PopeWatch: Deutschland

The hun is always either at your throat or at your feet.

Winston Churchill

One could make an argument that since the 19th century, and Karl Marx, much of the man made evil afflicting the world on a global scale has had its roots in Germany.  Under Pope Francis the Catholic Church in Germany is a pet, its leadership assuming strong roles in the Vatican, a new Argentina-Germany axis around the Church will revolve.  The Pope Emeritus however had a skeptical eye on the Church in his Fatherland.  Sandro Magister at his blog Chiesa gives us the details:

ROME, October 11, 2016 – “In Germany some persons are always trying to destroy me,” pope emeritus Benedict XVI has said in the book-length interview released in recent days.

And he has cited the example of the “fabrication” mounted against him by some of his countrymen when he changed the old prayer of Good Friday against the “perfidi Iudaei.”

But in the same book Joseph Ratzinger has lodged against the German Church an accusation much more general in its scope: that of being too “worldly” and therefore of having disregarded the strong appeal for “de-mundanification” that he issued during his last journey to Germany as pope, in the memorable address in Freiburg on September 25, 2011:

> Meeting with Catholics engaged in the life of the Church and society

The key passages of that “revolutionary” address – his definition – of the pontificate of Benedict XVI are reproduced further below.

But first there is another point of the book-length interview that calls for attention. It is the one in which Ratzinger speaks out against the system of ecclesiastical taxation in Germany and its nefarious effects:

“In effect I have serious doubts about the correctness of the system as it is. I do not mean that there should not be an ecclesiastical tax, but the automatic excommunication of those who do not pay it, in my view, is not sustainable. [. . .] In Germany we have a Catholicism that is structured and well-paid, in which Catholics are often employees of the Church and have a union mentality in regard to it. For them, the Church is only an employer to be criticized. They are not motivated by a dynamic of faith. I believe that this represents the great danger of the Church in Germany: there are so many collaborators under contract that the institution is turning into a worldly bureaucracy. [. . .] This situation saddens me, this excess of money that yet again is not enough, and the bitterness that it generates, the sarcasm of the circles of intellectuals.”

There is a striking contrast between this tough criticism and the favor that the German Church itself enjoys today from the pope who succeeded Benedict, as if this were the avant-garde of the desired renewal of Christianity worldwide under the banner of poverty and mercy, when instead it is plain for all to see that in Germany the Church is for the most part neither poor nor merciful, but if anything suffocated by its own apparatus and above all on its knees to the world on many crucial questions of morality and dogma.

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In order to understand Ratzinger’s criticisms better, it must be kept in mind that in Germany the Kirchensteuer, the ecclesiastical tax, is obligatory by law for all those who are registered as members of the Catholic Church or the Protestant Churches.

This tax brings the German Catholic Church more than 5 billion euro per year. An imposing sum, more than five times as much, for example, than the revenue brought in by the Italian Church with a state system of contribution – the “eight per thousand” – that is not obligatory but voluntary, and with a constituency of Catholics more than double that of Germany.

But since in Germany those who do not want to pay this tax must cancel their membership in the Church with a public act before a competent civil authority, and since these cancellations have been increasing in recent years, with the effect of reducing revenues, the German Catholic Church has implemented a countermeasure to discourage this attrition.

It did so in 2012 with a decree that stipulates for the leave-takers a series of deadly canonical sanctions, as if they were excommunicated and infected, without sacraments or even burial:

> Decreto generale della conferenza episcopale tedesca

To begin with, those who cancel their membership in the Church “may not receive the sacraments of penance, of the Eucharist, of confirmation and of the anointing of the sick, except in danger of death.”

And if then, after an attempt at reconciliation made by the local pastor, the restoration of the reprobate to the fold should fail, there could be even worse in store for him:

“When in the behavior of the believer who has declared his departure from the Church there should be seen an action that is schismatic, heretical, or of apostasy, the ordinary will see to taking the corresponding measures.”

A long way from mercy. In Germany, the divorced and remarried receive communion everywhere with no worries, homosexual marriages are increasingly blessed in church, but woe to anyone who removes his signature from the payment of the Kirchensteuer.

In an interview in the “Schwäbische Zeitung” of July 17, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Ratzinger’s prefect of the pontifical household and personal secretary, also denounced this glaring contradiction:

“How does the Catholic Church in Germany react to those who do not pay the tax for the Church? With automatic exclusion from the ecclesial communion, which means: excommunication. That is excessive, incomprehensible. Dogmas can be called into question and no one is driven out. Is it perhaps that the non-payment of the Kirchensteuer is a more serious infraction than transgressions against the truths of faith? The impression is that, as long as faith is at stake, the matter is not so tragic, but when money comes into play, the time for joking around is over.”

Not to mention the influences that the German Church can wield over many dioceses in the southern hemisphere, which it finances with its revenues, in addition to the Holy See itself, of which it is a prominent benefactor.

But now let’s hear from Ratzinger and his “revolutionary” address in Freiburg of September 25, 2011, as unheeded as it is of extraordinary relevance, not only for the Church of Germany.

Go here to read the rest.  The German Church highlights the danger of State supported churches.  Too often money becomes far more important than orthodoxy.  Ah, well, at least the Boche have an amusing national anthem: