With regards to your letter dated the 4th January and in response to my wish to formally defect from the Catholic Church, I just wish to clarify my reasons for defection.
Firstly, I no longer consider myself part of the Catholic Church and do not believe in God, This post will be deleted if not edited immediately or the Bible. However this in itself is not the reason I am formally defecting. As religion plays no part in my life, letting my membership lapse would have been sufficient.
But I choose to remove my name from the Church's records because I object to the church's stance and ambiguous morality.
I am a gay man, whom the church apparently 'loves' yet hates the fact that that I have been created this way (by your God), and rejects my ability to find love and happiness with another man, of equal standing. I live my life in a loving and caring way, I volunteer with Charities, I help out in environmental and community campaigns. I perform many good deeds in our community. Yet the church will deny me my happiness and companionship.
However, the Church, will cover up and assist in the propagation of lies, hate, pain and torture, through its negligent and law-breaking stance on paedophilia and abuse amongst its own members. The current Cardinal of Ireland has admitted to covering up the abuse by 'Fr' Brendan Smyth in 1975 and allowing him to go on abusing other innocent children. Yet he refuses to stand down. I fully believe that he, and other priests, bishops and cardinals, who were implicitly attached to the cover-up and abuse should be before the courts of this land for child endangerment.
Thus I do not wish to be associated with a tarnished and irrelevant institution, I do not wish my name to be included on your roll-call of members, I do not wish to give the Church more power in the politics of this country by claiming to represent me. Therefore I wish to formally have my name eradicated from your register, so I can have peace in knowing I am not assisting an institution that abused the trust and power it held in this country for centuries.