You've been looking in the wrong direction, the dangers are coming from the Left - read OP

No, but officially leaving the church is a lot harder. They don't have an opt-out/resignation policy. And they use this to artificially claim the numbers of catholics in ireland.

Also, in Germany, if you're baptised you have to pay an extra 3% tax to the Catholic church. There's actually no way out of doing this because the Chruch consider you a member and the State wants to see documentation of otherwise. So there are/can be practical implications. There was actually a drive on to enforce ALL catholics baptised in the EU to pay it - which would have included me - but I'm honestly not sure what came of it.

I agree to a certain extent - I'm technically a catholic but in real terms agnostic/athiest (like a lot of people) - but ultimately just get on with my life (at least until I get a tax bill!).

Banning GAC for kids through to adulthood is medically nonviable policy. But I look forward to the next future moral panic when the winner of a males division olympic medal/qualifier is female presenting with world-class fake tits.

*your

Bit of a wild conflation there in fairness.

Like I don’t see how attempting to prohibit parents from having their children baptised would address the issue of child sexual abuse.

The whole trans thing is an entirely separate can of worms. There have been attempts to introduce it into Catholic schools by means of proposed legislation to ignore the ethos of the school, but given who its sponsors are, again I don’t think it could be considered a credible threat coming from the Left -

Bill entitled an Act to guarantee the right of students to receive factual and objective relationships and sexuality education without regard to the characteristic spirit of the school

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/bills/bill/2018/34/

What you’d be suggesting would just be giving people ideas, like this -

https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/texas-attempt-to-tear-parents-and-trans-youth-apart-one-year-later

The State’s history of removing children from their parents care in order to protect those children from harm, has always tended to have the opposite of its intended effect, regardless of whether it’s fuelled by left or right, liberal or conservative ideologies.

"We're here, we're queer, and we're coming for your children"

Again, this is nonsense.

Claiming that in Germany if you are baptised you HAVE to pay the church tax.

Many millions of baptised Germans don’t pay the Church tax.

That wasn’t what was being argued as well you know.

I’m not sure where your confusion arises.

A poster claimed that in Germany, if you are baptised, you HAVE to pay a tax to the church.

This is not true because you do not HAVE to, as millions of Germans can attest.

Half a million in 2019 alone opted to leave the church, even though they were baptised, they don’t HAVE to pay.

“Thankfully, leaving the church in Germany – in official, legal terms anyway – is quite straightforward. All you need to do is be over the age of 14 and in possession of a valid passport or ID card.”

Actually that poster has. If you want to go to church and get the sacraments you must be registered for the church and you pay the tithe for the upkeep of the churches. What this means is when you get married, baptised etc there's none of this faffing around with an envelope for the priest nonsense or renting the church.

If you do not want to pay the church tax you deregister and that's it. You can go to mass if you want, but by deregistering you're not paying the tithe and you don't get the sacraments stuff taken care of. I think you may be able to still pay to get married or whatever, but not familiar with that. I have many, many friends who forgot to deregister when they turned 16 or 18 (I think it depends on wheither the state classes you as a dependent on your parents) and they have gotten bills in the post for 3, 4, 5 years unpaid tithes. It took them a couple of hours at most to deregister and get the tithe owed forgiven (as long as it's under a certain amount).

You do not HAVE to pay it at all. You make a decision to pay it, as an adult, whether baptised or not and it is not that hard to deregister from the Church. To deregister all you need is an offical form of ID and proof of membership of the church, either baptism or marriage certs or similar and it can be done with an online form or in person. I know this because I helped someone do it a few months ago.

Yup, the majority of my friends and colleagues across Germany and Austria, who both have the same tithe system. Also anyone who moves there on registration you're asked if you want to declare your registered religion for the tithe. As a foreigner moving there you can just say you're not religious and job done, though if you declare you're religion and want to later opt out it's not a major hassle. And if you're baptised here its a relatively quick deregistration process that takes about as much time as when you register a change of address.

The German system seems a very good system of measuring the number of members of each church though I dont know how it would work here. Would you have to pay the tax every year if you were sending your kid to a religious owned school? That may make it an issue here.

Even if you cant officially leave the church in Ireland, its membership is measured through the census anyway and if you don't believe in its teaching what harm can they do you?

Yeah, that story reads more like someone who did not keep on top of their registration situation with a little whiff of bull. To me that sounds like that person f'd up on their registration form when they moved there and never followed up with the letters they would have received annually looking for payment, and eventually the dues were passed on to a debt company, which can and does happen. And those companies are a pain in the absolute hole here.

