Today we pick up where we left off in our last post titled You Can Observe A Lot Just By Watching (see here). The subject matter of that post was in effect, trying to IDENTIFY the financial considerations which could be behind the HIDDEN AGENDA of the HERETICAL CLERICALISTS. So seeing as how we didn’t find this EVIDENCE yesterday, today we are back looking for the “money trail”.
In the previous post, we tried to tie in two, what one would assume to be intrinsically related issues, i.e. “HEALING THE WOUNDS” of the CONTEMPORARY FAMILY and ARRESTING AND REVERSING the trend of “c”atholics leaving the Church. Our simple assumption was that if they are not in the Church, they:
1) can’t have their “wounds healed”,
and
2) can’t help cover the operating costs of the church, i.e. the “money trail“.
Given the above, and giving the bi-Synod organizers the benefit of the doubt that in fact the bi-Synod was about helping the CONTEMPORARY FAMILY and not just about a “a small portion of believers”, we observed that there MUST BE an ELEMENT in the bi-Synod AGENDA that will “attract” these CONTEMPORARY FAMILIES BACK to the Catholic Church. At minimum, to help with the finances. Yet this, what would appear on the surface to be a CRITICAL ELEMENT, was missing from the discussions.
Today we will take a closer look at this last issue, i.e. that the HERETICAL CLERICALISTS did NOT take FORMAL financial considerations into account in the bi-Synod AGENDA. The EVIDENCE for this assertion was the observation that it seemed strange that the bi-Synod, which was called to deal with problems faced by the “CONTEMPORARY” FAMILY would devolve into a synod whose main aim is to deal with the “problem of divorced and remarried who want to receive Communion, which relates to a small portion of believers”.
To explain this irrational (TRANSRATIONAL) observation, using the FIELD HOSPITAL metaphor, of how to heal someone in a FIELD HOSPITAL if that someone doesn’t come to the FIELD HOSPITAL, we once again employ our favorite HERETIC of days gone by, the Franciscan William of Ockham who observed that: numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
With all things being equal, since the simplest explanation tends to be the right one, the obvious answer to the above conundrum appears to be the following: the HERETICAL CLERICALISTS don’t need to “attract” the CONTEMPORARY FAMILY back into the FIELD HOSPITAL.
Therefore, IF the AGENDA of the HERETICAL CLERICALISTS was NOT designed to “attract” the CONTEMPORARY FAMILY back into the FIELD HOSPITAL, THEN their stated AGENDA of HEALING the WOUNDS is NOT OBJECTIVELY TRUE.
This would imply that the second half or our assumption, i.e. the parallel issue of “attracting” the CONTEMPORARY FAMILY back to the FIELD HOSPITAL, so that the CONTEMPORARY FAMILY can help offset some of the expenses of operating that FIELD HOSPITAL, which would then support the contributions made pursuant to Canon 1271 of the Code of Canon Law, must be at the ROOT of the HERETICAL CLERICALIST’S AGENDA. In other words, a HIDDEN AGENDA.
Therefore, if the above is in fact the case, the most likely place to start looking for an answer is by looking at the FUNDING MODEL of the German Catholic Church. By looking at the construction of the FUNDING MODEL, we might be able to identify one of the ROOT CAUSES driving the HERETICAL CLERICALIST’S HIDDEN AGENDAS.
Under a NORMAL CATHOLIC CHURCH FUNDING MODEL, where the Faithful support the Church institutions through ALMS GIVING (acts of charity) made during Mass, the Church needs the Faithful to come to Mass in order to collect the ALMS, which then go to pay the bills. However, the most important aspect of the Faithful attending Mass is that it is both a precept of the Church and Church law that Catholics must worship God on Sunday and Holy Days of Obligation by participating in the Holy Mass (see here). By participating at Holy Mass, for our purposes here, the Faithful come into contact with the MOST PERFECT form of prayer, which de facto must be the best REMEDY for the HEALING OF THE WOUNDS OF THE CONTEMPORARY FAMILY.
For argument’s sake, let’s say that the confirmation of this last STATEMENT is the near obsession of the HERETICAL CLERICALISTS with giving Communion to public sinners. Actually, to ALL SINNERS is probably more accurate!
