By Tim Redmond

All over the country the Catholic Church is under fire for its reluctance to defrock priests with records of child molestation. But here in San Francisco, Marco Vargas has a different – and remarkable – tale: he wants to be kicked out of the church, and Archbishop William J. Levada won't do it.

Vargas, 29, an openly gay man who describes himself as a secular humanist, was born in San Francisco and baptized in the Catholic faith. He participated in the church for many years, even after he came out.

In the late 1990s, however, Vargas began to see the deep contradictions between the things he believed and the tenets of the church. "Little by little, I felt a growing anger," he told the Bay Guardian. "The church is against abortion, against contraception. They've spent $175 million on a cathedral in Los Angeles – how many children could that have fed?"

So Vargas began exploring humanist groups on the Web, and he discovered a Swedish site that offered an unholy political analysis.

"The church gets its political clout from the number of its members," Vargas explained. "My name and my membership was being used to promote this agenda. I realized that stopping going to church just isn't enough. It's very important to me as a gay man not to be counted as a member of an organization that is actively pursuing my oppression."

So Vargas wrote to Levada June 26, 2002, asking politely for excommunication – that is, for the chief local officer of the church, the pope's representative here in town, to formally declare that Vargas is no longer a member of the Catholic faith.

"As a principled and rational person," his letter states, "it pains me that someone, somewhere might be counting me as an adherent of an irrational superstition which has done, and is doing, irreparable harm to humanity and with which I profoundly disagree."

The letter had at least some impact: the pastor of the church at which Vargas was baptized, Father Oscar A. Mendez of St. Antony of Padua on Cesar Chavez Street, sent him back a note saying that he had recorded in the baptismal records of the parish Vargas's desire to renounce his faith.

But that wasn't what Vargas had in mind. He wants it official. "The last time I checked, only a bishop has the authority to excommunicate someone," he said.

Vargas is serious about this: he has carefully researched church law (Canon 1364, paragraph 1, cites "aposty [sic], heresy or schism" as acts punishable by excommunication) and has concluded that all he needs to do to get booted is to formally and publicly perform a "schismatical act." He figures that publicly announcing he rejects the Catholic faith ought to do the job.

In fact, in his note to Levada, Vargas makes his position pretty clear:

"I hereby renounce all the trappings of religion.

"I condemn as monstrous the idea of original sin, and renounce any baptism done on my behalf to wash it away.

"I do not believe that praying is anything more than talking to oneself and will not make believe that it is.

"As an ethical person who cherishes human life," he adds, "I find the Catholic Church's history to be grossly saturated with the blood of millions of innocents."

But the archbishop doesn't find that quite sacrilegious enough. "It would not be appropriate to use the term 'excommunicate' in your case," states an Aug. 2 note to Vargas from Monsignor Thomas S. Merson, secretary to Levada.

All of which raises an interesting question: what, exactly, does a person have to do to get kicked out of the Catholic Church these days?

Tom Burke, spokesperson for the San Francisco archdiocese, told the Bay Guardian the church would have no comment on Vargas's case, which he called a "personal matter."

But William Bassett, a professor of law at the University of San Francisco and an expert in Catholic canon law, says it's almost impossible for a person who just wants to leave to get formally removed from the faith.

"You have to have committed some horrible crime," he told us. "Renouncing your faith doesn't get you excommunicated these days."

Neither, apparently, does asking the bishop to please, please kick you out. "That's not something bishops do," he said. "There's no way to just do that. I've never even heard of anything like this before."

But Vargas is persisting. The church, he said, is trying desperately to keep its numbers up, so the unfaithful have to be aggressive.

"I used to be a Republican," he said, "and all I had to do to change that was fill out a form."

For more information on excommunication, including a guide to getting your name off the official church roster, go to infoweb.magi.com/~godfree/excom.html.

E-mail Tim Redmond at tredmond@sfbg.com.