Catholic, cough up, or you're out!

[Gob]

German Catholics lose church rights for unpaid tax

A German bishops' decree which has just come into force says anyone failing to pay the tax - an extra 8% of their income tax bill - will no longer be considered a Catholic.

The bishops have been alarmed by the number of Catholics leaving the Church.

They say such a step should be seen as a serious act against the community.

All Germans who are officially registered as Catholics, Protestants or Jews pay a religious tax of 8-9% on their annual income tax bill. The levy was introduced in the 19th Century in compensation for the nationalisation of religious property.

"If your tax bill is for 10,000 euros, then 800 euros will go on top of that and your total tax combined will be 10,800 euros," Munich tax accountant Thomas Zitzelsberger told the BBC news website.

Catholics make up around 30% of Germany's population but the number of congregants leaving the church swelled to 181,000 in 2010, with the increase blamed on revelations of sexual abuse by German priests.

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.

The Freiburg University academic said he wanted to continue praying and receiving Holy Communion and a lengthy legal case between Prof Zapp and the church will reach the Leipzig Federal Administrative Court on Wednesday.

"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.

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.

"This decree at this moment of time is really the wrong signal by the German bishops who know that the Catholic church is in a deep crisis," Christian Weisner from the grassroots Catholic campaign group We are Church told the BBC.

But a priest from Mannheim in south-western Germany, Father Lukas Glocker, said the tax was used to do essential good works.

"With kindergarten, with homes for elderly or unemployed, we've got really good things so I know we need the tax to help the German country to do good things."

While the decree severely limits active participation in the German Catholic Church, it does hold out some hope for anyone considering a return to the fold.

Until now, any German Catholic who stopped payment faced eventual excommunication. Although the measures laid out in the decree are similar to excommunication from the church, German observers say the word is carefully avoided in the decree.

[Sean]

That is mental! Who in their right minds would allow their church to tax them like that?

[rubato]

Who in their right mind would even want to pretend to belong to a church and refuse to follow its rules?

The Bible mandates 10% plus 'offerings'.

yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

Please show us where that RC rule is rubato. The biblical mandate was used at a time when the church acted effectively as the government for the "flock" and provided effectively al of the social services to its membership, not what the churches have evolved into. Now some churches still encourage tithing, some even require it, but the RC church is not one that does.

[Sean]

It would appear that it is one that does in Germany Big RR...

[Big RR]

I don't think so Sean, from the way i read the post, firstly the tax is 8%, not 9%; second it is exacted by the government, not the church; third, since the action was newsworthy, this appears to be the first time the RC Church stepped in to try and insist on their membership paying the governmental tax. The church is not insisting their memers pay anything to the church, only a pass through to the government. I do agree that the bishops are now requiring that all members publicly register and pay the tax, but this hardly harks back tot he biblical tithing mandate rubato refers to (especially since it applies only to catholics in Germany); indeed, the post says the tax was intsituted to compensate the church for property taken and nationalized in the 1800s, a very different thing.

[MajGenl.Meade]

All Germans who are officially registered as Catholics, Protestants or Jews pay a religious tax of 8-9% on their annual income tax bill. The levy was introduced in the 19th Century in compensation for the nationalisation of religious property.

Fascinating. From the article, a reasonable surmise is that the government collects the tax but it is then redistributed to charitable causes operated by religious entities - old age homes, kindergartens and so on. Otherwise it would be the opposite of "compensation" - first to nationalise church property and then tax the church members as well!

Given the events of 1933-45, I'm surprised that our Jewish brethren are only taxed 8% - their buildings along with the congregations were nationalised so thoroughly that one would think Germans might find 80% more appropriate

Then, it does of course suggest that Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems etc. don't (apparently) pay the tax at all since they had no churches (synagogues, mosques, ashrams, caves) in Germany in the 1800s.

Finally, I can think of no better way to stop people from leaving a church than to force them to pay more in taxes.

Well done bishops - no one expects the Germanic imposition!

Meade

[Big RR]

Well Meade when you hold the keys to the kingdom and can effectively eternally damn ex-communicants to hell, no tax is too big, is it?

[oldr_n_wsr]

Let me get this straight, the German government is charging a tax to those registered under a certain religion (all religions) in the name of that religion. The actual religion does not directly benefit from this tax, it only goes to those services that religion delivers.

OK!?!??!?!?!?

[Scooter]

The tax goes directly to the churches, and provides the bulk of church revenues. See here.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Thanks for that scooter
So it's a "forced" tithing (if you choose to sign up).

[Sean]

Well Meade when you hold the keys to the kingdom and can effectively eternally damn ex-communicants to hell, no tax is too big, is it?

I thought that only God could damn people to hell...

[rubato]

I don't think so Sean, from the way i read the post, firstly the tax is 8%, not 9%; second it is exacted by the government, not the church; third, since the action was newsworthy, this appears to be the first time the RC Church stepped in to try and insist on their membership paying the governmental tax. The church is not insisting their memers pay anything to the church, only a pass through to the government. I do agree that the bishops are now requiring that all members publicly register and pay the tax, but this hardly harks back tot he biblical tithing mandate rubato refers to (especially since it applies only to catholics in Germany); indeed, the post says the tax was intsituted to compensate the church for property taken and nationalized in the 1800s, a very different thing.

