German Catholics can only remain in the Church if they pay membership tax, rules court

This had been challenged by a retired law professor who said he wanted to remain a Catholic but not pay the tax. Last week, a new bishops' decree warned that anyone not paying the tax would be denied the right to religious rites. The German church levy was introduced in 1803 in compensation for the nationalization of religious property.

In 2011, the Catholic Church received 5bn Euros and the Protestant Church 4.5bn Euros from taxpayers, each adding up to the bulk of the churches' income, the BBC's Berlin correspondent Stephen Evans said.

He added that this arrangement, whereby the state collects taxes on behalf of religious groups and then reimburses them, was unusual in Western secular societies.

Hartmut Zapp, a retired professor of church law, filed a legal challenge in 2007, arguing that under Catholic doctrine, Church membership was determined by a person's beliefs and not by a financial relationship. The Freiburg University academic said he wanted to continue praying and receiving Holy Communion without paying the religious levy.

Judges at the Leipzig Federal Administrative Court, however, disagreed with Prof Zapp and ruled that there could not be partial Church membership. Their verdict follows a new bishops' decree issued last week, according to which anyone failing to pay the tax will no longer have the right to Holy Communion and religious burial.

Already alarmed by declining congregation numbers, the bishops were also pushed into action by Mr Zapp's legal challenge. They said refusal to pay Church tax should be seen as a serious act against the community.

Catholics make up around 30% of Germany's population but the number of congregants leaving the church swelled to 181,000 in 2010, with the increase blamed on revelations of sexual abuse by German priests.

“This decree makes clear that one cannot partly leave the Church,” Germany's bishops' conference said last week, in a decision endorsed by the Vatican.

Unless they pay the religious tax, Catholics will no longer be allowed receive sacraments, except before death, or work in the church and its schools or hospitals.

Without a “sign of repentance before death, a religious burial can be refused”, the decree states. Opting out of the tax would also bar people from acting as godparents to Catholic children.

“This decree at this moment of time is really the wrong signal by the German bishops who know that the Catholic church is in a deep crisis,” said Christian Weisner from the grassroots Catholic campaign group We Are Church.

But a priest from Mannheim in south-western Germany, Father Lukas Glocker, said the tax was used to do essential good works.

“With kindergarten, with homes for elderly or unemployed, we've got really good things so I know we need the tax to help the German country to do good things.”

While the decree severely limits active participation in the German Catholic Church, it does hold out some hope for anyone considering a return to the fold.

Until now, any German Catholic who stopped payment faced eventual excommunication. Although the measures laid out in the decree are similar to excommunication from the church, German observers say the word is carefully avoided in the decree.

Germany's Roman Catholics can only remain part of the Church if they pay a membership tax, a court has ruled. All Germans who are officially registered as Catholics, Protestants or Jews pay a religious tax, worth an extra 8-9% of their income tax bill....In 2011, the Catholic Church received 5bn Euros and the Protestant Church 4.5bn Euros from taxpayers, each adding up to the bulk of the churches' income, the BBC's Berlin correspondent Stephen Evans said. He added that this arrangement, whereby the state collects taxes on behalf of religious groups and then reimburses them, was unusual in Western secular societies....

....Their verdict follows a new bishops' decree issued last week, according to which anyone failing to pay the tax will no longer have the right to Holy Communion and religious burial. Already alarmed by declining congregation numbers, the bishops were also pushed into action by Mr Zapp's legal challenge. They said refusal to pay Church tax should be seen as a serious act against the community....Unless they pay the religious tax, Catholics will no longer be allowed receive sacraments, except before death, or work in the church and its schools or hospitals.

This illustrates why there should be separation of Church and State.

There is no institution -- pure or corrupt -- that the State cannot make worse.

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on the supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no powers equal to our own and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

Jefferson's tombstone omits reference to having been President, but includes authorship of The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom (1786) as one of his three major accomplishments. (The other two are the Declaration of Independence and founding of University of Virginia.)

To put this in simple terms....everyone in Germany has a right to quit the Church Tax. The downside is from that day on...no church wedding, no church funeral, and no confirmation activity for your kids. The average guy (figure $35k a year)....pays roughly $500.

Now, from a historical prospective...folks in the 1980s....were not keen on quitting. They all wanted the funeral. Some made the decision after the wedding to quit and just accept the deal. Over the past twenty years...several folks have opened chapels and a number of lay ministers conduct funeral services for roughly two to three hundred bucks. This makes it interesting to quit and just accept a cheaper deal.

My observation (twenty-odd years) is that the Church Tax is dying off and income is less each and every year. It might take another fifty years....but Germany and it’s eighty million might dwindle down to 100,000 tax-paying Catholics, and ninety percent of the Catholic churches would dissolve into real estate market.

It’s all fair....if you don’t want membership....you don’t pay the tax. Just accept the consequences later when your funeral comes up.

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