Le Forum Catholique

“How I would like a poor Church for the poor” exclaimed Pope Francis (L’Osservatore Romano, March 17, 2013). The antithesis of his ideal however, is embodied precisely by the church closest to him – the German one. The German Episcopal Conference, which sponsored ideologically and economically last October’s Synod on the Amazon, is in fact the wealthiest and most privileged enterprise in all of Germany. This wealth comes from the Kirchensteuer, a tax that the State devolves to the Church, by retaining a figure amounting to 8-9% of the overall tax burden of German Catholics. The taxation though is obligatory, unlike other countries, where Churches are financed through the generosity of the faithful, freely choosing to pay out a part of their income.

In Germany, those who want to be exempt from the Kirchensteuer must sign a statement showing their abandonment of the Church (Kirchenaustritt), which, as a result, deprives them of the Sacraments. On September 20, 2012, the German Bishops decreed that those who asked no longer to be registered in order to avoid paying the ecclesiastical tax, can no longer confess, receive Communion or Confirmation and, at their death, cannot have a Catholic funeral; they will not even be able to do voluntary work in a Catholic association, let alone work in a Church institution, such as a school or hospital.

In an interview published in Schwäbische Zeitung of July 17, 2016, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, denounced this glaring contradiction in these terms: “How does the Catholic Church in Germany react with those who don’t pay the Church tax? With automatic exclusion from the ecclesial community, which means excommunication. This is excessive – incomprehensible. Dogmas can be questioned and no one is thrown out. Is perhaps the non-payment of the Kirchensteuer a graver infraction than the transgressions against the truths of the Faith? The impression is, that, as long as what’s at stake is the Faith, it isn’t so tragic, but when money comes into play, then it is not to be trifled with”.

If the slogan of the American Colonies in the 18th century was “No taxation without representation”, the slogan of the German Bishops today is “No Sacraments without taxation”. If you pay you receive the Sacraments, if you don’t pay you are deprived of them. The wealth of the German Church is founded, in a word, on simony.

Simony is a sin that has accompanied the history of the Church throughout the centuries, being associated frequently with the so-called “Nicolaism”, the concubinage of priests. The first synods of Gregory VII (1073-1085), the great reformer Pope of the Middle-Ages, were precisely dedicated to the fight against the simoniacal German Bishops, transgressors of ecclesiastical celibacy. A much graver plague than the selling of indulgences, which offered the pretext for Luther’s Revolution.

The term simony comes from Simon Magus, who, it is written “offers money to the Apostles” (Acts, 8.18) to acquire spiritual power. St. Thomas Aquinas, who dedicates an entire question in his Summa Theologica to simony (q.100, II-II), explains that simoniacs are both those who buy or sell spiritual things: “Those who sell spiritual things are like Simon Magus in intentions, whereas those who buy them are like him in actions” (q. 100, a. 1). According to St. Thomas “to receive money for the spiritual grace of the Sacraments is a sin of simony which cannot be excused by any custom: since “custom does not prevail over the natural or Divine Law” (q. 100, art. 2, resp.). “Wherefore the custom, if such there be, of demanding anything as the price of a spiritual thing, with the intention of buying or selling it, is manifestly simoniacal, especially when the demand is made of a person unwilling to pay” (art. 2, ad 4).

Given that the Kirchensteuer extorts against the will of the taxpayer, the statement of abandonment of the German Church (Kirchenaustritt) signed by those who want to avoid payment, is devoid of value in the eyes of the Church. The Pontifical Council for the Holy See’s legislative texts, in a document dated March 13, 2006, explained that the abandoning the Catholic Church, for it to be validly configured as a true actus formalis defectionis ab Ecclesia, must be concretized in the following elements: a) an inner decision to leave the Catholic Church; b) the outer actuation and manifestation of this decision; c) direct reception of such a decision on the part of the competent ecclesiastical authority.” *

Every act that does not come from an inner motivation, but is obligatory, cannot be considered a free inner decision to leave the Catholic Church and is invalid. Furthermore, the parish priest should establish if there truly is the will to leave the Church, which never happens in Germany. The German Catholic who signs the Kirchenaustritt must not then fear being schismatic, if he does not have a real intention of abandoning the Church, but wants only to separate himself from the perverse financial system which ties him to the Episcopal Conference, for that matter, directed by Bishops who are not only simoniacs but also heretics and schismatics. The synodal path initiated in Germany by Cardinal Marx aims in fact at turning the sexual morality of the Church upside down and of subverting its hierarchal structure. It is a process of self-dissolution, which Catholics, in conscience, cannot collaborate with.

