What is the power of the Vatican?
A car from the residence of the bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg and the Catholic Cathedral of the central nervous system.
Billions of euros to the coffers in the German hierarchy every year thanks to tax church Hardly anyone goes to church, but it means that the bishops can intimidate Rome.
On the face of it, the German Catholicism is not in a very healthy state A survey conducted by the German Bishops Conference this summer found that weekly Mass attendance is now just 10 8 percent, after falling half of 22 percent recently in 1989. This is a lower rate of participation in that of England and Wales, and not much higher than in France anticlerical the number of marriages in churches German Catholics, as to him, rose from 116000 in 1990 to 44000 in 2013.
Even these figures are flattered by immigration from countries traditionally most observers like Poland or Croatia It is comforting for German Catholics that the Protestant churches are even worse German Church remains a major player in international Catholicism , largely because Germany Kirchensteuer own church tax system means that it is very rich.
The amounts involved are enormous In 2013, the Catholic Church in Germany has received almost 5 5 billion on June 4 billion a church tax Many international Catholic charitable activities would be impossible without German money is therefore not surprising that the priorities of Germany carry a lot of weight with for his lavish spending on Rome vanity projects and other Episcopal conferences of Europe strapped Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, the famous bling sacked bishop by Pope Francis, is not typical of the German bishops, but it is emblematic of wealth and arrogance of the German Church.
The origins of the church date of imposition back to the 19th century, when many German states have moved away from funding directly princes Catholic churches or Protestant in their strongholds The tax was designed to distribute money between Catholic, Protestant and Jewish communities based on the number of believers in this system, the tax authorities would collect a small percentage of your income in exchange for a commission, give to the church of your choice.
In some ways, the church tax corresponds to the German corporatist culture, there are other manifestations of this example, when Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki was recently appointed archbishop of Cologne, his appointment must be approved by the Government the State of North Rhine-Westphalia before being sent to Rome for ratification but the church tax because it affects directly the money, for example, was far the biggest Bismarck failed to break the church Catholic, but funding is administered by the State actually domesticated it.
Critics of the church tax have long noted that it has a corrupting effect, and there are many practical examples to prove it is a glaring anomaly that only a third of German Catholics are actually paying as applied as a supplement to the income tax, no children taxable income, pensioners, housewives, the unemployed fall outside the system.
But mass participation has fallen so low that the number of nominal Catholics pay the fee goes well beyond the number actively involved in the church This means there is little incentive for the bishops to consider emergency deterioration participation.
There are even more undesirable consequences German Church bureaucratic tendencies were still strong, thanks to its huge dioceses only 27 compared to 22 for the much smaller Catholic population of England and Wales and attachment German regulations But diocesan bureaucracies are overshadowed by the money and manpower in secular institutions.
With 560,000 employees, Caritas is the second largest employer after Volkswagen Such was the country context for the debate that took place between Kasper and Cardinal Ratzinger from 1999 to 2002 about the nature of authority in the Church if it flowed down Rome or up local and national churches Benoît XVI skepticism about national bishops conferences was very influenced by his knowledge of the German Church bureaucracy.
Despite his numbers down the German Church has played an important role in the recent Synod in Rome Family This was largely thanks to Pope Francis mystifying decision to let Cardinal Walter Kasper, retired head of the Vatican ecumenism, open in February at the consistory of cardinals procedure It should have been obvious that Cardinal Kasper would use the opportunity to push for Catholics and remarried to be readmitted to communion, a subject he has campaigned for over 20 years marks the verbose style of Cardinal Kasper during the Synod itself didn t improve matters, and drove straight into a row unedifying with Cardinal Raymond Burke would be easy to dismiss this as unimportant, especially more on this cardinal Kasper is very out of step with the international Catholic hierarchy, but the ruckus at the Synod does not expose the powerful German church throw his weight around an unusually public.
The pastoral care of divorced and remarried, of course, a big problem in many countries, from the increasing divergence between the understanding of the secular society of marriage and the teaching of the Church, but in Germany that has been fought over openly for many years in July 1993 a joint pastoral letter on the subject was issued by three bishops from the southwest of Germany late Archbishop Oskar Saier of Freiburg and bishops Karl Lehmann of Mainz and Walter Kasper of Rottenburg-Stuttgart These are not marginal Saier archbishop was one of the most important figures of the German bishops conference for decades, and both Kasper and Lehmann received red hats in 2001, Cardinal Lehmann remained in Mainz as a major power brokers of the German Church, as Cardinal Kasper moved to the Roman Curia.
At the heart of the three bishops letter was a process proposed to allow civilly remarried divorcees who either could not or would not apply to a church court for cancellation still receive communion Affected people seek spiritual guidance from a priest, and if they have decided in conscience that their previous marriage was invalid, the priest would have to respect their decision.
The German initiative has not gained the approval of Rome, and in September 1994, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith CDF issued a response, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and approved by Pope John Paul II The answer recognized that there was a real problem in the pastoral ministry to Catholics in irregular marriages, but argued that there was no way around the Catholic teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and valid, given that marriage was not only private, but a public affair, the Church could not just leave individual parishioner aware of what hasn t deterred Cardinal Kasper, who continued to back his cause pet on a regular basis.
The reality is that there is very limited scope for large pastoral initiatives in this area without fundamentally revise the marriage Church's understanding Even in the United States, where more than 80 percent cancellation requests are granted in relation less than 40 percent in Italy, the country with the second largest number of ecclesiastical authorities nullity must face the reality that the vast majority of divorced Catholics simply do not apply for nullity Rome can still decide to streamline the process of cancellation, but most likely the dominant approach on the field will be the one to close his eyes.
The real scandal, however, is what happens to parishioners who choose to pay the church tax, you can do that with the signing of a formal declaration that you left the church hierarchy German treat this apostasy and estimate that those who do so themselves have excommunicated a detailed set of guidelines issued by the bishops' Conference of Germany in September 2012 found that those who make the statement are not eligible to receive the sacraments not only are they excluded from communion, but they can only get married in church with the consent of the local ordinary, and may even be denied a Christian burial if they failed to show signs of repentance before death That does not sit well , at least with the current push to relax the rules for remarried Catholics an uncharitable observer might conclude that the money was more im with the teaching of the Church.
All these problems with the tax system of the church are well known and have been controversial for years but it seems that few people have interest in changing the critical things in the German Church came mostly liberals extreme or extreme conservatives, the hierarchy seems content with the status quo Few German politicians have expressed interest in the repeal of the tax and Rome has become used to being Germany's golden goose.
It would take an earthquake to shake the German Church its complacency.
This article appeared in the magazine The Catholic Herald December 12, 14.
Why the German Church is rich and arrogant, German church rich German Bishops' Conference.