A church tax. How outrageous is this?

Last week, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany issued a bishop’s decree stating that anyone failing to pay a special church tax amounting to 8% of his or her income tax bill would be denied the right to Holy Communion or a religious burial upon death.  Apparently, this tax is something that all Germans, regardless of whether they are Protestants or Jews, pay.  Introduced in the 19^th century, this was something that was meant to compensate for the nationalization of religious property.  I can only conjecture that this means that the monies collected would go into the upkeep and maintenance of church-owned properties.  These would include kindergartens, homes for the aged, and other church affiliated properties.

More apparently, the report stated that ‘without a sign of repentance before death, a religious burial can be refused’, and opting out of the tax would bar people from becoming godparents to Catholic children.

Understandably, this announcement caused a stir amongst the Catholics not only in Germany, but outside the country as well.  Many were livid at the way the Church in Germany seemed to put a monetary value on Sacraments and hence, the grace of God.  Some Germans said that though they did not want to pay the tax, they still wanted to receive the Sacraments and to go to Mass. 

Is this a wrong move to make, especially in a country that has Mass ‘attendances’ hardly in the healthy range?  I am wondering if this is the very reason the authorities had to take this seemingly drastic measure, because the active and contributing numbers alone are insufficient to meet the fiscal needs of the Church.  But is it really a simple case of ‘chicken or egg’, or is there more than meets the eye?

There has always been an unspoken understanding that when a person accepts Christ in baptism, that there is a complete re-orientation of one’s entire way of life and value system.  While it doesn’t mean that one automatically lives the life of a pauper, it somewhat requires (at least implicitly) that one learns to dispossess of oneself from that moment onward.  The first and easiest thing that one can do to activate and demonstrate this road toward selflessness and dispossession would be in a monetary and material way.  This works at a first level consciousness, and what would be noticed would be the ‘pain’ or ‘pinch’ that one feels when making that conscious choice to part with one’s hard earned money and drops it into the poor box or the collection plates that come around on Sunday before the offertory procession. 

But that is just the first level.  What should progress from there would be the further levels of selflessness and other-centeredness that are intrinsic in being disciples of the Lord.  For example, being generous with our time, being kind with our words, exercising forgiveness, developing our sense of community where we put aside our personal needs and wants for the good of the other, etc.  These are all the other necessary hallmarks of Christian living that the Gospel promotes.  They do not come easily, and one needs to constantly remind oneself (with the grace of God, of course) that at each moment, one is asked to die a little to oneself. 

While it is not a systematic and chronological flow, where one moves from a level 1 monetary giving, to a level 100 total self giving which sees a person imitating Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross, there is some connection.  One cannot deny this. 

I am wondering if the great uproar that people are making about this tax issue is somewhat connected with the fact that Catholics have somehow lost the understanding that the Christian life does entail a payment on many many levels.  If it is not a payment in monetary terms, it certainly is in other ways.  The very act of being immersed in a pool of water at baptism symbolizes that our lives are surrendered over to God, allowing us to take on a new identity.  That first dramatic act of handing over our lives to God is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  From that point on, there’s a whole life of giving that awaits us.  Perhaps the problem is that many of us tend to see the giving of anything – be it our time, our talents, our attention, our assets or our good disposition as something that the Church demands or ‘extorts’ unreasonably.  But isn’t the truth just the opposite, where if we really and truly understand and appreciate our new life in Christ and where he wants us to be at the end of our lives, i.e. heaven, that we will begin to see all these acts of giving as a mere response to what was first offered to us by God?  Truth be told, there is nothing that we can ever give that can equal or be worth anything near the tremendous gift of salvation and eternal beatitude.  It’s just beyond us.  Seen in this light, what is 8% of our income?  Everything else should in fact be seen in the light of salvation as gift, and gifts are meant never to be hoarded, but shared and distributed to those who are without them.

Yes, this is an ideal, but what is wrong with ideals?  Aren’t most of the problems in Church and the rest of life surrounding the fact that most of us are settling for mediocrity, the prosaic and the pedestrian?  There was an interesting article in a health supplement of the local (Singapore) paper last week about ‘Entering the discomfort zone’ in life, and the author insightfully showed how the greatest gains come only when we push ourselves beyond what our bodies are ordinarily used to do.  He gave the interesting examples of musicians who simply play easy, familiar pieces with the same old well-worn techniques, compared with the excellent musicians who push themselves harder, relentlessly honing their techniques eliminating their bad habits and ingrained faults with dedication and diligence.  This is hard work indeed, and analogously, so is our spiritual life. 

Most of us would prefer a ‘free lunch’ handed out to us in life, and sadly, a lot of us do think that the Christian life, initiated in baptism, is a kind of a ‘free lunch’.  Well, it isn’t.  We spend our entire lives responding to this call to spiritual perfection and it entails a dying to the self each day, and perhaps even each given moment. 

Is the Church in Germany wrong to peg an 8% minimum tax?  It does seem a tad drastic, and to be honest, I did feel rather uncomfortable with this setting of a number to ‘salvation’, though I am sure it is not meant to be the case.  It can easily misread as that, and I am sure that if it is not explained well, and to connect it to the basics of Christian living and the converted life, it probably will remain at that – a tax, and nothing more.  But if we take the trouble to re-examine what our baptismal calling is, and where it is really taking us to in the end, we may in fact be opening not just our purses more, but far more importantly, our hearts as well.