RC church members are famously the lowest in contributions to their denominations, about 1.5%

Maybe that is correlated to the facility with which they invent excuses for amorality and ignoring biblical dicta?

Tithing is 'old fashioned' but hating women and fags is as modern as zippers!


yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

Sean--I guess it depends who you ask; traditionally excommunication meant that someone was removed from the communion of the saints, and was seen as damnation as there was no salvation but through the RC church, which held the keys to the kingdom as passed down by jesus to Peter and successive popes. Modern views are less drastic, probably in view of the RC position that people must not only follow church teachings but be true to their consciences, thus it need not mean damnation.

As for only god condemning, the RC church claims the authority jesus conferred on the apostles to control the keys to heaven and be the source of forgiveness/retention of sins (where their pronouncements would be "written in heaven"--not certain of the biblical cites, but they could be easily found). If this is still the modern view (and I believe it is at the base of the RC faith), I could see a church pronouncement resulting in damnation.

[Sean]

It would depend on whether or not God agreed with the pronouncement though. I don't think that even the RCC, with all their arrogance, can over-rule God...

[Lord Jim]

Well, this looks like the best argument for " The Separation of Church and State" I have ever seen...

I think it should go without saying, that the State should not be in the business of collecting "taxes" on the part of the Church...Nor the State be determining how those funds should be dispensed...

I cannot imagine an arrangement more corrupting of the purposes of both the Church and the State, than one where the State is collecting tithes on the part of the Church...

Unless it is exacting taxes against the Church...

"Don't Undermine It, Don't Assist It"...

How's that as an operating principle between "Church and State"?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Sean--I guess it depends who you ask; traditionally excommunication meant that someone was removed from the communion of the saints, and was seen as damnation as there was no salvation but through the RC church, which held the keys to the kingdom as passed down by jesus to Peter and successive popes. Modern views are less drastic, probably in view of the RC position that people must not only follow church teachings but be true to their consciences, thus it need not mean damnation.

As for only god condemning, the RC church claims the authority jesus conferred on the apostles to control the keys to heaven and be the source of forgiveness/retention of sins (where their pronouncements would be "written in heaven"--not certain of the biblical cites, but they could be easily found). If this is still the modern view (and I believe it is at the base of the RC faith), I could see a church pronouncement resulting in damnation.

I think that's mostly correct Big RR. "Modern views" might be restricted (or perhaps that's better stated as 'widely applied') in liberal RC circles - such as many USA churches. But I think that Rome's position is that an excommunicated person who dies without repentance has in effect chosen to separate his or her self from God - consequences perhaps may not be "eternal damnation" but at least 50% of infinity in purgatory (long wait involved ).

One wonders how that might work if the excommunicant joins a protestant church, which Rome has now sort-of, kind-of recognized as almost-but-not-quite as 'christian' as Roman congregations and whose congregants just might be saved, even if just a little bit.

Yes, the claim is that the keys were given to Peter - watch out though; not "the apostles". That might imply that any church founded by the other 11 might have apostolic authority equal to that of Rome. Not possible, tch tch. Matthew 16:13-20 is the reference - their interpretation of which conveniently ignores Matt 18:18, 1Cor 3:11, Eph 2:20 and Rev 1:18; 21:14. However The expressions “will be bound in heaven” and “will be loosed in heaven” are examples in Greek of the periphrastic future perfect passive construction and should, therefore, be translated “will have been bound already” and “will have been loosed already” in heaven. In other words, Peter’s pronouncement of “binding” or “loosing” is dependent upon what heaven has already willed, rather than earth’s giving direction to heaven Believer's Study Bible. 1997. Criswell Center for Biblical Studies. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

Some interpretations tax belief

Cheers
Meade

[Big RR]

Point taken meade, and, yes, the "keys" were gven to peter alone, not all the apostles. But I did think that jesus told the apostles that they each had the power to forgive or retain sins, having those actions bound in eaven (and, of course, leading to the concept of them being already preordained by heaven or being indpeendent decisions which are binding upon heaven.

As for your point about the protestant ex-commuciants, my guess is that the conservatives would tell you that the RC church acts with the authroity of god and, even if they now recognize the churches, those excommunicated were rebelling against the authority of the church (and hence god, which I would think is a mortal sin) and are properly condemned, while the liberals would say they are not sure and leave their fate to the grace of god (much as the RC church now does with the fate of the souls of unbaptized infants, eliminating the need for limbo).

[Econoline]

Of course, any German Catholic who wants to could just move to a nation that doesn't have a tax on Catholics and doesn't have bishops who insist on their flock paying for the privilege of flocking. Problem solved. Hello, welcome to heaven, walk right in. Flock you, Cardinal Katzenjammer.

[Big RR]

Yep, and in days of yore when eating meat on Friday was a sin, you could live near the international date line and cross it at the proper time to avoid ever having a friday, leaving one free to eat meat every day. There's a way around everything