Yesterday was Debaptism Day in Italy. Here is an interview with an Italian gay couple, both of whom have debaptised themselves. Apparently, the Catholic Church would like to pretend this is an unimportant phenomenon, but it is by now transnational and – apparently – growing due not only to lack of faith but also mounting disgust at the political and ethical (?) positions of the church. Who can blame them?

We decided to de-baptize for our self-respect, our freedom, and above all, our consciences. Today, in our country, the Catholic Church is a violent and arrogant power center, at war with the aspirations to happiness of many men and women, entirely centered on the defense of its own privileges, more interested in imposing its own ideas — on same-sex couples, gender, divorce, abortion, euthanasia, assisted fertilization — than in the actual lives that people live on a daily basis. We absolutely do not want to be complicit with this, not even on a purely formal level.