How stupid. One only has to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church to know that leaving the church is as easy as just is as easy as just publically renouncing it. Just say out loud, in public, that you no longer believe or are Catholic. He just wants attention.
The difference in how the Catholic Church counts membership and how LDS counts membership? LDS by baptisms, the Catholics by who is registered in a parish (considered active). So if you don't want to be counted, don't register in a parish.
Actually, the Catholics claim a billion members, but only have active membership in the tens of millions. Their docrine may say one thing, but their practices are another. That is a common thread among all religions.
I've never heard any religious group lying about its numbers except for some small Christian cults like the LDS and JWs. Buddhists? Hindus? Please. You know perfectly well that not all religions are doing this, so why would you even make such a claim?
I would like to be de-baptized from the Catholic Church, because I was a baby when it happened and therefore had no say in the matter.
I actually e-mailed a website a few months ago, where Catholic Priests answer your questions. The "Father" who wrote to me told me that if I'd been baptized, then I was Catholic.
He totally ignored the fact that I'd said I was practically an atheist.
He did say that I was Catholic unless I denied the teachings of the Church.
I guess I just wanted to be able to put it in writing that I am not a Catholic, because I guess without being able to put it in writing, they just see my name on their records and count me in, and that bugs me.
I never was a Catholic. They baptized me, but then never took me to church.
My brother and I are technically Catholic, as we were baptized as babies, but never actually raised in the church. In fact, the only times we really went to church was for weddings, baptisms, and funerals.
The Catholic church does not keep a centralized database intended to track every single member of the church. There is nothing to have your name removed from.
The closest thing is a register of members of a particular parish, but leaving a parish and dropping off that register has nothing to do with whether you are or are not a Catholic.
People coming from the LDS church tend to view baptism differently from mainstream Christians. LDS baptism is more of an administrative ritual, conferring membership in the organization. Christian baptism is not about membership in a worldly organization so much as membership in the "Body of Christ" (the church as a spiritual entity). An LDS baptism is easily cancelled because it is about the technicality of membership. A Catholic baptism cannot be "undone" because it is believed to have permanent spiritual effects on the soul. You can renounce your baptism if you like, but there is no point in notifying the church because they're not keeping your name in a database to begin with. The guy on the other end of the phone is going to be like, "Huh. So what exactly do you want?" Demanding name removal is completely meaningless.
Also, when the Catholic church refers to the number of Catholics in the world, it is giving an estimate. There is no way to count the members and no attempt is made to count every single member. The church leadership know that people are constantly being born and dying, converting and walking away, drifting in and out of parishes, etc.
Another difference between LDS and Catholic baptism is that Catholic baptism can be performed only once.
LDS baptism -- being more about your status as a member of the organization -- can be repeated as many times as you apostasize and come back. It's like joining any other organization, dropping out, deciding to come back later, etc. LDS baptism is like sending in a subscription form or membership application. The focus is much more on the temporal meaning of the ritual.
An ex-Catholic apostate is still considered a member of the Body of Christ, but not in "full communion" with the church. If that person wants to return to full communion with the church, the only thing he needs to do is go to confession. Apostasy does not cancel the permanent spiritual effects of baptism, so re-baptism is unnecessary. There's nothing you can do about theologians believing that once baptized, you are still a member of the Body of Christ. It's just a belief with no (as previously stated) centralized database to identify you individually as a member of the church.
Those who leave mormonism sometimes assume that all religions are alike. They're not. Neither to many other religions use religious terms in the peculiar ways mormonism does.