Pay to pray: German bishops stop weddings and funerals unless religious taxes are paid

The Telegraph ^ | 9/28/2012

[bruinbirdman]

The road to heaven is paved with more than good intentions for Germany's 24m Catholics. If they don't pay their religious taxes, they will be denied sacraments, including weddings, baptisms and funerals.

A decree issued last week by the country's bishops cast a spotlight on the longstanding practice in Germany and a handful of other European countries in which governments tax registered believers and then hand over the money to the religious institutions.

In Germany, the surcharge for Catholics, Protestants and Jews is up to 9pc on their income tax bills - or about €56 (£45) a month for a single person earning a pre-tax monthly salary of about €3,500, AP reported.

For religious institutions, struggling to maintain their congregations in a secular society where the Protestant Reformation began 500 years ago, the tax revenues are vital.

The Catholic Church in Germany receives about €5bn annually from the surcharge. For Protestants, the total is just above €4bn. Donations, in turn, represent a far smaller share of the churches' income than in the US.

With rising prices and economic uncertainty, however, more and more Catholics and Protestants are opting to save their money and declare to tax authorities they are no longer church members, even if they still consider themselves believers.

"I quit the church already in 2007," Manfred Gonschor, a Munich-based IT-consultant, said. "It was when I got a bonus payment and realized that I could have paid myself a nice holiday alone on the amount of church tax that I was paying on it."

Gonschor added he was also "really fed up with the institution and its failures".

Such defections have hit the Catholic Church especially hard — it has lost about 181,000 tax-paying members in 2010 and 126,000 a year later, according to official

[Mrs. Don-o]

Well, I hope they can somehow abolish the whole repulsive business of government entanglement in the Church. But that's what developed as a result of the German Govt. annexation of the Church's patrimony.

Germany used to be a vast, decentralized network of territories, city-states, principalities, all of them more or less local and autonomous, each with its own self-governing codes and customs. Many bishoprics, abbeys and convents throughout Germany were granted temporal estates just to provide order and continuity. This in itself (lay investiture) was a major crisis in the feudal period, as popes opposed the appointment of bishops by princes.

The reform-minded popes (e.g. Gregory) tried to block emperors using the bishops this way. Then in the Reformation, abbeys, convents, and diocesan territories were largely handed over to Protestant princes. Finally in 1803 a great deal more was seized and transferred to new secular rulers.

Then in the 1870's, the Kulturkampf culminated in Bismarck tring to seize just about all things Catholic: schools, hospitals, publishing houses, the imposition of civil marriage, the jailing of priests and bishops, etc.

Bismarck finally gave way when he faced a bigger political crisis than he had bargained for. The new settlement resulted in churches (Evangelical and Catholic) giving up income (from properties) and accepting compensation, VOLUNTARY, collected from identified CHURCH MEMBERS.

That's bad?

But you would like to get rid of the tax. I'd agree. You also want to restore all the expropriated Church properties this was supposed to be compensation for?

Or do you think the Church should be required to bestow Sacraments on declared non-members?

[SevenofNine]

Oh thanks for that 411

Yeah because as American thinking it’s seem bizarre

I forgot about Euro troubled religious past

[miserare]

Well, this has been an interesting lesson in Church History.

I wonder why they never mentioned this practice in Catholic School?

As old as I am, I learn something new every day.

Thanks for the background info.

[wideawake]

The Church tax began life as restitution for the vast amounts of Church land, buildings and possessions stolen and destroyed by various governments over the years.

This system was not the Church's idea - the system was different before the Wars of Religion.

The Church is not the villain here and the state is not the hero.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Yep, fer sure. Turned convents, priories, bishoprics over to the princes and to the princes’ favorites. Parallel in many ways to Henry’s sacking of the monasteries in England. There, as in Scandanaviaa and all of northern Europe, the Reformation was a wonderful thing for the grand project of the redistribution of wealth: the transfer of property to the State.

[wideawake]

Thanks for eloquently educating the conclusion-jumpers on the thread. Well done.

[GeronL]

I do not believe in compulsory “donations”

[Mrs. Don-o]

THIS IS ONE OF MY HUGEST PEEVES!

[/Times New Roman Screaming Font]

Our parochial school has a Black History Month that lasts 36 weeks. And nobody knows a damn thing about Poland or Germany or Italy or Lithuania or Vietnam or the Philippines or even the extraordinary epic of Catholic Immigrants and the history of the Catholic Church in America.

I's like we were all hatched from eggs about 1/2 hour ago.

[xrmusn]

“It was when I got a bonus payment and realized that I could have paid myself a nice holiday alone on the amount of church tax that I was paying on it.”
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
HMMMM
Another great example of why “UNKA SUGAH” wants your employer to pay HIM your witholding and FICA taxes.

Leave it to the individual and he will realize how much he is really getting screwed.

BUT in the land of ‘the great geedunk’ ‘they’ have devised a plan to take from you and then, to many, give it back and then some......which makes a good portion of the 47% Romney was referring to.....
That will not vote for him, ‘no matter what’....

[miserare]

I agree. This is a huge deficit in the curriculum of the Catholic schools.

(BTW, I love your screaming font.)

[Mrs. Don-o]

It's very obviously not compulsory. The whole story is about people not being compelled. If you want out, bingo, you're out.

