Deacon, you may not be aware but the BBC is far from impartial when it comes to matters of religion. They would be far happier living under a Marxist state where all kinds of religious expression were banned. It is amazing that the BBC gives up 30 minutes a week on a single channel to screen
Songs of Praise, which it does most reluctantly and keeps changing the time every week to discourage viewers and lower ratings.
The article’s headline is misleading and the text contains several distortions, which you appear to have picked up.
1. The tax is
not a Catholic levy, i.e. an additional tax, in the manner of historical tithes. It is an apportionment of your overall tax bill. So if you pay tax at 20%, you do not pay any more tax on top simply because you are a Catholic.
2. All that happens is that a proportion of your tax (8%) is remitted to the Church rather than going into a general government pot. If you are a Catholic, then it goes to the Catholic church; if you are a Protestant then it goes to whichever church it is that you belong to. Note that is 8% of the 20%, so it amounts to 1.6% of your income. And for the privilege of collecting it, the German government takes a fee. If you have no religion then the money goes to the state – you do not get a refund!
3. The tax came about after the German government nationalised (stole) church property, so it is perfectly fair that the government should pay some compensation for its actions.
4. The principle of a citizen being able to nominate where some of his tax is spent is accepted in many countries. There is a very similar system in Switzerland. In the UK there was a long running debate over the destination of part of the Trades Union Subscription (the political levy), which had automatically gone to support the Labour party. It was changed at the request of members so that it can be nominated to support any registered charity, including churches. Of course this upset the Marxists at the BBC.
The most objectionable part of the article is the suggestion that church members would be denied the sacraments if they failed to pay this ‘tax’ implying that the Church is in some way only accessible to those who can pay. This is complete rubbish. The church does not sell any item which has been blessed. Access to church services has always been free and unconditional. Indeed, the statement includes this affirmation simply to dispel any fears to the contrary.
Catholics are under a duty to provide financial support to the church according to their ability. What appears to have been happening is that those who work in church schools/hospitals/institutions have been allowing their tax contributions to go elsewhere, rather than support those institutions that employ them! The decree of the German bishops is a reminder to those who have been careless that they should get the paperwork filled in. If it is conditional of being employed that you are a practising Catholic then it seems reasonable to me that you should ask for part of your tax revenue to effectively subsidize your own job! If the same option was generally available, I don’t know anyone who would opt to shut down their own employer. It may well be that certain public authorities in Germany have been registering people automatically as 'non-religious' so the money goes to support their own budgets rather than the church. It is about money, not religion, about paying for the social services provided by the Church. The Catholic Church in Germany is going through a rough patch with considerable resistance to certain changes promulgated in Rome. However, on this at least, the Vatican is fully behind the German bishops and it is disappointing that the story has been so distorted.
There have been similar problems in the UK where because of the interpretation of Labour’s badly written equality laws and the general desire to destroy all religious life in this country, Catholic Adoption Agencies were forced to allow adoption in non-traditional families. The government wanted the agencies to continue their good work (which was paid for by the voluntary contribution of Catholics), but insisted they act against the principles of the faith. The result was that those agencies closed. No collections are made in churches now to support the work of these bodies. I am at a loss to understand who benefits from such stupidity.