A Taxing Situation
So apparently in Germany if you’re religious, that is if you are “officially registered” as a catholic, protestant or Jew, then you have to pay an extra 8% on your income tax. Apparently this was to compensate the churches when religious property was nationalised in the nineteenth century.
What.
Really? The German government assists in collecting a tax for religious organisations. This is ludicrous, how do you possibly justify this level of absurdity? These independent, religious organisations are being funded by taxes. The Catholic Church, one of the richest institutions on the planet, which has more palaces and works of art than it does priests without a criminal record, is funded by a tax, levied by the German government, on its German adherents.
What the fuck.
I really don’t know what to say to this. Aside from a gut reaction against any government being such close bedfellows with religions, why would any of these organisations need this, why would they want this, how are they allowed to get away with this? Was the collection plate not enough? Did some church roofs need fixing, did some awkward families need bribing? What ever happened to “helping the least of my brothers”? Are you expected to fund your journey to heaven personally now?
Well it’s funny you should ask, because the Catholic Church in Germany is apparently denying the sacrament to any Catholic who wants to opt out of this tax, for whatever reason.
Unless they pay the religious tax, Catholics will no longer be allowed receive sacraments, except before death, or work in the church and its schools or hospitals.
Without a “sign of repentance before death, a religious burial can be refused,” the decree states. Opting out of the tax would also bar people from acting as godparents to Catholic children.
Now the sacraments don’t mean very much to me, I prefer my biscuits with a bit more substance to them, and a religious burial would be meaningless (besides I’d rather be cremated), however both to those banning these things and those who are being prohibited from participating in them believe that these ceremonies are important, nay vital, to the state and destiny of their eternal soul. Jeopardising that for the sake of some tax revenue you should have anyway seems rather petty to me.
Indeed the German bishops don’t appear to have read their Bibles very closely at all. I would direct their attention to the story of the moneylenders in the temple (Gospel of Mark, Chapter 11, Verse 15), or the parable of the rich man and the kingdom of heaven (Gospel of Mark, Chapter 10, Verse 25), also did Jesus not say to his disciples “that they should take nothing for their journey… no money in their purse” (Gospel of Mark, Chapter 6, Verse 8)? Wanting to take a commission for salvation is not a very Christian thing to do whichever way you slice it. So why are the German bishops doing this, aside from gibbering insanity of course?
Alarmed by their declining congregations, the bishops were also pushed into action by a case involving a retired professor of church law, Hartmut Zapp, who announced in 2007 that he would no longer pay the tax but intended to remain within the Catholic faith.
…
“This decree makes clear that one cannot partly leave the Church,” Germany’s bishops’ conference said last week, in a decision endorsed by the Vatican.
Unusually I understand the logic here, it’s completely ludicrous as all religious logic is, but I see what they mean. They worry that those who take issue with the policies of the Church, such as covering up child rape, will stop paying the tax but will continue to take the sacrament as presumably they still believe in the Catholic faith. What the bishops intend, I conjecture, is to intimidate those who would make such a move with the terrible punishment of not having a wafer on Sunday.
It’s blackmail, pure and simple.
And it won’t work. My money says that for every discontented German Catholic that this pacifies there will be at least two who are so disgusted by the actions of these bishops that they leave the Church entirely, not paying any of the Church’s tithes or taxes, since that is what’s so important to the bishops. Only time will tell if I’m right though.
The Theodosian Connection 