Deregistering in Germany or Austria is not going to make you a non-Catholic in your home country or prevent marriage in a Catholic church. It's not like they send a list of all people who declare themselves non-Catholic back to their home countries and have the baptismal certs burned. What is more likely is that he misunderstood, or the debt company deliberately mis-stated, that he couldn't get married in a Catholic church in Germany without paying and allowed him to assume/presume that this also applied in Italy. Though if he told them he was Catholic and wanted to get married in a church back in Italy then that's his mistake, it won't deregister him as a Catholic in Italy, but he has lied about being a practising Catholic on his German registration, and that's a big no no.

And I agree, much prefer the tithe system than the way it works in Ireland.

I don’t think you’ve left the church though. Hold onto your seat for a sec 😁

Basically how it appears to work is you declare to the State that you’re not affiliated with a religious community, and that’s one thing, but… that declaration makes no odds as far as the Catholic Church itself are concerned - it’s unfortunately the case that there is no formal means within the Church of renouncing your membership. You’re still a member even if you deliberately try to get yourself kicked out, because even when excommunicated - yep, still a member, just in the wings, so to speak, currently not in communication with the Church (they’re like an ex who still thinks you’re just on a break 😂).

There’s probably going to be something of a Lutheran split (history repeats itself) in the Catholic Church at some point in the future with way the German Catholic Church are trying to stop the haemorrhaging of Catholics who are declaring themselves disaffiliated from the Church, it’s not just about avoiding the Church tax, it’s about the way the Hierarchy have conducted themselves in the wake of scandal after scandal, and they just keep coming. It’s causing a considerable conflict for German Catholics who still want to be affiliated with the Roman Church, but don’t want to support the German Catholic Church, because they don’t want to fund the direction in which they see it going either -

In January 2023, in an interview with AP, Pope Francis warned that the German Synodal Way is both "elitist" and "ideological." He also said that is neither helpful nor serious, and contrasted it with the worldwide Synod on Synodality. He urged that the Church "be patient, dialogue and accompany these people on the real synodal path" and to "help this more elitist [German] path so that it does not end badly in some way, but so is also integrated into the church."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synodal_Way

https://www.ncregister.com/news/leaving-the-church-to-stay-catholic-german-faithful-face-church-tax-dilemma?amp

The introduction and operation of the State collection and administration of a Church tax in Ireland would be a disaster for everyone while the Catholic Church still owns and operates over 90% of schools, as just one example - forget about the children, they would go back to being able to employ only teachers who are members of the Church, teachers of other faiths and none need not apply. Roll back on those admissions policies too, and we’ve already seen how John Halligan kicked off when he was told he couldn’t be a sponsor!

That’s the difference between why the Church tax works in other countries where the State isn’t as reliant on private entities to provide public services, and why it wouldn’t work here where the Church has a virtual monopoly on both private and public services such as education, healthcare, housing, social services, etc. Anyone proposing the idea of a Church tax out of spite, thinking it would one-up the Catholic Church in Ireland, probably hasn’t thought it through.

Yeah but this is what I mean - the Catholic Church in Germany, and the Catholic Church in Ireland are two very different beasts. The German Catholic Church which have always gone their own way anyway, are now trying to hold onto what they have by introducing all these ideas which are a complete departure from traditional teachings. Why? It’s not because they give a fig about the faithful, it’s because it’ll keep the tax money rolling in from the State.

In Ireland the Church doesn’t have to do any of that. The State doesn’t want to do it either, and as long as they can scratch each other’s backs, it doesn’t matter how many Catholics there are or aren’t in the country. The State will still tell Protestants, Pentecostals, Jehovahs Witnesses, Muslims, Hindus, Confuscians, non-religious, atheist, whatever… that they’re more than welcome to avail of the services already provided by the Church, that the State is obligated to provide, but doesn’t, and has no interest in providing those services directly when it’s far more economical for the State to outsource public services to private providers.

This is why I don’t suggest anyone should be concerned about people who warble on about any threat coming from “the Left”. The Left are grand, they’re no danger to anyone. It’s like you said about the Church - they say a lot and I’m sure they do mean well, but ultimately nobody is really paying them any attention, and probably won’t be in 10/20 years time either, whereas the clip my young lad will get round the ear if he so much as questions baptising my grandchildren… he’ll feel it alright 😂

Ahh no, I get what you’re saying though, I just don’t imagine it changing that much tbh, sure you’d Usenet groups saying the same back in the 90’s, and probably saying the same before that in the 70’s.