As I understand it, the following are both the case:
If you pay tax in Germany and have the right “option” selected, you pay tax towards the Catholic Church
This is totally optional and furthermore it’s not just a default option - if you don’t select this option then the money is yours to keep [there are other options to give it to other cults but there is still an option to keep the money for yourself]
Firstly - am I correct about what I understand?
Secontly - what on earth are you playing at? I cannot believe that around half of you or whatever it is are actually Catholic. Germans I have met are brainy.
Surely I misundersand this in some way. Correct me!
It’s not a matter of the Catholic church specifically.
People choose to be members of a religious denomination for the usual reasons one is a member. If that denomination has made an agreement with the state to collect the tithe via church tax, you pay the tax, i.e. the tax (8 or 9 percent on top of income tax assessed depending on the federal state, i.e. some 2-4% of income for most people). Church tax is to members of the denomination what membership dues are to an association. If your relationship to the denomination you were baptized into is one of benevolent disinterest (as is for most people) it’s not worth leaving the fold for.
American temporarily living in Germany here. Yes, even temporary residents have to declare what religion they are on their residence form (but they accept “none” as an answer).
If you declare yourself to be Catholic, Protestant or Jewish, you are assessed a tax that goes to support the appropriate religious institution.
Note that it’s assumed that most members of a religious organization would be paying some money to help support it anyway: synagogue membership for Jews, offertories and pledges in Christian churches, etc. This system simply takes care of your religious dues via the same mechanisms used for your government dues, so to speak.
If you declare yourself a non-member and don’t pay tax, you are considered unaffiliated with that religious body. And that means that you aren’t considered a member if you want a wedding/funeral/baptism/bar mitzvah/whatever under the auspices of that body. So I imagine that many Germans who aren’t strongly religious still self-identify as members of a religion, because hey, it’s your heritage and you might want it some day. (Some also are just generally civic-minded and want to support the community activities provided by local religious bodies.)
As far as the numbers go: about 30% of Germans self-identify as Catholic and about 30% as Protestant. About 4% are Muslim and 0.25% Jewish, and up to a third are unaffiliated/nonbelievers.
Not sure why the OP is so freaked out by any of this.
[ETA: hi Mops, glad to see my impressions more or less validated by a real German. :)]
I’m freaked out because 2-4% of income is a massive amount of money to just give away for “identity”. I can see religious people doing it but come on, people move CONTINENT to escape that amount of tax.
It is causing a crisis for the German catholic church that more and more people are thinking along Simple Linctus’s lines and declaring that they are not religious. The German Catholic church has recently stated that your will be denied the sacraments for not paying the tax. Which seems reasonable to me. If being denied the sacraments bothers you you should support the church and if it does not bother you then you are not really a member of the church.
For one thing, acc. to article, it’s 9% of total tax, not % of income; for another, much or all of what we call social services are provided though the churches, and so tax is not supporting religion. (9% of tax bill would be a substantial saving, for me.)
I don’t know though I remember hearing something about it, how long have they let you chose no religion? Possibly it was just an atheist angry at having to pick a religion.
If you have been living abroad and then move to a Germany city, you just tick the box which says “no religious affiliation” (or something like that), and that’s the end of it.
Only if you are on record as being a member of one the denominations, you would have to go through the (really minor) hassle of formally renouncing your Church membership.
If you are a German citizen who was born abroad and never lived in Germany, you even have an advantage in this respect because they have to take your word for it when you say you are not a member of a Church.
I was always under the impression that having Bibles in hotel rooms was a genuine American tradition. Whenever there is an article or an opinion piece about the perceived religiosity of Americans, the author never fails to mention this factoid.
