By AHMA
Updated: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:26:08 UTC

I do not usually post a lot but I felt it an important topic, especially in the light of recent events.

So I will first point out those events, then give my reasoning for my title.

The Society of St. Pius X is a Christian organisation that has no official canonical status. They profess "traditional" Catholicism. One I would rather call fanatical. You may remember one of their members, Bishop Richard Williamson, for his Holocaust denial.

Unfortunately, they are allowed to maintain primary and secondary schools. The latest primary schools facility, in a village in Bavaria, is rented out to them by a member of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union).

One of them, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, in my opinion, personally insulted Professor Richard Dawkins by claiming "Dawkins propagates a body of thought which is identical to that of totalitarian regimes" and "his aggressive fight against belief and Church will lead to an abolition of humanity, the very thing that the concentration camps and gulags encapsulated." (http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article5095138/Piusbruderschaft-lobt-Meisner-fuer-NS-Vergleich.html)

These events and many others led me to a state where I simply had to voice one of the many concerns I have, which is the complete, yet silenced, disregard of the German state for its supposed secularity.

In 1803, during the Mediatisation process, land that was owned by members of the church was given to non ecclesiastical rulers. As compensation, it was decided that the benefiting states should all pay all salaries of clergymen, cover the costs of church maintenance, etc.

This, by the way, is in addition to the church tax, which is collected on top.

Unfortunately, they forgot to set a timeframe. So it came about that Bismarck paid, the Weimar Republic paid, Hitler paid, and the German State of today still pays.

There have been petitions to put an end to this, alas, to no avail. This is the answer to one of the petitions (in German).

Just to give you an idea, the annual salary payments (public tax money) for members of the church amount to over 400 million Euros a year. (Yes, I got that number right.) In 2009 it was 442 million Euros.

The most recent renewal of this contract was in 1933, between the Catholic Church and the Nazi government, the so-called "Reichskonkordat".

The actual payments to the Church are much higher then that and include pensions for members of the church, as well as the complete pay of theologians teaching in state universities etc. Many hundreds of millions are lost that way to the church.

But to me the most astonishing part is that the churches' strongest argument, their social work, is mostly paid for out of public taxes. Actually, up to 98% of "Christian" institutions in Germany are currently paid for from taxpayers' money.

But as the organisation behind it is the church, they can enforce their own doctrines, and ordinary work laws do not apply. As such, an openly atheist person could be denied a job simply for his non-belief.

In 2001 there was extensive research done to assess how much money the church in Germany really has, as it was constantly complaining about declining tax income. In 2001 the Christian churches combined held assets worth 981 billion Deutschmarks. That makes them by far the richest organisation in the country.

I can only hope that in times of trouble, which seem sure to come, we will use that money for better purposes. I would be surprised to see the churches use their own money to pay for the social services they so like to advocate. As they say, miracles do happen.

TAGGED: POLITICS, RELIGION, SECULARISM, SOCIETY