☀️ JOIN SPN MOBILE
Forums
New posts
Guru Granth Sahib
Composition, Arrangement & Layout
ਜਪੁ | Jup
ਸੋ ਦਰੁ | So Dar
ਸੋਹਿਲਾ | Sohilaa
ਰਾਗੁ ਸਿਰੀਰਾਗੁ | Raag Siree-Raag
Gurbani (14-53)
Ashtpadiyan (53-71)
Gurbani (71-74)
Pahre (74-78)
Chhant (78-81)
Vanjara (81-82)
Vaar Siri Raag (83-91)
Bhagat Bani (91-93)
ਰਾਗੁ ਮਾਝ | Raag Maajh
Gurbani (94-109)
Ashtpadi (109)
Ashtpadiyan (110-129)
Ashtpadi (129-130)
Ashtpadiyan (130-133)
Bara Maha (133-136)
Din Raen (136-137)
Vaar Maajh Ki (137-150)
ਰਾਗੁ ਗਉੜੀ | Raag Gauree
Gurbani (151-185)
Quartets/Couplets (185-220)
Ashtpadiyan (220-234)
Karhalei (234-235)
Ashtpadiyan (235-242)
Chhant (242-249)
Baavan Akhari (250-262)
Sukhmani (262-296)
Thittee (296-300)
Gauree kii Vaar (300-323)
Gurbani (323-330)
Ashtpadiyan (330-340)
Baavan Akhari (340-343)
Thintteen (343-344)
Vaar Kabir (344-345)
Bhagat Bani (345-346)
ਰਾਗੁ ਆਸਾ | Raag Aasaa
Gurbani (347-348)
Chaupaday (348-364)
Panchpadde (364-365)
Kaafee (365-409)
Aasaavaree (409-411)
Ashtpadiyan (411-432)
Patee (432-435)
Chhant (435-462)
Vaar Aasaa (462-475)
Bhagat Bani (475-488)
ਰਾਗੁ ਗੂਜਰੀ | Raag Goojaree
Gurbani (489-503)
Ashtpadiyan (503-508)
Vaar Gujari (508-517)
Vaar Gujari (517-526)
ਰਾਗੁ ਦੇਵਗੰਧਾਰੀ | Raag Dayv-Gandhaaree
Gurbani (527-536)
ਰਾਗੁ ਬਿਹਾਗੜਾ | Raag Bihaagraa
Gurbani (537-556)
Chhant (538-548)
Vaar Bihaagraa (548-556)
ਰਾਗੁ ਵਡਹੰਸ | Raag Wadhans
Gurbani (557-564)
Ashtpadiyan (564-565)
Chhant (565-575)
Ghoriaan (575-578)
Alaahaniiaa (578-582)
Vaar Wadhans (582-594)
ਰਾਗੁ ਸੋਰਠਿ | Raag Sorath
Gurbani (595-634)
Asatpadhiya (634-642)
Vaar Sorath (642-659)
ਰਾਗੁ ਧਨਾਸਰੀ | Raag Dhanasaree
Gurbani (660-685)
Astpadhiya (685-687)
Chhant (687-691)
Bhagat Bani (691-695)
ਰਾਗੁ ਜੈਤਸਰੀ | Raag Jaitsree
Gurbani (696-703)
Chhant (703-705)
Vaar Jaitsaree (705-710)
Bhagat Bani (710)
ਰਾਗੁ ਟੋਡੀ | Raag Todee
ਰਾਗੁ ਬੈਰਾੜੀ | Raag Bairaaree
ਰਾਗੁ ਤਿਲੰਗ | Raag Tilang
Gurbani (721-727)
Bhagat Bani (727)
ਰਾਗੁ ਸੂਹੀ | Raag Suhi
Gurbani (728-750)
Ashtpadiyan (750-761)
Kaafee (761-762)
Suchajee (762)
Gunvantee (763)
Chhant (763-785)
Vaar Soohee (785-792)
Bhagat Bani (792-794)
ਰਾਗੁ ਬਿਲਾਵਲੁ | Raag Bilaaval
Gurbani (795-831)
Ashtpadiyan (831-838)
Thitteen (838-840)
Vaar Sat (841-843)
