Catholics in Germany excommunicated for not paying church tax?

  • Thread starter Thread starter PowersMama
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

PowersMama

Guest
Hi.

I was just reading a news brief in an evangelical magazine called Christianity Today. It concerned the Catholic Church in Germany, where supposedly 1 million Catholics have been excommunicated since 1998 for not paying the church tax. (In Germany, people who are registered as Catholics or Lutherans have to pay a tax to the state to support these churches.)

This doesn’t sound right to me. Does anyone have more information on this issue?

Thanks!
 
That makes about as much sense as someone being excommunicated for not putting money in the collection basket.
 
I wander if there would be a movement in Germany to strike that law off of the books. I would think so. I would hate it if we had that same thing here in the USA. Just think of the IRS ramifacations of switching churches. Taht would be a nightmare wouldn’t it. 😛
 
I know that twice I have received notification from the Church in Germany that someone who had been baptized in Canada, supposedly in our parish, had renounced their Catholicism (we’ve always suspected it was tax related). We had no way to identify the persons since they didn’t appear in our baptismal registers and we’d never heard of them. If they had been ours we would have had to enter that notification in their baptismal records.
 
I think its really German law. You have to choose a religious affiliation on your tax forms and after choosing you are automatically taxed that amount for that church community. It applies to protestants as well.

Their system is totally different than ours.
 
PowersMama said:
Hi.

I was just reading a news brief in an evangelical magazine called Christianity Today. It concerned the Catholic Church in Germany, where supposedly 1 million Catholics have been excommunicated since 1998 for not paying the church tax. (In Germany, people who are registered as Catholics or Lutherans have to pay a tax to the state to support these churches.)

This doesn’t sound right to me. Does anyone have more information on this issue?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
The Church Tax for Catholics and Lutherans is voluntary. But if one chooses not to pay, then the Churches have the right, under German law, to officiate at marriages, funerals, etc. It’s a good example of what can happen when church and state get too entangled.
 
PowersMama said:
Hi.

I was just reading a news brief in an evangelical magazine called Christianity Today. It concerned the Catholic Church in Germany, where supposedly 1 million Catholics have been excommunicated since 1998 for not paying the church tax. (In Germany, people who are registered as Catholics or Lutherans have to pay a tax to the state to support these churches.)

This doesn’t sound right to me. Does anyone have more information on this issue?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Isn’t that against Canon Law requiring a specified amount of money?
 
canadianguy1143 said:
Isn’t that against Canon Law requiring a specified amount of money?
Click to expand...
the church does not pose the requirement, the government does

but the Church has the authority to declare who is a member and if, as I have heard from relatives, nothing official, the payment or declining to pay the tax is the usual way to declare formally church membership, they can proceed this way. I doubt if it is a formal excommunication, unless the manner of rejecting the tax amounts to formal defection from the Church. If there is something you have to sign, than it seems as if you would be in effect excommunicating yourself and the Church would have to take not. The church probably has to prove it has so many members to receive their share of taxes collected, so if someone has formally defected they would by lying if they accepted tax money for that person.

there is no comparison between their system and the US

is this really a news story, as in a narrative of a current event?
 
I’ve travelled quite a bit in Europe. I think they also have a church tax in Austria. Anyway, the churches in Europe are empty. Two years ago I was in Spain. The church I went to for Sunday Mass had one Mass and it was said by a priest who served several churches. There was only one family under 50 there.

I wonder why the popes are European as well as many of the higher ups in the curia. They can’t inspire their own countries so how can they inspire the rest of the world?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top