AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Thousands of Dutch Catholics are researching how they can leave the church in protest at its opposition to gay marriage, according to the creator of a website aimed at helping them find the information.
Tom Roes, whose website allows people to download the documents needed to leave the church, said traffic on ontdopen.nl - "de-baptise.nl" - had soared from about 10 visits a day to more than 10,000 after Pope Benedict's latest denunciation of gay marriage this month.
"Of course it's not possible to be 'de-baptized' because a baptism is an event, but this way people can unsubscribe or de-register themselves as Catholics," Roes told Reuters.
He said he did not know how many visitors to the site actually go ahead and leave the church.
About 28 percent of the population in the Netherlands is Catholic and 18 percent is Protestant, while a much larger proportion - roughly 44 percent - is not religious, according to official statistics.
The country is famous for its liberal attitudes, for example to drugs and prostitution, and in April 2001 it was the first in the world to legalize same-sex marriages.
In a Christmas address to Vatican officials, the pope signaled the he was ready to forge alliances with other religions against gay marriage, saying the family was threatened "to its foundations" by attempts to change its "true structure".
Roes, a television director, said he left the church and set up his website partly because he was angry about the way the church downplayed or covered-up sexual abuse in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools and seminaries.
A report by an independent commission published a year ago said there had been tens of thousands of victims of child sexual abuse in the Netherlands since 1945 and criticized the church's culture of silence.
(Reporting by Sara Webb; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Blog List
-
Kaley Cuoco Shows Off Fit Physique In Skin-Revealing Yoga Outfit - By Suzy Byrne Kaley Cuoco leaving yoga class in L.A. on Monday. (X17online.com)Kaley Cuoco gave new meaning to hot yoga on Monday when she emerged from cla...11 years ago
Pageviews
Popular Posts
-
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The FBI is still searching for one of two convicted bank robbers who escaped last week from a high-rise jail in downtown...
-
Rufus, a Sussex spaniel, at Westminster (Holly Bailey/Yahoo News) One in a series on show dogs and their owners. NEW YORK Mary Jo Marsh reme...
-
1. Caulk Talk Westlake Ace Hardware gives a few basic steps, including caulking windows before the ...
-
NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) The grief will not end. Yet the healing must begin. So as the shock of Newtown's horrific school shooting starts to ...
-
(Reuters) - Apple Inc shares fell 3.9 percent on Friday after the iPhone 5 debuted in China to a cool reception and two analysts cut shipmen...
-
Connecticut residents shared on Friday their reaction to the mass shooting in Newtown. Here's a sampling of their thoughts. Today, New...
-
1. Streamzoo Streamzoo lets you follow users (@) or subjects (#) and incorporates a badge and reward system to enco...
-
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Twenty years after Quentin Tarantino unveiled his first film "Reservoir Dogs," the director has turned his...
-
When the evening news anchor said "Big Brother is watching," little Jake thought that meant something totally different. [More fro...
-
BEIJING (Reuters) - China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media sai...