German Bishops: Catholics Who Formally Leave Church Cannot Receive Sacraments

  • Thread starter Thread starter Catholic_Press
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
So, if the law were changed so that the person simply has to check a box (or file a form) saying that they opt out of the automatic collection of church taxes through the government, then Catholics could freely check the box and the Church would not care? The only problem is that the box says doesn’t say “I opt out”, but rather says, “I’m not Catholic”?

If that is the case, then why don’t they change the box to say I opt out, or change it so that there are two boxes, one to opt out and one to opt out and simultaneously make a statement of non-faith, so those who feel the need can express their non-Catholicity? It seems an easy fix.

I wouldn’t think the German government would mind printing a form with two checkboxes instead of one, unless for some reason the German government is really the one with a dog in this fight, trying to keep up tourism or beautify the city streets or something by keeping up old church buildings by taxing Catholics only.
 
Pug said:
So, if the law were changed so that the person simply has to check a box (or file a form) saying that they opt out of the automatic collection of church taxes through the government, then Catholics could freely check the box and the Church would not care? The only problem is that the box says doesn’t say “I opt out”, but rather says, “I’m not Catholic”?

If that is the case, then why don’t they change the box to say I opt out, or change it so that there are two boxes, one to opt out and one to opt out and simultaneously make a statement of non-faith, so those who feel the need can express their non-Catholicity? It seems an easy fix.

I wouldn’t think the German government would mind printing a form with two checkboxes instead of one, unless for some reason the German government is really the one with a dog in this fight, trying to keep up tourism or beautify the city streets or something by keeping up old church buildings by taxing Catholics only.
Click to expand...
There’s no reason that either the government or the Church would go along with this. If it was possible just to check an “I don’t want to pay taxes” box which is essentially what an “I opt out-no strings attached” box would be, everyone would check it, the government would stop collecting taxes for the Church. Government employees would lose jobs because there would be fewer hours of work to do; the Church would lose funding. The Church in Germany gets something like 80% of its income from this church tax.

This church tax is a very old practice in German law. Their history is far different from ours, and people there are not used to placing their tithes in a basket in church like we do. Moreover, church attendance rates are very, very low in Germany as a whole, single digit in many places, and if collections were based on donations in Church, particularly in non-tourist areas, they’d probably be very low as a result, probably much lower than they are now with the old historic church tax.
 
Pug said:
So, if the law were changed so that the person simply has to check a box (or file a form) saying that they opt out of the automatic collection of church taxes through the government, then Catholics could freely check the box and the Church would not care? The only problem is that the box says doesn’t say “I opt out”, but rather says, “I’m not Catholic”?

If that is the case, then why don’t they change the box to say I opt out, or change it so that there are two boxes, one to opt out and one to opt out and simultaneously make a statement of non-faith, so those who feel the need can express their non-Catholicity? It seems an easy fix.
Click to expand...
It is not as simple as checking a box. What the Church needs is real and detailed evidence from this person that he intends to renounce his faith.
The bishops announce that if any individual announces his decision to drop his enrollment in the Church, his pastor should contact him and explain the consequences of this action.
Click to expand...
As you see, it will take a full document, plus at least a phone call, if not a personal visit, from a Church official in order to make it clear to this individual what he is giving up, and make it clear to the Church that he is certain of the finality of his decision (of course, for the Church the decision is never final, but a reconciliation will require a sacramental Confession and perhaps a lifting of censure by the ordinary).
 
iloveangels said:
There’s no reason that either the government or the Church would go along with this. If it was possible just to check an “I don’t want to pay taxes” box which is essentially what an “I opt out-no strings attached” box would be, everyone would check it, the government would stop collecting taxes for the Church. Government employees would lose jobs because there would be fewer hours of work to do; the Church would lose funding. The Church in Germany gets something like 80% of its income from this church tax.
This church tax is a very old practice in German law. Their history is far different from ours, and people there are not used to placing their tithes in a basket in church like we do. Moreover, church attendance rates are very, very low in Germany as a whole, single digit in many places, and if collections were based on donations in Church, particularly in non-tourist areas, they’d probably be very low as a result, probably much lower than they are now with the old historic church tax.
Click to expand...
So, it really is about the money and not the souls then.
 
