No Tax Payment, No Blessing!

[Winchester]

[quote name='Anomaly' timestamp='1348937721' post='2488043']
So if you don't pay money, the Princes of theChurch con deny you Gods graces and cripple your efforts or chances for Salvation.
Sign me up?
[/quote]
They can deny those sacraments. They cannot limit God.

[Anomaly]

[quote name='Winchester' timestamp='1348938257' post='2488046']

They can deny those sacraments. They cannot limit God.
[/quote]What? The Sacraments are how God interacts.
Then why have a Church?

[beatitude]

The sacraments are God's gifts, freely given - I don't see how they can be anybody's 'property'. We're not talking about table lamps here.

[Nihil Obstat]

Winnie, sacramental grace is a non-scarce resource.

[Nihil Obstat]

Actually that reminds me of a cool think Jeffrey Tucker wrote a few months back.

[url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker180.html"]http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker180.html[/url]


[indent=1]I have what I think is a new theory about why this situation persists. People who live and work primarily within the Catholic milieu are dealing mainly with goods of an infinite nature. These are goods like salvation, the intercession of saints, prayers of an infinitely replicable nature, texts, images, and songs that constitute non-scarce goods, the nature of which requires no rationing, allocation, and choices regarding their distribution.[/indent]
[indent=1][font="Times New Roman, Times, serif"][size="3"]None of these goods takes up physical space. One can make infinite numbers of copies of them. They can be used without displacing other instances of the good. They do not depreciate with time. Their integrity remains intact no matter how many times they are used. Thus they require no economization. For that reason, there need to be no property norms concerning their use. They need not be priced. There is no problem associated with their rational allocation. They are what economists call "free goods."[/size][/font][/indent]
[indent=1][font="Times New Roman, Times, serif"][size="3"]If one exists, lives, and thinks primarily in the realm of the non-scarce good, the problems associated with scarcity — the realm that concerns economics — will always be elusive. To be sure, it might seem strange to think of things such as grace, ideas, prayers, and images as goods, but this term merely describes something that is desired by people. There are also things we might describe as non-goods, which are things that no one wants. So it is not really a point of controversy to use this term. What really requires explanation is the description of prayers, grace, text, images, and music as [i]non-scarce[/i] goods that require no economization.[/size][/font][/indent]

[Winchester]

[quote name='Anomaly' timestamp='1348939462' post='2488052']
What? The Sacraments are how God interacts.
Then why have a Church?
[/quote]
You haven't heard of extraordinary means?

[Winchester]

[quote name='beatitude' timestamp='1348939723' post='2488053']
The sacraments are God's gifts, freely given - I don't see how they can be anybody's 'property'. We're not talking about table lamps here.
[/quote]
The Church is given authority over them, and you can't stick a gun to a priest's head and demand he give you Communion. Clearly the Sacraments are at least property by use, although not properly property by ownership.

[Lil Red]

moving to debate table.

[Groo the Wanderer]

Some of you are positively loopy.

The bishops are denying the sacraments to whomever declares themselves non-Catholic, as they should Why is there a problem with this?

Should the Church sit idly by and allow the gubmint to tax people on the basis if their religion? nope. so why the frik aren;t the german catholics making their voices heard in the voting booths? the german laity outnumber the german clergy by a rather large margin. get off the backs of the bishops and back them. sheeze!

[Anomaly]

[quote name='Groo the Wanderer' timestamp='1348980433' post='2488338']
Some of you are positively loopy.

The bishops are denying the sacraments to whomever declares themselves non-Catholic, as they should Why is there a problem with this?

Should the Church sit idly by and allow the gubmint to tax people on the basis if their religion? nope. so why the frik aren;t the german catholics making their voices heard in the voting booths? the german laity outnumber the german clergy by a rather large margin. get off the backs of the bishops and back them. sheeze!
[/quote]at first I was embarrassed for you Groo because I thought you thought it was a Government tax on religion, not Religions taxing people via the Government. I caught on when you were blaming the Government and acting like the Bishops are neing manipulated.

Your witty sarcasm made me laugh.

[Aloysius]

What was wrong with the counter-reformers? The bishops were just attaching indulgences to a good work--tithing, why should there have been anything wrong with that?

What is wrong with the bishops of the underground Chinese Church? Shouldn't they have to declare themselves as bishops on government forms, if not then they are declaring themselves non-bishops, right?

No matter which way you slice it, the bishops are viewing who is Catholic based upon who affiliated as Catholic on a government tax form (and therefore gave money to the Church through the government collection plate). That is wrong. And refusing the sacraments to those who do not affiliate as Catholic on a government tax form basically amounts to charging people a mandatory tithing in order to receive the sacraments, and it's no better than SELLING the sacraments. it's simony and it's disgusting.

[eagle_eye222001]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1348869819' post='2487722']
...
Basically these problems are on two very different levels, ...
[/quote]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1348935220' post='2488037']
I find this absolutely disgusting of the German Bishops and the Vatican.... this is [b]SIMONY...[/b]
[/quote]

I wholeheartedly agree with Nihil and Aloysius.

The bottom line is that we have two issues going on here.......unfortunately.......one of these is simony....and that can't be defended no matter the circumstances.

It seems to me that the basic story is that Sacraments are on sale now....like a Lemonade stand on the street. If I refuse to buy my annual subscription to Catholicism...I am an apostate...if I pay....I am paying for Sacraments since it is not a free-will donation, but rather a forced transaction!

[b]Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is a lose-lose situation with grave implications...and the world has every right to mock us for it![/b]




[b]God help us. [/b]

[qfnol31]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1348871920' post='2487731']
There was a time in the early church where in order to have a state job you had to swear you weren't Christian. Denying the faith to save money is the same as denying the church to make money.
[/quote]

I'm glad our Church and status today aren't as messy as the early controversy you reference. Back then it was considered such a sin to deny the Church, even under coercion and threat of death, that some people didn't want to allow these people back into the Church. Fortunately level heads and Tradition prevailed (via St. Cyprian, et al.) and these people were allowed back into the Church after an arduous process. While the practice of penance has changed much in the last 1750 years or so, to my understanding the idea of denying the Church for any reason still remains listed as a sin.

I see the German bishops fulfilling the same role as Cyprian or Pope St. Fabian and the others who said that denying the Catholic Faith for any reason, even under pain of death, is wrong. The difference here isn't the response of the bishops, but the situation in which they find themselves. Rather than putting Catholics to death, the German government is in effect fining Catholics (and other religious). I don't see how the Church can change her stance from before to now, even if she should benefit from this.


Ever wonder one of the reasons Tertullian isn't a Saint? It's much in part because of this earlier controversy. He and Novatian didn't want to readmit lapsed Catholics, but they were nevertheless lapsed Catholics.

[qfnol31]

Oh, and just so that there's absolutely no confusion: lapsed Catholics in Cyprian's time were allowed no recourse to the Sacraments, were publicly rebuked, not even allowed at Mass, and had to ask for communal forgiveness.

[Anomaly]

[quote name='qfnol31' timestamp='1349036686' post='2488506']
....Rather than putting Catholics to death, the German government is in effect fining Catholics (and other religious). I don't see how the Church can change her stance from before to now, even if she should benefit from this.
[/quote]q,
How do you see this as a"fine" by the German government. From the links I posted and the research I've done, it is the Church who initiates and sets the percentage of tax. The government (Germany and other countries) simply allows it to be done via the governmental apparatus.

Edited September 30, 2012 by Anomaly