Am detouring from my course of moving to talk about a current topic. This topic always appears in our conversation topic. So I would like to talk about it. My girlfriend always says that it is ridiculous that 9% of your monthly salary goes to the church tax if you declare yourself a Catholic. Basically, she is unhappy that you have to pay if you want to be a Catholic. It is a very pragmatic argument from her point of view. I mean, she is a very practical person who grew up in a family who don’t believe in religion in general. Atheists or Agnostic, either one. My girlfriend is Agnostic, that I am certain. She believes in some great ‘thing’ out there but nothing specific. That doesn’t bother me, I believe that people should be able to choose what they want. The thing is, she is not Catholic, so why does she complain about the tax? I always ask her that. She gets annoyed. Ha ha. Well, I did ask a Catholic in Germany and he said he doesn’t mind the tax, he says the church needs it. There you go, I told my girlfriend. Well, that annoys her further ha ha. But that is only one persons point of view. One happy German Catholic doesn’t mean everyone is too. For the record, there are protestants who pay religion tax too but I am catholic and will only talk with respect to what I am.
Basically, today’s discussion, I tried to rationalise to her why there is a need for Catholic taxes. For us in Singapore, we don’t have this tax, well, many more people go to Church and every week, there is a collection. I don’t know how much the average is, I never really found out. Let’s just hypothesise, say for instance if there are 2000 people that attend a particular church on a sunday (that I know is a modest figure) and each person gave a meagre $2, then, we would have $4000 at the end of the day which would result in $16000 a month and $192,000 a year. I don’t how much it takes to maintain a church in Singapore but that seems like a lot of money and it is just with $2. Without this tax in Singapore and if no one goes to church, where would they get the money to maintain the church? The churches in Singapore are not even as beautiful as the churches in Germany. All those old stained glasses etc. So, mathematically, if people = money, the church in Germany would be hard pressed to maintain it’s building and stuff. I was at mass in Düsseldorf last week, there were about…hmm.. 50 people or less present. Do the math, I think you would find the numbers don’t add to an amount reasonable enough to maintaining a church would it? Of course, you might ask, what it takes to maintain a church. Well, the next time you go to church, look around you and try to visualise what needs to be maintained.
I don’t know how accurate this is but you can read this article on Wiki. Scroll down to Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax
I guess however you argue it, there will be a reason for it, taxes I mean. This is not a pro-religion blog, just to be clear. It will be a pity if people don’t want to be a Catholic because there is s a tax involved. I mean, you are giving to the Church. Well, from my point of view, I am not the holiest person in the world but if you are a person of religion, try to see my point. Money comes from God and if the government wants you to pay tax for your beliefs, then, should you worry about whether God will give you enough? I wouldn’t. You shouldn’t.
Back to my girlfriend… well, like always, the conversation gets distracted by something else. However, I see a progress in her understanding my reasons. I think it is very healthy to be engaged in conversations like these where questions linger or worse fester. With that, it is also healthy to remember that, it is just that, a conversation.
An Tagen wie diesen! 