Chhant (843-848)
Vaar Bilaaval (849-855)
Bhagat Bani (855-858)
ਰਾਗੁ ਗੋਂਡ | Raag Gond
Gurbani (859-869)
Ashtpadiyan (869)
Bhagat Bani (870-875)
ਰਾਗੁ ਰਾਮਕਲੀ | Raag Ramkalee
Ashtpadiyan (902-916)
Gurbani (876-902)
Anand (917-922)
Sadd (923-924)
Chhant (924-929)
Dakhnee (929-938)
Sidh Gosat (938-946)
Vaar Ramkalee (947-968)
ਰਾਗੁ ਨਟ ਨਾਰਾਇਨ | Raag Nat Narayan
Gurbani (975-980)
Ashtpadiyan (980-983)
ਰਾਗੁ ਮਾਲੀ ਗਉੜਾ | Raag Maalee Gauraa
Gurbani (984-988)
Bhagat Bani (988)
ਰਾਗੁ ਮਾਰੂ | Raag Maaroo
Gurbani (889-1008)
Ashtpadiyan (1008-1014)
Kaafee (1014-1016)
Ashtpadiyan (1016-1019)
Anjulian (1019-1020)
Solhe (1020-1033)
Dakhni (1033-1043)
ਰਾਗੁ ਤੁਖਾਰੀ | Raag Tukhaari
Bara Maha (1107-1110)
Chhant (1110-1117)
ਰਾਗੁ ਕੇਦਾਰਾ | Raag Kedara
Gurbani (1118-1123)
Bhagat Bani (1123-1124)
ਰਾਗੁ ਭੈਰਉ | Raag Bhairo
Gurbani (1125-1152)
Partaal (1153)
Ashtpadiyan (1153-1167)
ਰਾਗੁ ਬਸੰਤੁ | Raag Basant
Gurbani (1168-1187)
Ashtpadiyan (1187-1193)
Vaar Basant (1193-1196)
ਰਾਗੁ ਸਾਰਗ | Raag Saarag
Gurbani (1197-1200)
Partaal (1200-1231)
Ashtpadiyan (1232-1236)
Chhant (1236-1237)
Vaar Saarang (1237-1253)
ਰਾਗੁ ਮਲਾਰ | Raag Malaar
Gurbani (1254-1293)
Partaal (1265-1273)
Ashtpadiyan (1273-1278)
Chhant (1278)
Vaar Malaar (1278-91)
Bhagat Bani (1292-93)
ਰਾਗੁ ਕਾਨੜਾ | Raag Kaanraa
Gurbani (1294-96)
Partaal (1296-1318)
Ashtpadiyan (1308-1312)
Chhant (1312)
Vaar Kaanraa
Bhagat Bani (1318)
ਰਾਗੁ ਕਲਿਆਨ | Raag Kalyaan
Gurbani (1319-23)
Ashtpadiyan (1323-26)
ਰਾਗੁ ਪ੍ਰਭਾਤੀ | Raag Prabhaatee
Gurbani (1327-1341)
Ashtpadiyan (1342-51)
ਰਾਗੁ ਜੈਜਾਵੰਤੀ | Raag Jaijaiwanti
Gurbani (1352-53)
Salok | Gatha | Phunahe | Chaubole | Swayiye
Sehskritee Mahala 1
Sehskritee Mahala 5
Gaathaa Mahala 5
Phunhay Mahala 5
Chaubolae Mahala 5
Shaloks Bhagat Kabir
Shaloks Sheikh Farid
Swaiyyae Mahala 5
Swaiyyae in Praise of Gurus
Shaloks in Addition To Vaars
Shalok Ninth Mehl
Mundavanee Mehl 5
ਰਾਗ ਮਾਲਾ, Raag Maalaa
What's new
New posts
New media
New media comments
New resources
Latest activity
Videos
New media
New comments
Library
Latest reviews
Donate
Log in
Register
What's new
New posts
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Welcome to all New Sikh Philosophy Network Forums!
