Part 2: Cuts in Catholic Social Services
On the other hand, subsidies for
youth organizations and community centers are to be radically cut
or eliminated altogether. Under the diocese's proposed cost-cutting
program, a number of facilities would be shut down, including
Catholic adult education offices, the Catholic Academy of Trier and
Catholic student societies in Trier and the nearby cities of
Saarbrücken and Koblenz.
Those who would be affected by the
cuts are outraged. "Our goal is to make the church more
accessible," says Guido Gross, a pastor who ministers to university
students, "but now they want to get rid of the entire field of
activity." Lukas Rölli of the Confederation of Catholic Student
Societies adds: "I will renounce my faith if the bishop signs
this." For Rölli, the Catholic Church creates the impression that
it "is trying to withdraw from society more and more, and back into
the vestry."
In Cologne, one of the world's
wealthiest dioceses, there is also a wide gap between appearance
and reality. Grassroots Catholics there have had to struggle to
stay afloat financially. Churches have been closed while a
shrinking number of priests have had to minister to bigger and
bigger congregations in line with strict requirements outlined in
austerity programs. Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of Cologne has a
large budget of €863 million, and the assets of the archbishop's
see are estimated at several billion euros. According to church
critic Frerk's calculations, the diocese's holdings in a group of
companies known as theAachener
Gesellschaften, which consist of about 26,000 residential and
commercial units, were worth more than €1 billion in 2003.
But the archbishop's financial
officer makes little mention of all this good news. If he did,
would the faithful be quite as willing to support all the cutbacks
and cheerfully donate their money to pay for a new stained-glass
window in the cathedral by the artist Gerhard Richter? For the
archdiocese, it is always preferable to have others foot the bills,
even when it comes to paying the archconservative Cardinal Joachim
Meisner. Based on a centuries-old agreement, the government pays
the diocese the cardinal's monthly stipend of about €11,300, which
hasn't stopped Meisner from repeatedly attacked his sponsors for
their godlessness and various "failings."
Taxpayers' Money for German
Churches
Meisner and many of his fellow
ministers aren't the only ones to receive public stipends. Year
after year, both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church in
Germany receive generous payments from the federal, state and local
governments. Not as well known as the church tax (about €10 billion
a year) are the annual subsidies to the church, both direct and
indirect, which in 2000 amounted to an estimated €17 billion.
The government pays substantial sums
of money for the maintenance and constant renovation of cathedrals
and other church buildings. It pays the salaries of religion
teachers and foots the bill for the altar wine used in church
services for the military. Some benefits, such as the annual
firewood deliveries a few southern German towns make to their
bishop, are based on 200-year-old entitlements that politicians
have never reviewed.
Despite the constitutional separation
of church and state in Germany, substantial subsidies are paid for
church conferences, church libraries, pastors who minister to
police officers, inmates of prisons and psychiatric institutions,
and the military. The government even helps to pay for the
employment of conscientious objectors, and for the maintenance of
offering boxes and wayside crosses.
The church likes to point out how
much it does for the poor and the weak, and to promote social
cohesion, and it has a valid argument. Nevertheless, the government
foots the bill for many of these activities. The German government
pays the bulk of the German Caritas Association's estimated annual
budget of €45 billion, while the Catholic Church pays only a
fraction.
In guidelines published on March 15,
the diocesan financial board in the Bavarian city of Regensburg,
which manages the assets of the bishop's see, even specifies the
conditions that must be met before it will contribute financially
to the renovation of church-run kindergartens and shelters --
namely that it will only contribute if the local government "has
contractually agreed to pay" two-thirds of total production costs"
and is willing to guarantee payment of at least 80 percent of a
potential operating cost deficit for "at least 25 years."
Apparently the diocese is only
interested in church-run kindergartens if the government assumes
most of the cost. Does that mean the diocese would quickly abandon
its compassionate care for the children of God if public funding
were to dry up? In other dioceses in Germany, Catholic hospitals,
schools and retirement homes are even fully government-funded.
Church Pays no Taxes and is
Unsupervised
In return, the church is not even
required to pay taxes: no property tax, no corporate tax and no
capital gains tax. Everything it does as a public corporation in
Germany is considered charitable, benevolent and tax-exempt. Unlike
other public corporations like universities, the church is not
subject to any state supervision.