Many German Catholics criticize the Kirchensteuer, but state that they cannot help but pay it in order not to be deprived of the Sacraments. But with this they become accomplices in the simony of the Bishops. St. Thomas explains, for example, that “ since nowise ought one to sin, if the priest be unwilling to baptize without being paid, one must act as though there were no priest available for the baptism. Hence the person who is in charge of the child can, in such a case, lawfully baptize it, or cause it to be baptized by someone else [..]And if he is unable to have recourse to another, he must by no means pay a price for Baptism, and should rather die without being baptized, because for him the baptism of desire would supply the lack of the sacrament.”

Will it be really impossible though, in and outside Germany, to find priests and bishops willing to administer the Sacraments to the conscientious objectors of the Kirchensteueur? We do not believe it; as nothing is impossible for those seeking first the Kingdom of God and His Justice (Mat.6, 33).

The French writer Ernst Hello (1828-1885) states that renunciation is the devil’s word. “God never renounces. The devil always renounces, even when he appears to act. He is the one who renounces. The man who renounces cannot do much and impedes everyone. The man who does not renounce lifts mountains” (L’uomo, [Man]Edizioni Paoline, 1958, p. 287).

What I fear the most today are the resigned and defeatist Catholics. Who are the defeatist Catholics? Those who are convinced that there is a disproportion of forces between us and our adversaries (which is true) and that we can do nothing more than accept the de facto situation (which is not true). The defeatist Catholics criticize the Kirchensteuer in private, but think it useless to criticize it publically, because they think nothing will change.

On January 20, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, said this in his homily for the Feast of St. Agnes: “with the blood of her young life, St. Agnes witnessed Christ, Son of God and only Savior of the world. And so she encourages also us here in Rome and Europe, to profess our Catholic faith publically, without fearing men.”

In Germany those who criticize the German Episcopal Conference publically and refuse thus to pay the Kirchensteuer, do not risk death, like St. Agnes, but risk being deprived of the Sacraments and in particular, of being censured socially. It is a hard trial certainly, but perhaps we ought to take example from those Catholics in England at the time of Elizabeth I, or in France, under the French Revolution, who were deprived of the Sacraments and persecuted, but stayed faithful to the Catholic faith. Secularized Europe needs heroism, not defeatism.

*vatican
--
SOURCE:RC

ET EN ITALIEN:cr

lors de sa visite apostolique en Allemagne.
Tout le message est à lire mais je détache un extrait significatif qui se retrouve, au passage, dans les exhortations du pape François qui pourrait contresigner ces lignes. Reste à les mettre en pratique en dehors des discours ... et là, on trouvera les Caïphes d'Outre-Rhin vent debout contre la réforme.

"Cependant, dans le développement historique de l’Église se manifeste aussi une tendance contraire : c’est celle d’une Église qui est satisfaite d’elle-même, qui s’installe dans ce monde, qui est autosuffisante et s’adapte aux critères du monde. Elle donne assez souvent à l’organisation et à l’institutionnalisation, une importance plus grande qu’à son appel à l’ouverture vers Dieu, qu’à l’espérance du monde pour l’autre.

Pour correspondre à sa véritable tâche, l’Église doit toujours de nouveau faire l’effort de se détacher de sa « mondanité » pour s’ouvrir à Dieu. C’est ainsi qu’elle suit les paroles de Jésus : « Ils ne sont pas du monde, comme moi je ne suis pas du monde » (Jn 17, 16), et c’est ainsi qu’Il se donne au monde. En un certain sens, l’histoire vient en aide à l’Église à travers les diverses périodes de sécularisation, qui ont contribué de façon essentielle à sa purification et à sa réforme intérieure.