Explore Sikh Sikhi Sikhism...
Sign up
Log in
Discussions
Interfaith Dialogues
Gotta Pay To Pray: Germany’s Catholic Bishops Call On Faithful To Hand Over Tax
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Archived_Member16" data-source="post: 173146" data-attributes="member: 884"><p><span style="color: Navy"><strong><span style="font-size: 18px">Gotta pay to pray: Germany’s Catholic bishops call on faithful to hand over tax</span></strong></span></p><p> <span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"><strong>By Juergen Baetz, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - September 28, 2012</strong></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"><img src="http://www.theprovince.com/life/7315170.bin" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"><span style="color: Red">A woman sits Thursday on a bench in the Catholic cathedral of Frankfurt, Germany. The country’s 24 million</span></span></p><p> <span style="color: Navy"><span style="color: Red">Catholics have been told that, if they don’t pay their religious taxes, they will be denied sacraments, including weddings, </span></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"><span style="color: Red">baptisms and funerals.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"><span style="color: Red">Photograph by: Michael Probst, AP</span></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"><strong>BERLIN</strong> — The road to heaven is paved with more than good intentions for Germany’s 24 million Catholics.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">If they don’t pay their religious taxes, they will be denied sacraments, including weddings, baptisms and funerals.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">A decree issued last week by the country’s bishops cast a spotlight on the longstanding practice in Germany and a handful of other European countries in which governments tax registered believers and then hand over the money to the religious institutions.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">In Germany, the cost for Catholics, Protestants and Jews is a surcharge of up to nine per cent on their income-tax bills — or about $75 a month for a single person earning a pre-tax monthly salary of about $4,500.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">For religious institutions, struggling to maintain their congregations in a secular society where the Protestant Reformation began 500 years ago, the tax revenues are vital.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">The Catholic Church in Germany receives about $6.5 billion annually from the surcharge. For Protestants, the total is just above $5.2 billion. Donations, in turn, represent a far smaller share of the churches’ income than in the U.S.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">With rising prices and economic uncertainty, however, more and more Catholics and Protestants are opting to save their money and declare to tax authorities they are no longer church members, even if they still consider themselves believers.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“I quit the church already in 2007,” said Manfred Gonschor, a Munich-based IT consultant.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“It was when I got a bonus payment and realized that I could have paid myself a nice holiday alone on the amount of church tax that I was paying on it.”</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Gonschor added he was also “really fed up with the institution and its failures.”</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Such defections have hit the Catholic Church especially hard — it lost about 181,000 tax-paying members in 2010 and 126,000 a year later, according to official figures.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Protestants, who number about 24 million nationwide, lost 145,000 registered members in Germany in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">But the figures include some people who still want to baptize their children, take communion on major religious holidays, marry in a religious ceremony and receive Christian burials.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">The group We Are Church, which claims to represent tens of thousands of grassroots Catholics, said many Germans stop paying the tax because they disagree with the church’s policies or simply want to save money — not because they have lost their faith.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“I haven’t quit because I still think that I might want to get married in a church one day, even though I know that’s absurd,” said Anna Ainsley, a 31-old-year banker and a Protestant from Frankfurt.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“But when I see my tax declaration, then I think every year that I should finally quit.”</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Those are the people that Germany’s Catholic bishops had in mind when they decreed Sept. 20 that stopping the payment of religious taxes was “a serious lapse” and those who did so would then be excluded from a range of church activities.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“This decree makes clear that one cannot partly leave the church,” the bishops said in a statement.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“It is not possible to separate the spiritual community of the church from the institutional church.”</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Wavering Catholics will now be sent letters reminding them of the consequences of avoiding the church tax, including losing access to all sacraments.