According to church law, "the
Catholic Church has the innate right, independently of secular
power, to acquire, own, manage and sell assets for the attainment
of its own purposes." Defending this "innate right" and the
billions backing it is one of the central functions of bishops.
Complicated financial structures and
secret coffers only become somewhat more visible to the public when
perfidious administrators abuse them.
This is a particularly glaring issue
in the Diocese of Limburg at the moment. A few weeks ago, the head
of a church financial administration, who had embezzled about €5
million, was sentenced to more than six years in prison. The man,
who was also the managing director of the Catholic congregation in
Limburg, had unimpeded access to church funds.
"The embezzlement was surprisingly
easy," the judge remarked. The problem was only discovered when the
diocese recently began to introduce a new commercial accounting
system. Until then, the Limburg bishops and their confidants could
apparently dispose of their funds as they saw fit. The current
Bishop of Limburg, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, had to admit that
mistakes were made during financial audits.
A Palace Fit for a
Prince
The diocese could easily afford such
a careless approach to its finances, because the bishop's see
appears to have plenty of cash. It is currently planning to build a
new residence for the bishop, partly with funds from the bishop's
see. Residents of the small city refer to the hill above Limburg,
where the bishop will live behind the tall stone walls of a former
aristocratic estate, as the "Acropolis."
"Our bishop wants to be a prince
again," the locals say mockingly. By contrast, his predecessor,
Bishop Franz Kamphaus, chose to live modestly in a two-room
apartment in the seminary instead of the old bishop's residence,
which he turned over to a family of Ethiopian refugees for several
years.
What architects have designed for
Tebartz-van Elst on the "Acropolis" is far more than a generous
apartment with an on-site chapel. As part of the project, adjacent
buildings will also require extensive renovation and conversion.
New quarters will be needed for an order of nuns that will be
moving in to ensure that His Excellency is well taken care of. And
as part of a new security system for the cathedral museum,
relocating one of the museum's emergency exits will cost €1.5
million alone. As an added benefit, it will be harder to disturb
the bishop in his refuge in future.
Meanwhile, the bishop has ordered his
flock to live by the motto "Save and Renew." Limburg is one of the
dioceses cutting back on parishes, masses and priests. In the
surrounding villages, the faithful are hard at work collecting
donations for the most urgent maintenance work on their churches.
"The saving is happening at the base, while the renewing takes
place elsewhere," says Henny Toepfer of the local chapter of the
reform movement "We Are Church." She has trouble understanding why
millions of euros are available for a new residence, but not to pay
for buses to bring elderly Catholics from the villages to church
services.
The Lure of Financial
Markets
For some time now, the old-fashioned
vices of pomposity and wastefulness have been joined by a
thoroughly modern temptation for the financial administrators of
the bishops' sees: the promise of turning a profit in global
capital markets.
Take, for example, Magdeburg. Hoping
to solve its financial problems, the poverty-stricken diocese,
which also has relatively few members, established a stock
corporation called Gero AG. To increase earnings from interest and
compound interest, Bishop Leo Nowak's confidants invested in real
estate deals, ship partnerships, biogas plants and even
controversial research into genetically modified plants. A priest
in the administration of the diocese even blessed a greenhouse
intended for use with genetically modified plants, in hopes that
the church's pious investment would flourish.
Today the bishop faces a financial
mess. His diocese claims to have lost more than €40 million, while
the press estimates the losses at about €100 million. Now the new
executive board of Gero AG plans to restructure the ailing network
of companies and holdings. The corporation has already sued its
former managing director for damages.
Why do the princes of the church
refuse to be held accountable to their congregations? And why are
they so careful to keep the government, which supports them so
generously, out of their financial affairs?
A former spokesman of a diocese has
spent a lot of time thinking about these questions. He attributes
the current problems to the pre-modern world of diocesan
ordinariates and residences, which revolved around royal courts.
"The bishops and prelates, with their colorful titles, feel
superior to the Western world and shield themselves against it," he
says. "The confessional stands in the church, not the offices of
the tax authorities."
Translated from the German by Christopher
Sultan
