After the first edition of David Yallop’s book, ‘In God’s Name’ was published, in 1984, steps were taken to ensure the Vatican divested itself of assets in a company called Istituto Farmacologico Sereno, whose best selling product was a female contraceptive pill, Luteolas.

The Church in Rome had remained silent for years about investments it held in a company which made the very product it insisted Catholics, even in a loving marriage, were committing a sin of selfish hedonism for using, as decreed in Humanae Vitae, an Encyclical letter of the supreme pontiff Paul VI.

Until Yallop shone a light on this blatant hypocrisy the Church would have happily carried on privately making money from something they publicly declared sinful. That it took an investigative journalist, charged by a secret Vatican insider to discover the truth about who murdered Pope John Paul I, to unearth this fact, makes it all the more amazing that the murdered man himself had been elected to become Pope, by his popularity among the African bishops, who understood that Albino Luciani had a rather more progressive attitude on matters of contraception than did his predecessor and, as it turns out, each of his two successors.

Catholics haven’t had the Pope they want or deserve for decades. If the current pontiff doesn’t retract his illogical pronouncements on HIV / Aids, as has been requested of him by every major world health organisation and scientific advisory, including the Lancet, since he announced ahead of his visit to Africa that condoms exacerbate the spread of HIV / Aids, the wilful ignorance of the real world among the controlling elite in the Vatican looks set to continue for many generations to come.

How many people must die because celibate old men, who control the world’s oldest tax exempt private intelligence agency, refuse to face up to reality?

If you were baptised Catholic but no longer wish to be associated with this ignorant and shrivelling credo, you can apply to have a formal act of defection entered into the public record as a protest. Our voices will be heard if we come together with determination.

Contact the diocese into which you were baptised, or where the records of your baptism, first communion, first confession and confirmation are kept, and explain to the bishop why you no longer consider yourself Catholic. I have made public my letter to the bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, which you are free to use as a template for one of your own.

Here in the UK, so far at least, it appears to be a fairly straight forward request—but in other parts of the world, where the Vatican still exerts some degree of political control, this might not be so easy. I would be delighted to hear about your personal experiences of entering into this process from around the world.

Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_formalis_defectionis_ab_Ecclesia_catholica

https://howgoodisthat.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/a-formal-act-of-defection/

https://howgoodisthat.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/a-formal-act-of-defection-part-2/

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/general-discussion/111976-formal-act-defection.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5011270/Atheist-nurse-tries-to-get-himself-de-baptised-from-Church-of-England.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/5018013/Vatican-insiders-declare-the-Pope-a-disaster.html#

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7967173.stm