As to the process itself, the above can be described as a POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP, or a process that “enhances or amplifies an effect by it having an influence on the process which gave rise to it”. (see here) What this means is that the more lapsed “c”atholics that can be drawn back to the Holy Mass in order to be “healed”, the more ALMS will be given to offset the operating costs of the institution that is the Church. When successfully “healed”, these returned “c”atholics will in turn motivate other lapsed “c”atholics to return to the Church and through this effect, the “healing”/ALMS giving dynamic gets amplified. On an aside, this mechanism has been very successful for 2000 years making the Catholic Church the OLDEST CONTINUOUSLY FUNCTIONING INSTITUTION IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF MAN. But I digress…
In the German Catholic Church FUNDING MODEL, one based on the KIRCHENSTEUER, or a church tax, this POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP breaks down. To be more precise, the relationship between the institutional Church and the attendance of the Faithful at Mass is broken, if not nonexistent. The reason is due to faulty design of the FUNDING MODEL itself. Allow me to explain.
The manner in which the German Church is funded, 70+% of revenue comes through a government collection scheme. The KIRCHENSTEUER itself is a withholding tax on paid income that the employers of the Faithful withhold monthly and pay directly to the German state revenue authorities, who then disburse it to the church. The church tax is only paid by members of the respective church. People who are not members of a church tax-collecting denomination do not have to pay it.
Tax itself is a small part of the overall tax bill. “In the example where a single person earning 50,000 euros may pay an average income-tax of 20%, thus 10,000 euros. The church tax is then an additional 8% (or 9%) of that 10,000 euros (800 or 900 euros) for a total of 10,800 or 10,900 euros in taxes”. (see here) Therefore, the actual KIRCHENSTEUER tax amounts to a €66 (€75) increase in withholding on the monthly income of the payee. Yet when taken as a whole, the take for the German Catholic Church is quite large. In 2013 net income from the KIRCHENSTEUER amounted to €5.5b (see here) and in 2014 it was over €5.6b. (see here and here)
Therefore, what we see from the above is that this KIRCHENSTEUER FUNDING MODEL effectively breaks down the NEED of the Faithful to go to Mass and give ALMS (funding) and the actual funding mechanism itself. What is CRITICAL under the KIRCHENSTEUER FUNDING MODEL is that the Faithful stay in the Church tax payee pool, regardless of whether they go to Mass or not. It is this divergence of INTERESTS, between the INTEREST’S of the Faithful (spiritual need to attend Mass) and the INTEREST’S of the German ecclesiastical authorities (materialistic need to keep people in the church tax pool), that is behind the “tide of apostasy” observed in the German (Western European) Church. This is also the ROOT CAUSE of such incidents as bishops threatening excommunications for withdrawing from the KIRCHENSTEUER tax pool. (see here) More on this in a follow-up post.
For the purposes of today’s subject matter, what is critical to understand is that the institutional Church in Germany, i.e. HERETICAL CLERICALISTS does not need the Faithful in the pews in order to fund itself. The adoption of this faulty KIRCHENSTEUER FUNDING MODEL has broken down the PROPER Faithful/Church relationship. One area where this knock-on effect can be seen is in the empty churches. By breaking the bond between church funding and Mass attendance, the church authorities have lost contact with the Faithful and the Faithful lost contact with the church. This in turn has led to the “de-catechisation” of the German catholics while at the same time allowed the church authorities to neglect this “de-catechisation” of the German catholics problem, since it doesn’t have a direct impact on the Church’s revenue stream.
Another knock-on effect of the KIRCHENSTEUER on the German Episcopate can be observed in the German Episcopate’s actions when trying to address this empty churches issue. What is obvious to all, is that the German Episcopate does not really know what the average German catholic is thinking since they have no contact with him. Therefore, the Episcopate is forced to rely on IMPERFECT INFORMATION (CORRUPTED) provided by “small groups” which are active within the Church, groups that for the most part have vested interests in particular agendas. These small but vocal “special interest” groups then CROWD OUT the average, normal “c”atholics. A good case in point is the multiple groups that have sprung up “around” the Church to promote the HOMO AGENDA, an agenda which appears to dominate the German, Austrian, Belgian and Swiss churches, while at the same time only affects a minuscule proportion of the Catholic and “c”atholic population.
