When our children were born, it went without saying that they would be baptised, and I mean properly baptised, the wash-away-the-sins baptised because they were corrupted from birth and required a good old cleansing from original naughtiness. They would have their tiny heads dowsed in cold water by an enforced-celibate man in a gown who would do the pouring of holiness onto their bonces and they would then walk the path of righteousness, smug in the knowledge that they would pass through the pearlies – cheers, Pete, and live happily ever after in eternity far from the clutches of Satan. It went without saying or question because we had both been brought up Catholic, well, indoctrinated like all good Greenies and it would make the grandparents happy which counted for a lot. To my modern mind, attending a Catholic primary (and secondary school as I had done) could surely not be as guilt-inducing and sometimes terrifying as it had been in the past. I never did process Sister Rosemary’s blanket punishment of our whole class. Somebody forgot their PE kit. She made us all strip and shower and stood and watched, then made us all get dried with one paper towel each. I slipped backwards, bashed my head and slid front bottom akimbo along the floor. So unfair and I was such a good girl. This kind of punishment was perverse, like the wooden rulers on your knuckles and the Torquemada-like interrogations on Monday mornings to check that we knew what colour vestments the priest had worn at Sunday mass the day before. Choosing to Catholicise our kids did also, in some small part, mean that they stood a better chance of attending a very good, over-subscribed Catholic primary school close to home. Very convenient and one less thing to worry about for parents wanting the best. Job done. So what if they had to spend half of their school day praying! At least they would know right from wrong and any tragedy could be explained away as God’s will. They followed in our holy and perhaps, hypocritical footsteps, hook, line and sinker. Sunday mass, Holy Communion, Confession (I never really agreed with that load of nonsense) and Confirmation. Child one and two did the lot and got the T shirt. Child three refused to be confirmed but by that point I had given up the fight not just for them but for myself also. God’s will, my arse. Far too many bad things and losses had occurred to ever believe that a loving God would have, in any way, allowed it. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
The truth is, I had never been totally comfortable with blindly practising my ‘faith’ because I had far too many unanswered questions. As a Feminist, it never sat comfortably with me that men ruled the roost, enjoying the best of both worlds by wearing the trousers, and the frocks. As a Socialist it ground my gears to see first-hand that the Catholic Church was and still is disgustingly wealthy. My one touristy visit to the Vatican – after all we were in Rome – made my eyes sting. There were bedraggled beggars sitting outside on the pavement with their hands outstretched yet, within the walls of this treasure palace, were housed the most unimaginably priceless goodies, no doubt ransacked, nicked, swizzed, stock-piled, accrued, bought, bribed, whatever, by an institution that basically held its audience to ransom or they would end up dancing with the Devil. There is enough lolly in that place to eradicate world debt or at least to feed every starving person on the planet. From visiting those rooms replete with paintings, busts, sculptures, bejewelled ceramics and golden pots (and that was only the stuff that was on view!), I was more convinced than ever that the Catholic Church had plenty of dosh to be getting on with. Their coffers were clearly bursting. Not so it seems.
Fast forward to 2024. Child one is living in Germany where he has been based for eight years. His phone-call to me last week made me want to grab a wire brush and scrape away every Catholic shred of brain-washing from my kids’ heads. Mum, you are not going to believe this. Turns out that because I am a Catholic (said child hasn’t been in a church for donkey’s years and when he did go, it was only to please me or his Abuelita) and because I didn’t renounce my ‘faith’ when I arrived in Munich, apparently I should have been paying Kirchensteuer to the Church. He had no idea about this tax so carried on regardless, working his butt off and paying all the other tonne of tax that Germans pay in exchange for excellent health care etc which, by his own admittance, he has been very happy with and used. Dig a little deeper though and things become rather more sinister. He doesn’t belong to any parish in Munich yet they knew he had been baptised and confirmed. And how did they know that? Because they, and by they I mean the Catholic Church (great big capital hard C for Kommen Sie her unt koff up), had got their grubby mitts on copies of his baptismal and confirmation certificates from our local Catholic Church records back home. Are these docs all housed somewhere? Are they now on-line? How can such private information be so readily available for the taking? Does the Vatican have access to every Catholic’s paper proof of renouncing Beelzebub? Is there a secret, religious police in Germany that sniffs out the ‘defaulters’? And what of GDPR? Whoever this busy-body detective was, I was fit to strangle him/her with my rosary beads. Why should any hard-working person have to pay towards the Catholic Church unless they choose to? And why the hell does it need any more spondoolies than it already has?
Maybe the Brotherhood is putting its foot down because of the record number of Germans who have enacted the formal process known as Kirchenaustritt. In other words, I’m a Catholic, get me out of here. This is the only way to avoid having to pay this tax if you were baptised. Give up on God and become a dirty sinner again. Or maybe, because times are hard everywhere, the blessed are trying to find an extra few bob to make ends meet? It is no surprise that people are tightening their purse strings unlike the Church’s strings which are loose and welcoming of the money slipping in. And why, pray why, are record numbers of Germans turning their backs on this institution? Well, apparently it has a lot to do with a Church-commissioned report in 2018 which concluded that at least 3677 people were abused by clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014. Only God knows how many before those dates! Half of these were under 13 years of age and a third of them had been altar boys. An independent report in the Munich archdiocese where the late Pope Benedict XVI served as archbishop from 1977-1982 faulted the handling of abuse cases by a string of Church officials past and present including the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. i.e. Mr Pope! I wonder did anybody listen to their act of Contrition in the Confessional Box. Sinful.
I rage at the injustice of such an institution creaming money from the unsuspecting and for what reason? To pay their priests? To pay their solicitors to fight the courts in cases of depravity? To buy a bit more shiny silver to flash on the altar? My lad is a grafter, and he pays his dues. I came up with every conceivable explanation that he might use to argue his case as to why he should not have to pay this distasteful, spiritual tax. He didn’t know about it, for starters. He doesn’t go to Church. He has received nothing from the Church for years. His religion was forced upon him when he was too young to make that decision, to all intents and purposes a human rights violation. Why should the ‘religious’ be penalised by having to pay this extra levy? Do other denominational institutions in Germany tax their faithful or ‘unfaithful’ followers? Does the Church have the right to pry into your personal documents? It seems beyond explanation to me and a huge travesty. I suggested my lad engage a solicitor and let them have it! He did and he will let them have it. All €19,000 of it because it transpires that there is no way around it and none of the three solicitors he contacted was prepared to touch his case with a barge pole. Eight years of unpaid, robbing-buggers taxes will be coughed up by my boy, a thoroughly good Sister Ann (she was a beast) rapping on the knuckles as a punishment for not making the rich even richer. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. He will do his penance – four Our Fathers, three Hail Marys and a stick-it-in-your-collection-box act of contrition. Incensed, he has applied for his ‘excommunication’ papers so that he will no longer have to financially support an institution which he does not believe in, which has ravaged many people’s lives and which gets away with no end of other misdemeanors, injustices and hypocrisies. It is hard to get your head around the madness of it all. I, for one, just cannot Adam and Eve it.
womaninthisdress 