk of membership. On the other hand I really think he needs to have a word with the Pope about the relatively recent rejigging of Canon law that prevents people from leaving. Or did Diarmuid Martin not get that memo from his holiness. To me what Archbishop Martin says is eminently reasonable, and can only be a positive for secularists. In fact it is what non-believers and secularists have been wanting for ages, a bit of reality among both believers and lapsed. Let those who are really catholic be catholic, and those who don't really believe be honest about this.
Though I don't think he realises that absolute collapse the church would suffer if all the part-time, uncommitted, wishy washy, only-go-at-Christmas catholics left. They will be left with a bunch of old people and a hard core of fundamentalists, who were much more absolutist than even the clergy.
But back to my main bugbear - he needs to have a word about the Pope about this, or is it a mere ecumenical matter.
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