Catholics cannot use ‘debaptism’ to leave Church, Vatican rules.

The Dicastery for Legislative Texts said baptismal records were ‘the objective record of sacramental actions’ and ‘not a list of members’.

The Vatican ruled that a Catholic cannot be “debaptised”, refuting a small movement of people who want their names removed from parish baptismal records in protest against current Church policies.

In an “explanatory note” issued on 17 April, the Dicastery for Legislative Texts said baptismal records were “the objective record of sacramental actions” and “not a list of members”, so cannot be altered.

This appeared to be a preventative measure since the courts in Belgium, one of the countries with a “debaptism” movement, has asked the European Court of Justice last December to rule on the question.

Small “debaptism” movements have emerged in countries bordering Germany, hoping to find a way to show how many Catholics are leaving the Church and reduce the official number of Catholics worldwide. The Vatican uses baptism figures for its annual census as the world’s largest organised church.

Because the German church tax is run by the state, a non-Church source gives annual figures on how many people have stopped paying it. The numbers of recorded departures from both Catholic and Protestant churches have been worryingly high for years, a very public indicator of advancing secularisation and worshippers’ frustration with clerical abuse scandals and unrealised reforms.

Smaller “debaptism” movements have also been reported in several European and North American countries. In Britain, the National Secular Society has long provided downloadable “debaptism” certificates even though Catholic and Anglican churches do not recognise them.

“The sacraments received and the entries made do not in any way limit the free will of those Christian faithful who, by their own choice, decide to leave the Church,” the dicastery note said.

Proponents of what is called débaptisme in French and ontdoping in Dutch argue that retaining a name in baptismal records goes against laws on privacy and data protection.

In France, the Council of State ruled last year that retaining a name was not contrary to such laws and a supplemental note sufficed. According to La Croix, courts in Ireland and Slovenia have made the same decision.

In Belgium, the state data protection agency ruled in favour of “debaptism” in late 2023, the same year that 14,251 Belgians applied to be removed from baptismal registers. The Belgian Church appealed and the case is now before the European Court of Justice.

Some 98 per cent of these 2023 “debaptism” cases were in Flanders, where the television documentary Godvergeten (“Forgotten by God”)about sex abuse in the Belgian Church drove up the total dramatically.

In the neighbouring Netherlands, “debaptism” is not officially allowed but, in an act like moving to a different city, individuals can deregister from a local parish and never hear from them again.

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Click to view from original source: Vatican News