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“Maybe you haven’t considered the consequences of your decision and would like to reverse this step,” a draft of the letter states.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Protestants have taken a less stern position, saying non-taxpayers are still welcome to attend services and take communion. But becoming a godparent, getting married in a church or taking a job in church-affiliated institutions such as hospitals or kindergartens are off-limits to those who stop paying their taxes.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Switzerland and Austria also tax Catholic and Protestant church members. In Denmark, the Lutheran Church collects a tax from its members. Members of Sweden’s Lutheran Church pay around one per cent of their income, collected by the national tax authorities, just as in Finland.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">In Italy, taxpayers have the choice of diverting a small part of their income taxes to religious institutions, including the Catholic Church and the country’s Jewish community, but the contribution is voluntary.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">In none of those countries have the churches take such a firm stand against dropouts.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">So far, German courts have stood by the bishops’ decision. This week, the country’s top administrative court threw out a lawsuit against the archdiocese of Freiburg by retired theologian Hartmut Zapp, who has spent years fighting the Catholic Church over the tax.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Zapp argued that a Catholic should be free to stop paying but remain a member of the spiritual community and that his religious beliefs could not possibly be tied to a tax payment.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">The archdiocese responded in a statement that “those who lack solidarity bid farewell to the community of believers.”</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">The tax issue presents moral and ethical dilemmas to millions of German believers, even dividing couples.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Sonja Trott, a 34-year-old Munich teacher, said she quit the Catholic Church 15 years ago because she no longer believed in its teachings.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“Now I’d like to convince my husband that he also should quit, that would save us a lot of money,” she said.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">But her husband Christoph, a sales executive, says he cannot imagine refusing to pay on moral grounds because it would seem like a betrayal of his faith.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“I don’t like paying it, but I do because I fear the step of quitting the church,” he said.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">He would prefer to donate part of the money to charities, “but well, in Germany, the payment determines whether I’m allowed to consider myself a Catholic or not.”</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">For other Germans, it’s unethical to stop paying the tax but continue to use the church when it suits them.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">Christine Solf, a Munich-based consultant, says she doesn’t attend services regularly but appreciates the church’s charitable work. For her, church membership is also a family tradition.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">“I know people who quit for financial reasons but then still want their children to be baptized. That’s not OK in my opinion,” Solf said.</span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy">© Copyright (c) The Province</span></p><p> <span style="color: Navy"></span></p><p><span style="color: Navy"><strong>source:</strong> <a href="http://www.theprovince.com/life/Gotta+pray+Germany+Catholic+bishops+call+faithful+hand+over/7315169/story.html" target="_blank">http://www.theprovince.com/life/Gotta+pray+Germany+Catholic+bishops+call+faithful+hand+over/7315169/story.html</a></span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Archived_Member16, post: 173146, member: 884"] [COLOR="Navy"][B][SIZE="5"]Gotta pay to pray: Germany’s Catholic bishops call on faithful to hand over tax[/SIZE][/B] [B]By Juergen Baetz, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - September 28, 2012[/B] [IMG]http://www.theprovince.com/life/7315170.bin[/IMG] [COLOR="Red"]A woman sits Thursday on a bench in the Catholic cathedral of Frankfurt, Germany. The country’s 24 million Catholics have been told that, if they don’t pay their religious taxes, they will be denied sacraments, including weddings, baptisms and funerals. Photograph by: Michael Probst, AP[/COLOR] [B]BERLIN[/B] — The road to heaven is paved with more than good intentions for Germany’s 24 million Catholics. If they don’t pay their religious taxes, they will be denied sacraments, including weddings, baptisms and funerals. A decree issued last week by the country’s bishops cast a spotlight on the longstanding practice in Germany and a handful of other European countries in which governments tax registered believers and then hand over the money to the religious institutions. In Germany, the cost for Catholics, Protestants and Jews is a surcharge of up to nine per cent on their income-tax bills — or about $75 a month for a single person earning a pre-tax monthly salary of about $4,500. For religious institutions, struggling to maintain their congregations in a secular society where the Protestant Reformation began 500 years