Dear Cardinal Marx (how to revive the Catholic Church in Germany)

Dear Cardinal Marx (how to revive the Catholic Church in Germany) October 13, 2015

Dear Cardinal Marx,*

It’s been reported in the (U.S. Catholic) news that, as archbishop of Munich and Freising, you and your fellow German bishops are threatening to change church teaching regarding remarriage, and maybe other areas regarding sexuality and the family as well, such as those having to do with same-sex couples, in the name of “pastoral care.”  You seem to believe that this action will revive the fortunes of the Catholic Church in Germany, which is losing adherents year after year.

And perhaps you’ll gain a few new members, or at any rate, a few individuals will choose to continue staying on the rolls — though you may lose just as many who feel cheated by having struggled through a difficult marriage and now feel like suckers for it.

But if you really want to revive the church, rather than just keep the money flowing in, it’s time for a bigger change, one that’s more radical, and more challenging.  Yes:  get rid of the church tax.  Regular readers of mine will know that I talked about this yesterday here, but I felt it merited addressing more directly.

Yes, I know that the church tax was intended to keep the church strong.  My first German teacher, in Germany, told us that the objective was to ensure that the church wouldn’t be co-opted by the government but would be able to speak against injustice, even if perpetrated by the government itself.  But it’s making things worse, not better.

Here are three key reasons to abandon the tax:

1) Unlike the voluntary contributions Americans make to their churches, the German church tax is an all-or-nothing extra 9% of income tax.  With no option to simply pay less church tax, more and more of your flock is choosing “nothing.”

2) Church tax, being centralized, doesn’t reward local parishes who actually work to reach out and minister.  So far as I understand, the funds are allocated to parishes based on the total count of registered Catholics who live within predefined geographic borders, without regard to how many attend services or are involved in the church in any other way.  True, baskets are passed during mass, but the practice of tossing in a few coins rather than foldin’ money means this makes little difference.  Once could even say that this system penalizes churches who work at ministering, given staffing costs, the cost of keeping the building heated, and all the extra costs that don’t result in any additional donations coming their way.  It also seems to me that the very centralized nature of church tax collection seems to be encouraging leadership to aim for centralized “quick fixes” such as retreating from unpopular doctrine, rather than encouraging local parishes to reach out.  Certainly, there is a definite benefit to the fact that, if one American parish disappoints its parishioners, they will vote with their feet, and pocketbooks, by going elsewhere.

3)  Church tax is corrupting.  Let’s fact it:  we in the U.S. had the sexual abuse crisis; you’ve got  the “bishop of bling.” And rather than seeing the growing number of de-registrations as a need for change, you’re doubling-down on denial of sacraments to those who refuse to pay up.  Do you not see how wrong this is?  Is this not in itself a demonstration that the church tax has corrupted church leadership?

And, by the way, I’m not just some busybody American who thinks she knows better.  My husband is German, and we lived in Germany for two years, with two small children.  The first year, I alternated between trying out a number of reasonably-nearby parishes (the low-light:  an old lady yelling at me about my misbehaving kids, after mass at Maria Koenigin in Gruenwald), alternatingly with and without kids in tow, and attending, as a family, the welcoming, child-friendly haven of St. Killian’s English-speaking parish (the website listed at the link is invalid, so I do hope they’re still around).  The second year, I found St. Georg in Taufkirchen, which at the time had a Familiengottesdienst nearly every Sunday, even if there wasn’t anything more to it than kid-friendly hymns and an explicit welcome to families.  (As a bonus, they were built recently enough that they actually had bathrooms in the building — a must when you’re potty-training a child.)  Now they’re a part of the Pfarrverband with the other local parish, the welcoming priest is gone, and everything’s scaled back considerably.  And you know what?  When I had my youngest son baptized there, they had to secure official permission from the parish I was geographically supposed to be at, for reasons that were never entirely clear to me but I assumed had to do with the local parish having a “claim” to me and whatever coins I should see fit to throw their way, or to a more generous donation what we were supposed to have made by virtue of some unwritten rule.

Now, I know you’ve got cathedrals to maintain, and it’s a big risk to forgo what seems like a guaranteed income stream, but is the slow decline in revenues, with no end in sight, really the right choice?  If you truly want to minister to your parishoners, please, abandon the Church Tax.

Best Regards,

Jane the Actuary

* My apologies for writing in English rather than German, but just let me know and I’d be happy to translate.


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