Confirmation of the above CROWDING OUT effect, first from the physical churches (Mass attendance) and subsequently from the KIRCHENSTEUER payee pool, can be discerned from the recent Mathias von Gersdorf post were he writes: (see here)
A lot of people separate from their church probably not because they became atheists or non-religious people. They do not want to be simply associated with a particular church, to who they make monthly pay. They reject the rigid form of financing. They want to decide for themselves where and when they give money, “- says von Gersdorff. “Without a doubt, there are also many conservative Christians who do not want to pay church tax and leave the Church. Just as liberals want to decide themselves who they financially support “- we read further.
What the above implies is that even with a small monthly withholding, the Faithful who are separating from the Church are still going through the trouble to “formally declare their wish to leave the community to the state (not religious) authorities. With such a declaration, the obligation to pay church taxes ends. Some communities refuse to administer marriages and burials of (former) members who had declared to leave it”. While others are threatened with excommunication, might as well add.
So what we see is that the KIRCHENSTEUER has introduced a NEGATIVE FEEDBACK LOOP in place of the 2000 year old POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP that has served the Catholic Church very well and has made it the oldest formal organization in HUMAN HISTORY.
Let’s think about this for a second or two, shall we?
Other knock-on effects of this badly flawed German KIRCHENSTEUER FUNDING MODEL are not only the whimsical accommodation to special interest groups, but also to politicians. Since the Church depends on the state to collect the KIRCHENSTEUER, the German Episcopate is dependent on the politicians to render these services. In case they would want to collect the church tax themselves, they would still be dependent on the tax authorities to reveal taxation data of their members in order to calculate the contributions and prepayments owed. If the state would cut off the German Episcopate from this taxpayer data, the German Church and the second largest employer in German would collapse in a matter of months.
Concluding, what we observe in the above analysis is an explanation for several aspects of the HERETICAL CLERICALIST’S behavior at the bi-Synod.
First, the HERETICAL CLERICALIST’S need to focus on small, yet vocal “special interest” groups can be explained by the fact that these groups are not only vocal, but politically active likewise. This is the case with respect to the HOMO LOBBY. Given that this blog has established as far back as the 18th of December 2014 (see here) that the HIDDEN AGENDA behind the calling of the bi-Synod was introduction of GENDER IDEOLOGY into Catholic moral doctrine and ecclesiastical law, the above analysis is just another piece of evidence supporting this HYPOTHESIS.
With respect to our observation that it would appear as if the CRITICAL ELEMENT of “attracting” the CONTEMPORARY FAMILY back to the Church in order to have their “wounds healed” is missing, the above analysis explains this quite well. By putting in place a FUNDING MODEL which divorces ALMS giving at Mass from the operational funding of the Church, the HERETICAL CLERICALISTS do not need to focus on the perennial problem of lack of attendance at Mass and empty churches.
With respect to our identification of the “money trail”, our analysis can clearly identify IT by taking into account the badly designed KIRCHENSTEUER FUNDING MODEL. We can clearly observe that it was the pandering to certain “special interest” group, i.e. the HOMO LOBBY which led to the calling of the bi-Synod process. This HOMO LOBBY was able to exert this pressure on the German Episcopate and in turn, the German Bishops’ Conference and in turn, the HERETICAL CLERICALISTS and in turn, the CONTROL GROUP for two specific reasons, namely HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY thrown into their lobbying effort and the SUPPORT of a large part of the GERMAN POLITICAL CLASS, that can in turn exert pressure on the German Bishops through the latter’s dependence on the former for their funding needs.
And by extension, for their very survival.
And it is through continuously repeating these “wrong mistakes” that the HERETICAL CLERICALISTS from the German Bishops’ Conference brought the entire Roman Church to the brink of SCHISM at the culmination of the bi-Synod process.
Now all that is left is to see if Francis crosses this Rubicon.
The Deus Ex Machina Blog 