ago, the tax revenues are vital. The Catholic Church in Germany receives about $6.5 billion annually from the surcharge. For Protestants, the total is just above $5.2 billion. Donations, in turn, represent a far smaller share of the churches’ income than in the U.S. With rising prices and economic uncertainty, however, more and more Catholics and Protestants are opting to save their money and declare to tax authorities they are no longer church members, even if they still consider themselves believers. “I quit the church already in 2007,” said Manfred Gonschor, a Munich-based IT consultant. “It was when I got a bonus payment and realized that I could have paid myself a nice holiday alone on the amount of church tax that I was paying on it.” Gonschor added he was also “really fed up with the institution and its failures.” Such defections have hit the Catholic Church especially hard — it lost about 181,000 tax-paying members in 2010 and 126,000 a year later, according to official figures. Protestants, who number about 24 million nationwide, lost 145,000 registered members in Germany in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available. But the figures include some people who still want to baptize their children, take communion on major religious holidays, marry in a religious ceremony and receive Christian burials. The group We Are Church, which claims to represent tens of thousands of grassroots Catholics, said many Germans stop paying the tax because they disagree with the church’s policies or simply want to save money — not because they have lost their faith. “I haven’t quit because I still think that I might want to get married in a church one day, even though I know that’s absurd,” said Anna Ainsley, a 31-old-year banker and a Protestant from Frankfurt. “But when I see my tax declaration, then I think every year that I should finally quit.” Those are the people that Germany’s Catholic bishops had in mind when they decreed Sept. 20 that stopping the payment of religious taxes was “a serious lapse” and those who did so would then be excluded from a range of church activities. “This decree makes clear that one cannot partly leave the church,” the bishops said in a statement. “It is not possible to separate the spiritual community of the church from the institutional church.” Wavering Catholics will now be sent letters reminding them of the consequences of avoiding the church tax, including losing access to all sacraments. “Maybe you haven’t considered the consequences of your decision and would like to reverse this step,” a draft of the letter states. Protestants have taken a less stern position, saying non-taxpayers are still welcome to attend services and take communion. But becoming a godparent, getting married in a church or taking a job in church-affiliated institutions such as hospitals or kindergartens are off-limits to those who stop paying their taxes. Switzerland and Austria also tax Catholic and Protestant church members. In Denmark, the Lutheran Church collects a tax from its members. Members of Sweden’s Lutheran Church pay around one per cent of their income, collected by the national tax authorities, just as in Finland. In Italy, taxpayers have the choice of diverting a small part of their income taxes to religious institutions, including the Catholic Church and the country’s Jewish community, but the contribution is voluntary. In none of those countries have the churches take such a firm stand against dropouts. So far, German courts have stood by the bishops’ decision. This week, the country’s top administrative court threw out a lawsuit against the archdiocese of Freiburg by retired theologian Hartmut Zapp, who has spent years fighting the Catholic Church over the tax. Zapp argued that a Catholic should be free to stop paying but remain a member of the spiritual community and that his religious beliefs could not possibly be tied to a tax payment. The archdiocese responded in a statement that “those who lack solidarity bid farewell to the community of believers.” The tax issue presents moral and ethical dilemmas to millions of German believers, even dividing couples. Sonja Trott, a 34-year-old Munich teacher, said she quit the Catholic Church 15 years ago because she no longer believed in its teachings. “Now I’d like to convince my husband that he also should quit, that would save us a lot of money,” she said. But her husband Christoph, a sales executive, says he cannot imagine refusing to pay on moral grounds because it would seem like a betrayal of his faith. “I don’t like paying it, but I do because I fear the step of quitting the church,” he said. He would prefer to donate part of the money to charities, “but well, in Germany, the payment determines whether I’m allowed to consider myself a Catholic or not.” For other Germans, it’s unethical to stop paying the tax but continue to use the church when it suits them. Christine Solf, a Munich-based consultant, says she doesn’t attend services regularly but appreciates the church’s charitable work. For her, church membership is also a family tradition. “I know people who quit for financial reasons but then still want their children to be baptized. That’s not OK in my opinion,” Solf said. © Copyright (c) The Province [B]source:[/B] [url]http://www.theprovince.com/life/Gotta+pray+Germany+Catholic+bishops+call+faithful+hand+over/7315169/story.html[/url][/COLOR] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Discussions
Interfaith Dialogues
Gotta Pay To Pray: Germany’s Catholic Bishops Call On Faithful To Hand Over Tax
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
Accept
Learn more…
Top