Lapsed Catholic

A lapsed Catholic is a baptized Catholic who is non-practicing. Such a person may still identify as a Catholic and remains a Catholic according to canon law.

Quotes

• He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
  • Kingsley Amis, One Fat Englishman (1963), p. 72

• I wouldn't be a very spiritual man, right? I don't believe in God, right? Still Catholic. Because there's nothing you can do when you're Catholic. Once you've started Catholic, frankly, there's no real way to stop being Catholic. Even not believing in God isn't regarded as sufficient reason to get out of the Catholic church. You'd think it'd be fairly fundamental to the whole thing, but no. Catholicism: the stickiest, most adhesive religion in the world.
  • Dara Ó Briain, "Live at the Apollo" (6 July 2005)

• I've usually found every Catholic family has one lapsed member, and it's often the nicest.
  • Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Lapsed Catholic on Wikipedia