From my perspective it is not “more noble” to ignore the Church’s clear teaching on the matter; however, a Catholic cannot then find or found another Catholic Church that will actually do what they like. You must admit that the Evangelical ecclesial buffet has a bit more variety than any Catholic diner, even including the fast-food Catholic variety.
Religions schism and merge and schism again. Even today, people break from the Catholic Church and call themselves Catholic. We cannot help what people call themselves or what names and identities they appropriate and what doctrines they twist, distort or ignore for their own purposes.
There may be an endless variety of evangelicals. It may even be that the term “evangelical” has been taken up by so many different groups that the term has lost any real meaning. Maybe not.
However, attempts to explain the gap between Catholic and “white evangelical” opinions on SSM with shrill arguments that Catholics are just too nice to call sin what it is while evangelicals can do it because they hate gays . . . well, that just seems to me to be uncalled for.
Whether a Catholic who ignores the church teaching stays in the church or feels compelled by his/her conscience to leave the church, from my point of view, is irrelevant. Whether an evangelical who ignores Scripture stays in a church that teaches Scripture or leaves to find a church that will affirm his/her disregard for Scripture, is also irrelevant.
The research cited to make the claim that evangelicals are trending toward gay marriage support is used to prove that all broad categories of Christians in America are moving toward such support. However, “white evangelicals” are actually among the most conservative Christians on this issue, far more faithful to the tradition of the Church universal than most American Catholics, it would seem.
That being said, I wonder when Catholics will stop wagging their fingers at Protestants for not having a central ecclesiastical authority and instead start trying to help their fellow Catholics actually submit to their own church’s authority?