Catholic in Germany? Pay your church tax in Germany or face loss of the sacraments. At least so says the BBC's report of a German bishops' announcement. I don't read German or I'd try to verify this one: BBC is not famous for accuracy in stories about religion. To be fair, neither are pretty much all the other news companies. But see the CatholicNews version which emphasizes the public renunciation aspects of Zapp's announcement.
There's history involved, of course:
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....
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
From an American point of view one problem is obvious: churches should raise their own money. Then, presto!, there is no Zapp scandal any longer. His protests are now only between him (and the thousands like him) and his church. Caesar isn't in the picture any more, except for punishing crime. And the church finances still get the hit Zapp wants them to endure.
Money comes off the table entirely when talking about sacraments. Unless the bishops want to revive "So bald der Pfennig im Kasten klingt", which I hope they are wise enough not to dream of... Zapp's declaration would have to become more clear cut; right now it takes on a hint of tax evasion.
Hat tip to Maggie's Farm, and yes, I googled for Tetzel's rhyme: I don't even know that much German. I notice that the additional tax (waived for non-religious) is quite a bit less than 10%; only about \$300/head on the average or maybe \$1200/family_income.
3 comments:
It's a fascinating bit of modern history. To Americans, Canadians, Australians, this is simply incomprehensible. Of course the state should not be collecting the church tax.
Yet it is a different picture for churches with deeper ties to the state. Issues of "what is our history?" "What is our culture?" "Who are we?" come in in ways that Americans can only view from a distance in puzzlement. We see that such things are deeply important to the participants, even though church attendance is very low, and we furrow our brow: the superficial reasons on both sides are clearly not the whole story.
For reasons immediately apparent to us, I have no respect and no sympathy for the institutional churches in Germany at all. The institutional churches in other countries do not rank much higher. Even C of E, which has been the great bearer of Western Civilisation in general, has not been an especially solid bearer of Christianity. The average Nebraskan would simply shrug if all of those churches just fell into oblivion.
But how culture is preserved is a curious thing. Is it fragile or robust? Should we encourage the churches to make valiant stands on each hill in the long twilight struggle against the encroaching dark? Or are these battles essentially irrelevant to the cause of Christ, deserving of no attention from us whatsoever? I don't know, and I fear being wrong and misleading others.
The idea of the church using the state to enforce tithing brings out my inner Puritan and makes me want to go establish a new colony somewhere.
And you get more of what you reward. Declare "no religion" and your taxes go down.
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