From Pink News: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/12/28/thousands-of-dutch-catholics-look-to-leave-the-church-after-popes-anti-gay-comments/
by Joseph Patrick McCormick
28 December 2012
According to the founder of a Dutch website which aims to offer information to those looking to leave the Catholic church, thousands of Catholics have been researching how to do so.
Tom Roes, who operates a website containing the documents required for members of the Catholic church to “deregister” themselves, said the number of visitors to the site went from around 10 a day to over 10,000, reported the Irish Times.
“Of course it’s not possible to be ‘de-baptised’ because a baptism is an event, but this way people can unsubscribe or deregister themselves as Catholics,” Mr Roes said.
He went on to say that he had no way of knowing how many people actually went on to leave the church after visiting his site, ontdopen.nl.
Out of the population of the Netherlands, around 28% is Catholic, while roughly 44% is not religious. Reports suggest that 18% of the population is Protestant.
In his ‘World Day of Peace’ remarks last week, the Pope said: “There is also a need to acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union.
“Such attempts actually harm and help to destabilise marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society”, the Pope told worshipers.
Continue reading at: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/12/28/thousands-of-dutch-catholics-look-to-leave-the-church-after-popes-anti-gay-comments/
