German Bishops One-Up U.S. Counterparts

All Things Considered:

Last month, German bishops warned that if members of the Catholic Church don't pay the country's church tax, they'll be denied the sacraments — including baptisms, weddings and funerals.
In increasingly secular Europe, Germany is one of the few countries where the state collects a special levy from tax-registered believers and hands it over to three organized faiths.
Registered Catholics, Protestants and Jews pay a surcharge of up to 9 percent on their income. The Catholic Church alone received some $6.5 billion in 2011.
In issuing the stringent new decree, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the president of the German bishops' conference, said that not paying taxes for the church is a grave offense, and that sacraments will be banned for those who distance themselves from the church.
"In Germany, the church is a community of faith which coexists alongside the legal system," Zollitsch said. "The two cannot be separated."
Many conservatives and progressives are up in arms.

Wow, talk about a motivation to drop out.  At a local parish, the priest's policy was that to be eligible to get married or get a child baptized, a parishioner had to put an envelope in the collection at least 50 of the 57 times they were collected each year (52 Sundays and 5 Holy Days of Obligation).  I never quite understood the policy.  One guy I knew said his friend's mom signed his friend up as a parishioner, then put a dollar in the collection each week for a year so the guy could get married at the church.  It would seem like someone would be considered a member if he put in, say $50 a month, even if that was only 12 times.  That would seem like a better deal than $50 a year over 50 collections.  But what do I know.  Looks like the German bishops are telling people to pay or get the fuck out.  For some reason that reminds me more of the Pharisees than Jesus.  Wasn't it that bearded hippie who said the poor old woman putting in the penny was better than all the rich folks putting in their gold coins?  Maybe not, I can't remember.