Simply Leave and Stop Contributing

Sounds like a shrewd decision,problem is though most havnt this luxury of choice as family pressures/good old catholic guilt etc all have strangleholds on people,to simply leave and stop contributing for most is just unthinkable,sad really but fact.

It's important to formally break with the church too, on record...so you are not counted as a follower when they give statistics.

There's formal ways to do this...it has to do with letters to where you were baptized, and also somewhere higher up.

I'll look for the U.K. site that discusses it....though the process might be different here in America.

It's not as simple as all that. Some people don't have the choice to do that. Or will be disowned by their family if they do it. And how is a sexually abused pre-teen, who is afraid or ashamed to tell his/her parents about what's going on going to be able to choose to not attend church?
And some may still be very religious and WANT to go to church, because they fear for their "immortal soul".

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I did the same thing when I was 5. The pastor was preaching about how if we don't believe in god we'll go to hell...blah blah blah. According to my mom, I stood up and I proclaimed, "That's not fair!!!!" and I ran out.

I was such a charming child.

-- I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been

I was thrown out of (baptist) Sunday school at the age of 6 for asking where Cain and Abel got their wives. I went to adult church for two weeks, and decided I didn't believe. My family was very supportive. When I asked if I could stop going to church, we all stopped going. I am very lucky to have been raised by parents who weren't fanatical. I'm still the only atheist in the family. I think every Catholic should stop contributing to the church. Simply leave a note in the collection plate demanding the church stop playing shell games with pedophiles.