Cash-strapped governments in Europe are looking to properties owned by the Roman Catholic Church as a source of revenue.
This troubles me in at least two ways. First of all, the more functions the government takes on, the greater its need for revenue. If, having exhausted its individual and commercial sources of revenue, the expanded and expansive government turns to properties and income streams connected with a church, it is fueling its growth at the expense of “civil society.” Government drains old communal institutions to support its programs. There’s just a whiff of totalitarianism in all this. Just a whiff.
Second, it seems pretty clear that the government will decide which functions are core religious functions and which aren’t. (Shades of the contraceptive mandate here!) For fiscal purposes, then, religion is whatever the government says it is. While there’s talk about the separation of church and state (especially where there are long-standing cooperative relationships, let alone subsidies), the effect, ultimately, is to subordinate the church to the state. Another glint of totalitarianism.
I’m glad that we have a First Amendment and a culture that values religious liberty in the United States. But we also have elites that wish us to become ever more like our European brethren and regard our religiosity as a retrograde tendency. And we have governments looking for ever more areas of responsibility and ever more sources of revenue. When the irresistible force comes, I hope and pray that the object is indeed immovable.
September 14th, 2012 | 1:54 pm
In all fairness to European governments: (1) The European Church doesn’t have a history of relying on donations from the people, but relies on donations from the government. (2) Several exposes in Italian media have shown Church “properties” that are clearly being run as commercial enterprises, such as a hotel in a central business district that charged room rents at the same rate as nearby lodging.
The Catholic Church in Italy has stated they are willing to pay their fair share on such enterprises, so I don’t think you’re likely to see a big fight on the principle. Personally, I’d prefer the Church got out of that business altogether, but I haven’t really thought about it much.
September 15th, 2012 | 4:39 am
In most cases, what Jack Perry calls “donations from the government” are, in reality, compositions for church property expropriated by the government.
In France, the present annual rental value of the pre-1789 church property (parishes, dioceses and religious orders) is €144 billion or $189 billion. If one adds the dîme or tithe (calculated at one-sixth of rental values) the figure is almost doubled. Under the Concordat of 1801, the state paid the salaries of the clergy and maintained church buildings. Since 1905, it has merely maintained the buildings (which are state property) except in Alsace-Moselle, which was part of Germany between 1871 and 1918 and where the Concordat is still in force. The state also pays the salaries of teachers and librarians in church schools, but not that of the principal or other staff.
This pattern has been repeated all over Europe.
September 16th, 2012 | 4:14 pm
It is well to keep in mind that the story in the gospels where Jesus is asked about taxes does not mention an excemption for the church … neither is such an excemption found anywhere else in the New Testament.
And to call the potential taxing of churches “totalitarian” redefines the meaning of that term. As long as the decision to tax is made by democratically elected officials how can it be totalitarian in the proper sense of that word?
I should declare my interest: the evangelical church I belong to is not tax exempt in my country; never has been and never will be; it is not even recognized as a church on a par with the Catholic church.
September 17th, 2012 | 4:18 pm
Mein lieber Herr Paul,
It is commonly understood that the power to tax is the power to destroy.
The larger the state grows, the more it needs revenue, the weaker becomes the civil society (or “mediating structures”) that is (or are) supposed to interpose itself (or themselves)between the state and the individual.
This is the whiff or glint of totalitarianism I smell or glimpse.
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