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List of former Catholics

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Former Catholics or ex-Catholics are people who used to be Catholic for some time, but no longer identify as such. This includes both individuals who were at least nominally raised in the Roman Catholic faith, and individuals who converted to it in later life, both of whom later rejected and left it, or converted to other faiths (including the related non-Roman Catholic faiths). This page lists well-known individuals in history who are former Catholics.

One 2008 Pew Research Center study estimates that 10.1% of people in the United States describe themselves as former Catholics in some sense. In total the study reports that 44% of Americans profess a different religious affiliation than the one they were raised in. A majority joined another Christian denomination while a substantial minority are counted as currently unaffiliated.[1] A significant number of former Catholics join mainline Protestant denominations with a similar worship pattern, such as Lutheranism or Anglicanism, while others have become Evangelical Christians.[2][3][4]

Note: The list includes those who leave the Catholic Church including any Eastern Catholic Church which is in communion with it. People such as Eddie Doherty, who were allowed to transfer from the Latin Catholic Church to an Eastern Catholic church, or vice versa are not considered as "former Roman Catholics", while Eastern Catholics who convert to a non-Catholic church or another religion are considered as such, even though Eastern Catholics do not typically refer to themselves as "Roman".

Individuals who converted to other Christian denominations

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Eastern Orthodoxy

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Tom Hanks.

Protestantism

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Lutheranism

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Anglicanism

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Henry VIII who made himself Supreme Head of the Church of England

Reformed

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John Calvin, Protestant Reformer.

Pentecostalism

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Seventh-day Adventism

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Marianne Thieme.

Other Protestant

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Old Catholic and Independent Catholic churches

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Christian Science

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Mormonism

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Ultra Violet.

Individuals who converted to other religions

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God-Believers

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The 'God-believers' (Gottgläubig) movement was an unofficial and unorganised religion in Nazi Germany. Most of the top Nazi leaders had already disaffiliated before the Nazi seizure of power, but even some of the lower ranking Nazi bureaucrats and representatives began disaffilating from the Catholic and Lutheran Churches over the course of the 1930s as a direct result the gradual worsening of relations with the churches, whom they accused of meddling in Germany's political affairs. These people stressed they still believed in a creative power who guided the German nation and rejected atheism. However, the movement disappeared shortly after World War II, and was last referenced in Allied occupation documents in 1946.

Adolf Hitler and several other key Nazis had abandoned the Catholic Church in their late-teens and early twenties.

Other former Catholics

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Magdi Allam, left Islam for Catholicism, then left Catholicism.
  • Anne Rice, American writer, converted from Roman Catholicism and made this official through several messages on her website on 29 July 2010. She no longer wished to be referred to as a 'Christian', though retained her belief in Christ, disagreeing with various positions of the Roman Catholic Church.
  • Magdi Allam, Egyptian–Italian journalist who publicly converted from Sunni Islam to Catholicism in 2008, baptised by Pope Benedict XVI himself. He left the Catholic Church dissatisfied after the election of Pope Francis in 2013, primarily because he thought the Church failed to take a tough stance against Islam; he remained a Christian, however.[21]

Buddhism

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Islam

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Diana Haddad

Judaism

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Campbell Brown

Kabbalah

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Raëlism

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Scientology

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Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes in May 2009

Debatable

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This section lists some who, while adopting ideas that some others would consider incompatible with the Catholic faith, may have defected from the Church neither by a formal act nor even informally by an act of heresy, schism or apostasy. Mere attendance at services of another religion or adoption of certain meditation techniques need not signify abandonment of one's own religion. According to a 2009 survey of the Pew Research Center Forum on Religion and Public Life, one in five American Catholics report that they at times attend places of worship other than the local Catholic parish (which does not have to mean non-Catholic places). The same survey noted that some Catholics incorporate "yoga as a spiritual practice", emphasize psychics, and draw on and involve themselves in other religious movements.[59]

Atheism, agnosticism, or non-religious

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Alex Agnew
Marie Curie, double Nobel Prize winner
François Hollande
Dara Ó Briain
Julia Sweeney

This section contains people who rejected Catholicism in favor of a non-religious philosophy, including atheism, agnosticism and secular humanism.[60]

See also

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Footnotes

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