{"id":7828,"date":"2012-09-29T04:24:35","date_gmt":"2012-09-29T04:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=7828"},"modified":"2012-09-29T04:24:35","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T04:24:35","slug":"god-and-mammon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/god-and-mammon\/","title":{"rendered":"God and Mammon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>How the Roman Catholic Church chooses to decide who is\u2014and who is not a Roman Catholic\u2014is up to that church. Even so, this is quite a story<\/a> (from Reuters):<\/p>\n

Liberal and conservative Roman Catholic activists in Germany criticised a decree that came into effect on Monday to deny sacraments and religious burials to people who opt out of a \u201cchurch tax\u201d.<\/p>\n

The German bishops issued the decree last week warning Catholics who stop paying the tax they would be excluded from all religious activities, also including working in a church job, becoming a godparent or taking part in parish activities.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Pay and pray\u2019 is a completely wrong signal at the wrong time,\u201d the reformist movement We Are Church said on Monday. The decree \u201cshows the great fear of the German bishops and the Vatican about further serious losses in church tax revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

A conservative group called the Union of Associations Loyal to the Pope asked why Catholics who stop paying the tax would be punished but those it called heretics could stay in its ranks.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo sacraments are for sale \u2013 whoever pays the church tax can receive the sacraments,\u201d it said in a statement, saying the link the decree created \u201cgoes beyond the sale of indulgences that (Martin) Luther denounced\u201d at the start of the Reformation.<\/p>\n

German tax offices collect a religious tax worth 8 or 9 percent of the annual regular tax bill of registered Catholics, Protestants and Jews and channel it to those faiths. An official declaration that one is leaving the faith frees the citizen from this tax\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the Roman Catholic Church chooses to decide who is\u2014and who is not a Roman Catholic\u2014is up to that church. Even so, this is quite a story (from Reuters): Liberal and conservative Roman Catholic activists in Germany criticised a decree … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[711],"tags":[771,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7828"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7842,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7828\/revisions\/7842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}