Because it does not correspond to their values or because they are disappointed by the choices of the Church, each year, several Catholics ask to be debaptized.
A priest from Haute-Garonne targeted by a canonical investigation for alleged sexual touching. A new pedocrime case within the Church which embarrasses Samuel. This Catholic has decided to protest by sending a letter of renunciation: he wants to be rebaptized.
“When the institution protects this stuff, and time and time again it’s been repeated… you can’t believe it wasn’t known,” he said.
“To believe is to think with your emotions, and there, the emotion that dominates is anger”, he explains at the microphone of BFMTV.
An act that remains marginal
Each year, several Catholics do like him and decide to renounce their religious affiliation, but the phenomenon remains marginal in France. In 2018, Release estimated around 2000 the number of people who have officially asked to be “debaptized.” Far from the more than 4,000 adults who were baptized in 2022, according to RCF.
A site, however, allows believers who want to leave the Church to make an act of apostasy in a few clicks. A letter generator was created in 2012, when the institution’s comments on marriage for all may have shocked some Catholics.
“Every time there is a controversy related to the Church, we have a peak in attendance on the site”, explains to BFMTV Remi Duval, designer of apostasiepourtous.fr
“Something Painful”
“There was the Pope who had declared that he recommended psychiatry for children whose parents would detect homosexual inclinations, (…) there was also a lot of noise at the time of the refusal of the resignation of Cardinal Barbarin by the Pope,” he cites as examples.
But the approach that does not convince all believers. “He who believes in god, he cannot be rebaptized, it is not possible”, affirms one of them, questioned at the end of the mass by BFMTV.
“For us, practicing Catholics, it’s something painful, but hey it refers to everyone’s freedom, and in the church freedom is something that is essential”, explains another.
The conference of bishops of France did not wish to respond to requests from BFMTV. Officially, she does not recognize any religious value in this act of debaptism.
