Pope Benedict XVI made an unusual change to the dividing-line between Catholics and ex-Catholics in 2006.
Many neo-con non-trad Catholics will frequently hear a family member or co-worker say something like, “I’m an ex-Catholic.” Then, the lukewarm Catholic smiles back and says, “Once Catholic, always Catholic.” What they actually mean is: “You really have not left the Catholic Church, even if you think you have.”
To be sure, it’s a nice idea to say “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” but it’s false according to classic Catholic dogma. The fact is that the Catholic Church has always taught that an ex-Catholic maintains the character of baptism, but not the grace of baptism. Mortal sin extinguishes the grace of baptism.
And if that mortal sin be heresy, schism or apostasy, then the ex-Catholic is truly that: An ex-Catholic. (Keep in mind that publicly joining a Protestant sect is technically defined as heresy, meaning all the ex-Catholics in Protestant communities no longer remain under the appellation of “Catholic” despite their original baptisms.)
People prefer to be believed—not patronized—when they discuss something as intimate as their faith. So, I will listen to them, take them at their word that they departed from the Catholic Church. Then, I will propose how they can come back to the sacraments in a charitable manner.
Most importantly, we must admit this: Countless Popes, Church Fathers and Saints all teach that heretics and apostates are not part of the Catholic Church.
Yet modernists (even conservative ones) apparently ignore this out of either 1) a blind desire to be welcoming to ex-Catholics and/or 2) an approach to the waters of baptism seeing all sacraments as magic tricks instead of the power of God attached to the Apostolic Faith. Probably both.
On the other hand, St. Thomas Aquinas asserts that all heretics are also schismatics, so you can’t be a schismatic for refraining from being in union with a heretic. (Read that last sentence a few times again as you ponder the Church crisis since 2013.)
But back to the topic at-hand: Traditionally, the Catholic Church has always let someone leave the Catholic Church. Why? Because we believe in free-will. The fact is that anyone who has left the Catholic Church is an ex-Catholic (just as they claim to be!) On the other hand, a bad Catholic need only make a good confession to return to the Church if he has not committed any public acts of heresy, schism or apostasy.
In 2006, Julián Cardinal Herranz, the President of the Pontifical Council wrote a statement on this topic on the Vatican website here with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI wrote this about all the people trying to leave the Catholic Church:
The formal act of defection must have more than a juridical-administrative character (the removal of one’s name from a Church membership registry maintained by the government in order to produce certain civil consequences), but be configured as a true separation from the constitutive elements of the life of the Church: it supposes, therefore, an act of apostasy, heresy or schism.
But that only counts, they claim, if the ex-Catholic has “1) the internal decision to leave the Catholic Church and b) the realization and external manifestation of that decision and c) the reception of that decision by the competent ecclesiastical authority.”
That third one is fascinating. That means that according to Pope Benedict XVI, the millions of ex-Catholics in Europe and North America and South America are technically no longer part of that enormous group of “ex-Catholic” unless they write a letter of defection to their bishop or pastor.
Clearly, this never happens in real life. This means the Vatican massaged the traditional teaching on defection from the faith to become so subjective that no ex-Catholic can ever really become a Protestant.
The Vatican website continues:
The defection must be a valid juridical act, placed by a person who is canonically capable and in conformity with the canonical norms that regulate such matters. Such an act must be taken personally, consciously and freely. It is required, moreover, that the act be manifested by the interested party in written form, before the competent authority of the Catholic Church: the Ordinary [bishop] or proper pastor, who is uniquely qualified to make the judgment concerning the existence or non-existence of the act of the will as described above.
That’s amazing, because it means the bishop himself can decide if the ex-Catholic really meant it or not. But it’s even more amazing because it means the Catholic Church can continue to count on the books all ex-Catholics unless they put it in writing to their bishop! Of course, less than 0.001% of everyone who has left the Catholic Church since 2006 has written a letter to the local bishop seeking his acknowledgment, much less his permission.
In fact, if you can find me just one bishop in the world who has received a snail-mail letter of defection from the Catholic Church and then accepted the defection (as the above Vatican website requires) I will publish it here on my website and eat my words. But I guarantee you won’t find it. Until then, I have to come to the obvious conclusion that all defectors from the Catholic Church since 2006 can still be listed on the books as “Catholic” due to a dishonest loophole.
This might explain why Anthony Stine keeps saying on his podcast Return to Tradition why nearly every diocese of the West is using highly conflated numbers in counting the number of Catholics. And I agree with him: Chanceries are still counting millions of ex-Catholics as valid but missing Catholics. Between 50 and 100 million Catholics in the Western Hemisphere have left the Catholic Church since Vatican II, and yet we are told by the Vatican in 2026 that the numbers are still growing. Now we have the theology behind such massaged statistics.
How convenient for the Archdiocese of Munich to claim millions of atheists who were once-baptized Catholics are still part of the German Catholic Church these days. How convenient for the Archdiocese of Rio De Janeiro to claim millions of Pentecostals as still part of the Catholic Church in Brazil these days. But hey, “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” even if you haven’t received Holy Communion in forty years.
Here in the United States we have 1 convert to the Catholic Church for every 8.5 who leave her. But back in 2006, the Vatican twisted an objective departure from the sacraments into a highly subjective evaluation of conscience and feelings where no one can practically become “an ex-Catholic.” Indeed, nearly everything coming out of Rome since the 1960s favors subjective relativism over objective dogma in matters of Our Faith.
So, I’m going to take new Protestants at their word that they’re no longer Catholic and try to bring them back to the true faith. I keep finding that the heresy of Protestantism is at least more honest than the heresy of modernism.
At the beginning of 2025, I wrote a similar article here and I encourage you to read it. It did not include the above evaluation of the lines from Benedict XVI, but it is much longer than this one on the issue of the Church crisis.