German Religious Tax

The thing with Germany's system is that people who mark "not a member" get to pay less tax overall, and while I would say that I like that, in practice it's triggering a circus like this.

Having a checkoff where you can devote a portion of your taxes to the church of your choice, or to the state, sounds like it'd work better in practice than the German status quo. Especially if the checkoff isn't based on whose rolls you're on (and the churches don't get to check who's paying).

edited 24th Sep '12 4:40:56 PM by Ramidel

Good point.

I'm baaaaaaack

WARNING: THREAT OF A DERAIL AHEAD!

Responding to Trivialis:

It's a quirk of U.S. political culture, and to the degree that Europe has avoided it, the Europeans are quite lucky. Neither is atheism. Returning to on-topic waters: is there any such organization in Germany? Not necessarily so. If they're the organizations that promote religious freedom (from religion included), science, education, and skepticism, then there's a demand there. But I repeat that I'm looking at this from a North American perspective, and the Europeans seem to have dodged the claptrap that we're stuck with on this side of the pond, so I'm not sure if there's the same demand for such organizations in Europe.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

I guess I'll respond in PM, because why not.

Let's go back to the meaning of "Catholic" here: it means "universal". The idea of the Church selling salvation only to believers who are in a position to pay for it is antithesis to the very idea of the Church. I'm an atheist, but one of the few things I respect for the Church for is that it generally does take the "help the poor" thing seriously. But imagine being a low-income German Catholic at the moment, facing exclusion from the faith over a percentage that you might not really be able to pay. The Church isn't offering a phone contract or something, it's offering salvation. To try and flog that out of a 'barrow is generally considered deeply unethical.

edited 24th Sep '12 11:33:05 PM by TheBatPencil

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

So what does the pope think of this?

Everything is Possible. But some things are more Probable than others. JEBAGEDDON 2016

Well, according to the link, posted on the last page, he is actually pretty annoyed about it. Or else he wouldn't bring it up every time he goes to Germany.

Why he doesn't simply sign and send a Papal Bull to the church in Germany with lots of references to the tables being flung over and the money lenders being driven out of the Temple by Yeshua Bin Yusef himself by liberal applications of the old wielding of the lash baffles me a bit.

Politics, I'd guess. Plenty of politics.

The Pope has an unusual amount of power for the head of a religion, but he's not a truly absolute ruler. Every nation has its own association of the bishops, which wields considerable power too; and the cardinals can have their own agendas, and are also far from powerless.

If the Pope started throwing his weight around like that, I think that a renewal of the Conciliarist heresy would not be impossible. And even if it did not get to that, annoyed bishops and cardinals can certainly hinder a Pope's work more than a little.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

@Carciofus: I think Conciliarism is seriously unlikely to happen again as a large-scale movement for structural reasons. Bishops start schisms all the time, but they don't get very far, and if Catholic laypersons don't like what the Pope is doing, they're far more likely to either ignore him, disaffiliate with the Church or find a new Church to join than they are to get involved in a theological dispute.

And if the bishops of Germany tried to start a fight over the Pope telling them to stop something that both he and a large number of the faithful see as an extortion racket, do you really think that said bishops will be able to get the faithful behind them?

The Pope is infallible. Something which is a lot newer a concept than I thought it was, but still something that the Catholic hierarchy in Germany cannot gainsay unless they want to split from Rome. He has the power, he should use it, otherwise as has been said in this thread and elsewhere access to the sacraments is being put behind a pay-wall. I care a helluva lot less about those since I walked away from the whole edifice of organized religion when I was fifteen but I do appreciate that for those in the Church and wish themselves to be members of it, it is a pretty big deal indeed. Lack of access to those sacraments can put their very souls in mortal danger of sin.

Luther hammered those ninety-five theses on the doors of Wittenberg Church for not much more reason.

And what happened in the next century?

Thirty Years War.

Which wrecked Germany so badly that it took Bismark to put it back together hundreds of years later in Prussia's image and things went wrong from there. I am probably being a bit alarmist, but this sort of crap happened before. Little things can really cause big problems decades down the line. And the German bishops and cardinals, and their little helpers in the German government should know this better than anyone.

As I understand it (Carcio or other Catholics on board correct me if necessary), the Pope isn't considered completely infallible all the time, he has to specifically invoke infallibility and can only do so under certain circumstances.

Somehow you know that the time is right.

Well if this isn't one of those circumstances, then I am a Dutchman, I am six foot three, played for Celtic and my name is Pierre Van Hooijdonk. (none of those statements are true)

Hey, tall guy. :P

This isn't one of those cases. Infallibility can only be used for defining religious teaching, not to settle administrative policy disputes. In fact, since the power was codified, it has been used precisely once for anything not involving the canonization of saints, and that was to define the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

Again, this is the kind of thing that led to those ninety-five thesis. What the hierarchy in Germany is doing is flying in the very face of the man whose teachings that that hierarchy professes to believe in and this should be slapped down by whatever means the Pope chooses to do it. His biggest gun is his infallibility.