Here’s an interesting bit of information that hasn’t been picked up much:

This controversy has been going on for a long time, and it seems that there is a retired professor of church law at Freiburg, named Hartmut Zapp, who announced in 2007 that he would no longer pay the tax but intended to remain Catholic. There’s a legal case brewing that’s set to be tried in the Leipzig Federal Administrative Court anytime now. That’s what apparently set all these articles in all these newspapers going. This isn’t coming out of nowhere like it looks to us Americans like it is.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19699581
 
This article, in English, towards the bottom, has more detail about the legal process that’s been going on for a couple of years now.

irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0924/breaking56.html

The news media in the US is just using the whiz-bang-style articles to get a quick jab in at the Church before the election. But in Germany, it’s a different issue and it’s been a controversy for some time now.

It appears from what I’m seeing, that the civil legal decision over what “opt out” means, in light of the law as it’s written in Germany, will be handed down shortly. Remember that this procedure applies not only to the Catholic Church but also the other churches. It goes to court this week, I think. Again, this is why these articles are appearing now in the news.
 
Elizium23 said:
It is not as simple as checking a box. What the Church needs is real and detailed evidence from this person that he intends to renounce his faith.

As you see, it will take a full document, plus at least a phone call, if not a personal visit, from a Church official in order to make it clear to this individual what he is giving up, and make it clear to the Church that he is certain of the finality of his decision (of course, for the Church the decision is never final, but a reconciliation will require a sacramental Confession and perhaps a lifting of censure by the ordinary).
Click to expand...
I mentioned that it could be a form (document) rather than a box to check. I also tracked down a form letter (in German) that could be used or modified for a pastor to contact an individual who chose to fill out the form about not being Catholic. Google’s translation of it is not all that great. If you can read German, here is the link.

I don’t read German, so in the horrible translation it sounds like they will try to talk the person out of it, but that they will not allow a person to receive sacraments, etc. if they persist in their course of action. The usual deathbed stuff applies, I take the translation to be saying.

So the Church will reach out to you, but they don’t seem to be letting you do what you wish.
 
GraceSofia said:
Katrin,
Do you mean to give a tenth in addition to the government-collected tax?
Also, do Muslims have to pay this tax? Most of the explanations I have seen, such as at Wikipedia, talk only about Christians and Jews.
Click to expand...
I asked and no, they don’t pay taxes; they donate to their own funds. So someone asked our friend who paid for all the mosques right, and Müslüm answered that he’d pay for all the mosques haha 😃 I suppose the mosques are maintained through donations also 😉
 
iloveangels said:
There’s no reason that either the government or the Church would go along with this. If it was possible just to check an “I don’t want to pay taxes” box which is essentially what an “I opt out-no strings attached” box would be, everyone would check it, the government would stop collecting taxes for the Church. Government employees would lose jobs because there would be fewer hours of work to do; the Church would lose funding. The Church in Germany gets something like 80% of its income from this church tax.

This church tax is a very old practice in German law. Their history is far different from ours, and people there are not used to placing their tithes in a basket in church like we do. Moreover, church attendance rates are very, very low in Germany as a whole, single digit in many places, and if collections were based on donations in Church, particularly in non-tourist areas, they’d probably be very low as a result, probably much lower than they are now with the old historic church tax.
Click to expand...
It being a venerable practice in Germany, I doubt that everyone would use the opt-out check box. Germans Catholics would understand the practice and accept it for the most part, and not try to opt-out, since they have an obligation to support the Church anyway. Maybe if you let Americans have an opt-out box, yes, they would mostly check it, but Germany as you point out has a different history.
 
iloveangels said:
This article, in English, towards the bottom, has more detail about the legal process that’s been going on for a couple of years now.

irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0924/breaking56.html

The news media in the US is just using the whiz-bang-style articles to get a quick jab in at the Church before the election.
Click to expand...
I guess the Irish media is just using the articles to get a quick jab in at the Church on general principles. :rolleyes:
 
504Katrin said:
I asked and no, they don’t pay taxes; they donate to their own funds. So someone asked our friend who paid for all the mosques right, and Müslüm answered that he’d pay for all the mosques haha 😃 I suppose the mosques are maintained through donations also 😉
Click to expand...
Why am I not surprised that they don’t pay taxes? Many mosques in Europe are funded by the Saudi royal family and some in Turkey, like the huge one in Cologne, were built by the Turkish government.

I’d love to see the U.S. and U.K. government come forward to donate money to prevent Catholic churches in the U.S. and U.K. in particular from closing or being sold off. The U.S. government has apparently spent money to build mosques, so why not?
 