IAnd the media potrays this as people being denied the Sacraments? Wha...? Why would a non-Catholic want sacraments?]

[Wuli]

“The Church tax began life as restitution for the vast amounts of Church land, buildings and possessions stolen and destroyed by various governments over the years.”

and such “restitution” is still being paid

1. if so, it should be based on “church statistics of number of members” when the program began, or when the church proeprty was destroyed or stolen, not on todays membership, not on people checking of anything on their tax forms; and the moneys allocated should have have a sunset date when the “restitution” has been paid;

2. but instead, the churches agreed to a permanent church-state government subsidy;

but, in my saying that the churches should not have agreed to this permanent church-state financial tie, I am not looking at the state as “the hero”.

so, I am not blessing the state when I fault the churches for agreeing to the permanence of this “restitution” tax-subsidy;

I imagine the monies already allocated have served the orginal purpose, and taxes could be reduced all around by the amount equal to the churches share of the “9%”, and the churches could learn to survive on what their own members put in the till on Sunday morning, or tithe regularly to them.

the chickens always eventually come home to roost when the church gets in bed with the state

[Iscool]

This line in the article is completely incorrect. If the money is not donated it is not kept by the taxpayer. It is kept by the government. No one is saving any money by not approving the donation.

"I quit the church already in 2007," Manfred Gonschor, a Munich-based IT-consultant, said. "It was when I got a bonus payment and realized that I could have paid myself a nice holiday alone on the amount of church tax that I was paying on it."

This guy who has already received the cash says you are wrong...

[Mrs. Don-o]

I'm in substantial agreement with you; there are some big negative features of this system; but I would reiterate one point:

It's not exactly a "permanent church-state government subsidy" when 100% of the Catholic funds come from Catholic church members. It's Catholic funds to Catholic churches. Nobody "has" to pay if they don't want to.

I still concur that the entanglement is one big historic headache. Which some --- I'm not saying you, but some ----want to "resolve" by the 100% usurpation and absorption by the State of all roles, all functions, all cultural resources, all human services, and all material support, at all times. It's what the French mean by laïcité : the separation of church and real life.

[count-your-change]

“Show me da money!” None of this “you received free, give free” business.

[wideawake]

I imagine the monies allocated have already served their original purpose

Hardly. The land stolen from the Church alone is worth well in excess of one trillion euros today. At the current rate we're centuries away from just restitution.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Well.

You DO realize that with the expropriation of Church property, the majority of the Catholic universities were closed as well as thousands of monasteries and countless Catholic religious, charitable, and cultural foundations? You do realize that the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss did to Catholics in Germany what the Revolution had done in France, what Cromwell had done in Ireland, and later, Plutarco Elías Calles in Mexico and the Communists in Poland? (To be clear, I'm not talking about massacres, I'm talking about attempted institutional annihilation.)

And accepting what is actually a meager repayment for stolen property, a repayment that comes 100% from the pockets of the Catholic citizenry themselves, you call "the church gets in bed with the state"?

It's far from the kind of prostitution implied by the "bed" metaphor. It's an accommodation which achieves only a fragment of justice -- far short of the entire liberty the Church actually needs to carry out her mission.

[Mrs. Don-o]

C-y-c, it's not about money-for-services, as you'd know if you had any source of information other than the ignorant MSM (the Telegraph in this instance.) It's about people declaring themselves to be non-Catholics, then demanding, what? A sacrament they don't believe in?

People are never denied sacraments on account of money. If it were so, the person who did the denying would be very seriously in the wrong, and subject to canonical penalty.

This is like that lesbian Buddhist in Washington DC demanding Holy Communion. If people identify themselves as ex-Catholics or anti-Catholics---(Link)---- they really have no business laying claim to spiritual goods they have formally and explicitly disavowed.

Read some of the other comments from myself and from wideawake, for context. Or just continue on, fact-free. And a good evening to you.

[GeronL]

Government should not be involved at any level

[count-your-change]

It's entirely about pay for service.
Those who chose not to be taxed (not refuse support for their church) must declare they are no longer Catholic as a recent German court ruled against a man who wanted to remain a church member but not pay the tax.

The tax is voluntary in same way income tax payment in the U.S. is voluntary. One has to renounce citizenship to opt out of it.

Here is how a German Catholic bishop described it:

“WARSAW, Poland — The German bishops’ conference defended a controversial decree that said Catholics who stop paying a church membership tax cannot receive sacraments.
“There must be consequences for people who distance themselves from the church by a public act,” said Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, conference president, in defending the Sept. 20 decree.
“Clearly, someone withdrawing from the church can no longer take advantage of the system like someone who remains a member,” he said at a news conference Monday as the bishops began a four-day meeting in Fulda. “We are grateful Rome has given completely clear approval to our stance.”
(National Catholic Reporter online)

Not paying the tax is “withdrawing from the church”. Payment for services rendered.

The widow put her mite in the collection box without a Roman tax collector or threat of being denied anything. Jesus said to his disciples, “you received free give free”.

Or doesn't that apply?

“It's about people declaring themselves to be non-Catholics, then demanding, what? A sacrament they don't believe in?”

It's about people being given the choice of declaring themselves non-Catholic or paying a tax.