I person does not leave Catholicism. They are always a Catholic, just an inactive one.
Oops
A person does not leave Catholicism. They are always a Catholic, just an inactive one.
A person does cleave to Christianity. They are always a sinner, just an inactive one.
I must be the exception to the rule. I'm pretty active. I got to get going. I have Berean type Catholics coming for Bible study today. 😂🙀🇵🇭
Hmmmm....the Muslims say the same thing. And they are commanded in the Quran to execute anyone who dares leave. Something they perhaps learned from the Catholics?
One more example of fantasy, holding that something is so because an autocratic church said so. Yet which also is another example of confusion due to the often ambiguous or changeable nature of Cath. teaching.
In Scripture, one who would reject a false gospel for the true one are declared to no longer be what they were before. Instead they were called Christians. (Acts 11:26) Likewise to reject the gospel for another, or impenitently continued in willful sin is to effectively leave the faith. (Heb. 3:12; 10:38,39; Gal.5:1-4) Such could not be called "Christian," because that term denotes a certain class of souls following the risen Lord by faith.
But while makes it easy to become a Catholic, even just by desire, yet at best it requires something akin to a marriage license for her to consider one to no longer be a Catholic, if she allows it at all.
In the past Rome required:
For the abandonment of the Catholic Church to be validly configured as a true actus formalis defectionis ab Ecclesia so that the exceptions foreseen in the previously mentioned canons would apply, it is necessary that there concretely be:
a) the internal decision to leave the Catholic Church;
b) the realization and external manifestation of that decision; and
c) the reception of that decision by the competent ecclesiastical authority...the formal act of defection must have more than a juridical-administrative character (the removal of one’s name from a Church membership registry maintained by the government in order to produce certain civil consequences), but be configured as a true separation from the constitutive elements of the life of the Church: it supposes, therefore, an act of apostasy, heresy or schism.
...schism and apostasy do not in themselves constitute a formal act of defection if they are not externally concretized and manifested to the ecclesiastical authority in the required manner.
It is required, moreover, that the act be manifested by the interested party in written form, before the competent authority of the Catholic Church:
Consequently, only the convergence of the two elements – the theological content of the interior act and its manifestation in the manner defined above – constitutes the actus formalis defectionis ab Ecclesia catholica... the competent ecclesiastical authority mentioned above is to provide that this act be noted in the baptismal registry (cfr. can. 535, § 2) with explicit mention of the occurrence of a “defectio ab Ecclesia catholica actu formali”. - ACTUS FORMALIS DEFECTIONIS AB ECCLESIA CATHOLICA, March 2006; http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/intrptxt/documents/rc_pc_intrptxt_doc_20060313_actus-formalis_en.html
Formal defection was also mentioned in the 1983 Code of Canon Law (canons 1086, § 1, 1117 and 1124), but apparently the term "formal defection" was stricken from those canons in in 2010 per order of Benedict in MOTU PROPRIO (2009)