En effet, les sécularisations – qui furent l’expropriation de biens de l’Église ou la suppression de privilèges ou de choses semblables – signifièrent chaque fois une profonde libération de l’Église de formes de « mondanité » : elle se dépouille, pour ainsi dire, de sa richesse terrestre et elle revient embrasser pleinement sa pauvreté terrestre. Ainsi, l’Église partage le destin de la tribu de Lévi qui, selon l’affirmation de l’Ancien Testament, était la seule tribu en Israël qui ne possédait pas de patrimoine terrestre mais elle avait pris exclusivement Dieu lui-même, sa parole et ses signes comme part d’héritage. Avec cette tribu, l’Église partageait en ces moments historiques l’exigence d’une pauvreté qui s’ouvrait vers le monde, pour se détacher de ses liens matériels, et ainsi son agir missionnaire redevenait également crédible.

Les exemples historiques montrent que le témoignage missionnaire d’une Église « dé-mondanisée » est plus clair. Libérée du fardeau et des privilèges matériels et politiques, l’Église peut se consacrer mieux et de manière vraiment chrétienne au monde entier ; elle peut être vraiment ouverte au monde. Elle peut à nouveau vivre avec plus d’aisance son appel au ministère de l’adoration de Dieu et au service du prochain. La tâche missionnaire qui est liée à l’adoration chrétienne, et qui devrait déterminer la structure de l’Église, se rend visible plus clairement. L’Église s’ouvre au monde non pour obtenir l’adhésion des hommes à une institution avec ses propres prétentions de pouvoir, mais pour les faire rentrer en eux-mêmes et ainsi les conduire à Celui dont toute personne peut dire avec Augustin : Il est plus intime à moi-même que moi-même (cf. Conf. 3, 6, 11). "

discours de Fribourg en Brisgau du 25 septembre 2011.

Comme chacun sait, les épiscopats francophones des pays riches ont fait payer - et continuent probablement encore - des droits d'auteur sur les textes liturgiques traduits en français, scripturaires ou non.
Personne ne conteste que ceux qui ont travaillé aux traductions doivent recevoir un juste salaire.
Mais une fois les frais de traduction couverts, les textes doivent être gratuits.
Autrement, pour dire qu'il n'y a pas simonie, il faut dire soit que demander des droits d'auteurs n'est pas faire une forme de trafic, soit que les textes de l'Eglise, bibliques ou liturgiques, ne sont pas des choses saintes.
Car pour la conférence des évêques de France, la simonie :

Désigne toute forme de trafic d’objets sacrés, de biens spirituels ou de charges ecclésiastiques. Un épisode des Actes des Apôtres (8,12-24) fait allusion à la simonie. C’est sous le pontificat du Pape Grégoire VII que s’opère la réforme qui permettra de mettre un terme à la simonie.

Et c'est d'autant plus grave que, comme l'ont fait remarquer début 2012 Mgr Bernard-Nicolas Aubertin, Mgr Robert Le Gall et Mgr Philippe Guéneley, la traduction de ces textes n'est pas une nouveauté : cela fait des siècles qu'on y travaille.
De plus, les conférences épiscopales des pays francophones d'Afrique Noire ne reçoivent rien de cette manne. (A moins qu'on ait changé les dispositions antérieures.) En effet elles n'ont pas été consultées pour l'élaboration des traductions : il y en a qui sont plus égaux que d'autres !

S'il faut parler de ces choses, ce n'est pas par amour du scandale ; mais parce que quand j'ai écrit à Rome pour que les textes de la liturgie soient libres de droit, je n'ai pas eu de réponse. Dieu peut-il bénir l'apostolat d'épiscopats simoniaques ? Il est urgent de se reprendre.

Votre dévoué Paterculus