So atheists in Germany who were formerly Christain are appalled that they have to pay a church tax.
So they declare they have left their respective churches.
They are now appalled that they can’t receive the sacrements that they don’t believe in.
You must have to be German to understand this.
 
gus said:
So atheists in Germany who were formerly Christain are appalled that they have to pay a church tax.
So they declare they have left their respective churches.
They are now appalled that they can’t receive the sacrements that they don’t believe in.
You must have to be German to understand this.
Click to expand...
LOL. No, just human.
I have an acquaintance who was outraged that the Catholic priest would not marry him and his girlfriend. He was a divorced nominal Protestant. The woman was a fallen away Catholic cohabiting with him and their 2 children. They were completely outraged! They thought they had a right to be married by that priest.
 
GraceSofia said:
Why am I not surprised that they don’t pay taxes? Many mosques in Europe are funded by the Saudi royal family and some in Turkey, like the huge one in Cologne, were built by the Turkish government.

I’d love to see the U.S. and U.K. government come forward to donate money to prevent Catholic churches in the U.S. and U.K. in particular from closing or being sold off. The U.S. government has apparently spent money to build mosques, so why not?
Click to expand...
Why would the US government do that? In Germany the tax is collected specifically for the Church. The State pays the priests salary and the upkeep of the Catholic churches, schools and hospitals.

While nowhere as high, a similar system is in place in Saskatchewan, Canada, where a part of your property tax goes to either the Catholic schools or the public schools depending on how you register. Both school systems are public funded.
 
German Bishops
The German bishops’ conference defended a controversial decree that said Catholics who stop paying a church membership tax cannot receive sacraments.
Click to expand...
“There must be consequences for people who distance themselves from the church by a public act,” said Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, conference president, in defending the Sept. 20 decree.
Click to expand...
“Clearly, someone withdrawing from the church can no longer take advantage of the system like someone who remains a member,” he said at a Sept. 24 news conference as the bishops began a four-day meeting in Fulda. “We are grateful Rome has given completely clear approval to our stance.”
Click to expand...
The archbishop said each departure was “painful for the church,” adding that bishops feared many Catholics were unaware of the consequences and would be “open to other solutions.”
Click to expand...
“The Catholic church is committed to seeking out every lost person,” said Archbishop Zollitsch, whose remarks were reported by Germany’s Die Welt daily.
“At issue, however, is the credibility of the church’s sacramental nature. One cannot be half a member or only partly a member. Either one belongs and commits, or one renounces this,” Archbishop Zollitsch said.
Click to expand...
Fr John Boyle
It would seem to me that the burden of proof is with the ecclesiastical authorities to verify that one who has removed his/her name from the religious tax register has in fact notoriously abandoned the faith or formally defected from the Church or is by some other means in manifest grave sin.
Click to expand...
I await with interest the comments of Dr. Edward Peters who is obviously studying the matter closely.
Click to expand...
The reported position of the German bishops is that “This decree makes clear that one cannot partly leave the Church.It is not possible to separate the spiritual community of the Church from the institutional Church.”This is obviously a fair point, but I think a lot rests on the motives for the removal of one’s name from the tax register. I think it would be difficult to uphold the requirement of being on a tax register for being considered a member of the “institutional Church”. But I’m sure the bishops have good Canon Lawyers involved in this and that the Vatican has guided them. We shall have to wait and see. I find it perplexing and would agree with one commentator that it sends the wrong signal.
Click to expand...
 
Many good Catholics do not want to pay Church taxes, because one part of this money is used to pay Heretics. Also some leave formally the Church, because it is a crime to allow everyone the Sacraments except to someone who does not pay taxes.
This is money for salvation and some like Hartmut Zapp try to fight this.
 
GelasianumVetus said:
The reason this is an issue is the particular way in which churches are supported in Germany. As a German citizen, you have an official religious affiliation, and the part of tax income that is earmarked for the various religious communities is given to the church you are officially a part of. Some Germans are trying to avoid this by officially renouncing their Catholic status. This is where the problem lies. They are officially stating to the government that they are not Catholic in order to avoid the tax.
Click to expand...
Does the German government collect extra taxes from people with a church affiliation or, if you claim an affiliation does it just give a portion of what you’d have to pay anyway?
 
Pug said:
I mentioned that it could be a form (document) rather than a box to check. I also tracked down a form letter (in German) that could be used or modified for a pastor to contact an individual who chose to fill out the form about not being Catholic. Google’s translation of it is not all that great. If you can read German, here is the link.

I don’t read German, so in the horrible translation it sounds like they will try to talk the person out of it, but that they will not allow a person to receive sacraments, etc. if they persist in their course of action. The usual deathbed stuff applies, I take the translation to be saying.

So the Church will reach out to you, but they don’t seem to be letting you do what you wish.
Click to expand...
Sure you can do as you wish. You can choose to sign and go anytime you wish.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top