Ceci n'est pas une endive - Tag - crazy world - Comments

Holy shit! The Church got me. - Moya

Moya — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:00:34 +0100

This is a dreadful situation for the unsuspecting foreigner in Germany. There should be some kind of obligation on the authorities in Germany to explain to every foreigner employed in Germany that being Catholic or Protestant has nothing to do with religious faith but with finance.

The scandal is that opting out of paying Church Tax requires the person to renounce his/her faith. In the case of a baptized Catholic, from the point the 'church leaver' signs the formal declaration at the Local Court, he is excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Germany is the only country in the world heaving with apostates! Leaving the Catholic Church in Germany incurs severe penalties. As an excommunicated Catholic you cannot then be married in a Catholic Church. Your children cannot be baptized. You cannot be buried in a Catholic cemetery, your children cannot go to a state-funded Catholic school and so on.

The Catholic institutions, schools, hospitals, kindergartens, retirement homes are funded by Church Tax, which is collected by the state on behalf of the Church. Thousands are employed by these institutions and remunerated from the income from Church Tax. The problem is, the price paid to keep these insitutions going by the richest Church in the world is the highest that could be paid: excommunication if you don't want to pay this troubling tax.

Catholics have been leaving the Church in droves in recent years. The question is whether the German Catholic bishops are willing to ditch Church Tax for ways of financing its services which other countries around the world have been using for ever. It will of course mean than German Parish Priests will no longer be paid the high salaries they have accusomed to, or cruise around their parishes in Mercedes, but maybe, just maybe, they will then start remembering that the founder of the Church wanted to bring people to God, not drive them away.

Holy shit! The Church got me. - notafish

notafish — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:41:35 +0100

@ann the fee is not exactly steep, it's around 20 euros, depending on your local administration. This said, I do find it "steep" that you're asked to pay to "get out of the church". I still have to blog about the fact also that I received a very nice but firm letter from the Catholic Church in France, a few weeks after having "gotten out" of the church in Germany which read that they were sorry to see me go. So this has a long tail.

Holy shit! The Church got me. - ann

ann — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:24:25 +0200

hi!

I am in exactly the same situation. I said 'yes' , I am a catholic and only later I realised I need to pay high 9 % taxes on income for that!!! And I do not even go to church. You mentioned 'steep' fee...how much was it if I may ask?

thanks a lot!

The Toilet in the Bathroom - Guillaume

Guillaume — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:47:50 +0100

« A bathroom without a toilet is not a bathroom ». Well, he didn't say someone had to actually use it :). You can probably find some shelves and a heavy cupboard...

Holy shit! The Church got me. - Olaf

Olaf — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:27:03 +0100

The BBC article about the roots of French secularism you linked too also says that "all obvious religious symbols from schools - including headscarves, Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps" are banned.

In Germany, there is no issue about what school children wear to school (imagine the state forbade Jews their kipa (scullcap)! Gulp!).

However, there has been an issue with German teachers wearing a headscarf and whether this was legal or not. The conclusion some states (such as Baden Würtemberg) reached was, that the headscarf was illegal for teachers - but NOT the nun habit (the Christian version of a headscarf and modest clothes). (There are some schools run by monasteries)

Weird, isn't it?

And the weird thing was, that the courts even uphold this rule, even though it clearly favors one religion over another...and even though this runs against the German constitution ("no one may be discriminated against because of their religion")

Holy shit! The Church got me. - Olaf

Olaf — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:53:12 +0100

In order to get "out" of the church, you simply go to your local "Bürgerbüro" (office that deals with anything going on between the city and you, the citizen. The place they issue passports as well as parking permits. The place they sell you a trash bag if you have more trash than your alloted quota/than fits into your trash can) and state that you want to leave the church ("Ich möchte aus der Kirche austreten"). You pay a (steep! for that little administrative effort at least) fee, which differs between cities, get a piece of paper which states that you left church and take that paper as well as your "Lohnsteuerkarte" (colored income tax piece of cardboard) to another person in the same office and they will cross out your religious affiliation and then you won't have to pay tax on your (non existing) religious affiliation.

If you try to argue that you never "joined" the church in Germany good luck. Most Germans were joined by being born by parents associated to a Christian church and I had to pay, even though *I* never joined anything.

You have to prove that you are not a member of the church, NOT the other way around - even though it *should* be the other way around. But I never understood German logic either.