Limiting its use to canonizations when something this serious is going on would be catastrophically stupid. It would be defining religious teaching to use it in this case. Otherwise what is the point of the pope?

This is not just a simple administrative decision. People's souls are being put in jeopardy by the men who are meant to be their fathers in Christ. And this has caused enough fuck ups in Germany that even the dimmest seminarian there should be able to point out this as stark staring obviously not a good thing to do.

Just because in this case I agree with the Pope it doesn't mean that I'd be OK with infallibility being used in this way. I am kind of uncomfortable with the doctrine of infallibility to begin with, although I am — grudgingly — willing to accept it as long as it is used only to clarify some very high-level theological issues; but I would definitely not want it to become a way for the Pope to curb everything that he doesn't like inside of the Church. As I see it, we already have too little checks and balances; I am not a fan of the idea of giving even more power to the Pope.

Instead, I think, one possible way of responding to this mess (but I don't presume to tell German Catholics what they should do, of course) might perhaps be for the German Catholics who disagree with this to publicly announce that they will not pay that tax until the Bishops stop trying to hold the Sacraments hostage, or something like that.

As I see it, the Catholic laity as a whole definitely needs to take more direct action anyway.

That's something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, actually: for example, I'm considering becoming a member of Call to Action (a Catholic organization that advocates for women's ordinations, gay rights and so on), although I want to first take some time to study the group. It's not much, but it's a start — I really dislike the idea of promoting factionalism inside of the Catholic Church, but personal disagreement only gets that far.

edited 25th Sep '12 6:00:27 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

There is nothing of a higher level than the human soul. Which those idiots in the German hierarchy are putting at danger by putting a tax on the sacraments. I too am opposed on general principles to the doctrine of papal infallibility so it actually being used at all leaves me feeling rather icky. But on this one issue and no other, he should be using it like a fist from God.

To repeat, this is Germany. These kind of disputes never end well there if they are allowed to go on unchecked. And we are all still to this day living with the consequences of what happens when they end up going catastrophically badly wrong. This issue may not end up going as badly as I fear it might, but Luther never saw the Thirty Year's War coming either. Mind you, he may have gone ahead with what he did at Wittenberg anyway even if he had. Or not. History is funny that way.

I think that we cannot rely on the hierarchy to solve all problems for us. If some Catholics have an issue with a decision of this kind, they should let themselves be heard.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Wait, so because of the Caltholic church, Protestants and Jews have to pay, too?

In what universe does this make sense?

Well, ours. Or so the religious leaders of those faiths would have you believe.

Protestants and Jews pay to their organizations. If they are officially registered as Protestant or Jews, that is.

That's got nothing to do with the Catholic Church; and the Church does not deny its Sacraments to Protestants or Jews because they don't pay their taxes, it does so because, well, because they are not Catholic

edited 25th Sep '12 6:46:10 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

From the OP:

Meaning that it is not Protestant or Jewish organizations that are demanding this new tax at all (it would be difficult considering the decentralized nature of these religions), and even if the money is not being demanded by their organizations, they're being forced to pay an extra tax.

@Carc: Well, denying the Sacraments to people who declare that they're not Catholic does make a certain amount of sense.

It is not a new tax. It's been there for a very long time. If you are officially registered as a member of these religions, you pay that tax. I dunno what these other confessions do if someone refuses to register officially while still participating to their ceremonies and so on; I guess that that's up to them.

The thing now is that a number of Catholics have been deregistering, while remaining Catholic, either in protest for, say, the child abuse scandals and so on, or simply out of desire to save money. And in response, the German bishops declared that if one does so, they are forbidden the Sacraments — which, as a Catholic, I find an abomination, for the reasons I stated.

But members of other confessions are not affected from this in the least: whether they have to pay or not, and what happens if they don't pay, is something that the Catholic Church has no control whatsoever on (and no interest to mess with, furthermore).

Well, yes, of course. But in the case of the professor, for example, the professor declared that he still considered himself Catholic, but he refused to register and pay that tax. I dunno about his motivations; but to deny him, or people in similar situations, the Sacraments unless they pay is unacceptable.

edited 25th Sep '12 6:59:06 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

In Germany, if you want to avoid paying the tax, you have to formally declare that you're no longer a member of the religious community in question. So essentially, what you're saying is that people should be allowed to remain in the Catholic Church and receive the services of said Church despite having formally abjured your membership.

Put in that light, the German bishops' position sounds a lot more reasonable to me, or at least, perhaps the blame should be put on the German government for running church tax the way it does.

edited 25th Sep '12 7:00:52 AM by Ramidel

Put it that light, it means that in Germany, the Catholic Church is an organization with a membership fee — if you don't pay the fee, you are not a member.

I think that this is a grave betrayal of the calling of the Catholic Church.

EDIT: And it's not like the Church could not affect the way that that tax is collected — if it asked the State to give Catholics the choice of whether to pay the tax or not, I am sure that that could be arranged.

edited 25th Sep '12 7:05:28 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.