Germanic Schisms

[...]in Germany, if you withdraw from paying your Church Tax, the Marxenkirche (correct me if I've got my German wrong) will excommunicate you.

Withdrawing from the Church Tax means going to a notary or the registry office and signing an official paper. The registry office then passes on the information. The signing is probably considered similar to declaring publicly that one is at odds with the faith.

So an orthodox Catholic can't withdraw from financial complicity in the heterodox doings of the German episcopate without being deprived of the Sacraments.

Yes. However, what an orthodox Catholic can do, is muse how, for example, Cardinal Marx may justify excommunicating 20.000 or more people per year in his bishopric in this age of mercy.

It seems that the masters of the V2 Church have studied Cranmer and learned lessons. They may not have the police arm of the State to back them up, but the tactics seem very similar--carrot and stick judiciously wielded to bring the faithful into ... complicity and thus into an uneasy compliance. In my own archdiocese I'm told that priests were instructed long ago that there were to be no sermons re Islam or homosexuality. Perhaps that list has been lengthened since then. To what degree of complicity are confessors now brought? What, in such a case, are their responsibilities before Christ? And what of seminarians--those who thought they were entering the ministry of what turned out to be the fool's paradise of the Benedictine Church? These are tough questions--tough realities!

Re the Ecclesia Dei communities, those are surely valid concerns, but was that not in fact the hidden design of Ecclesia Dei? To minister to those who were "attached" to the "old" liturgy--"attached" being a clearly and intentionally emotionally laden term. Implicitly: do your smells and bells to satisfy your attachments, but you will be complicit. The clear intent, as it seems to me, was precisely to break "the link between sound and safe liturgy, and orthodoxy in the area of dogma and the Church's moral teaching." That was the sticking point, and still is, for SSPX. But even for SSPX the struggle to maintain the spirit of the Faith must be difficult.

As for a coming time when fence sitting will itself be be "a schismatic deviation from witnessing to the Truth," didn't Joseph Shaw address that issue when he and his fellow signatories were savagely attacked by the Vicar General of Opus Dei as causing scandal to the unity of the Church? Those evil times may in fact be upon us already.

In Germany, while in theory opting out of Kirchensteuer (church tax) makes a person ineligible for church's ministration such as funeral, baptism, marriage and confirmation etc, in reality few priests withdraw their services simply over non-payment of church tax. Of course it's not a satisfactory situation and faithful are urged not to opt out, as it's a vital source of income supporting many church, social and charitable activities. But it's fair to say that the institution of church tax is coming under increasing scrutiny and fierce debate is going on in German society. Fr Masaki

"As I understand it ... correct me if I'm wrong ... in Germany, if you withdraw from paying your Church Tax, the Marxenkirche (correct me if I've got my German wrong) will excommunicate you."
I am sorry to say, but you are wrong :-). The Pontifical Council for Interpretation of Legilative texts reprimanded the German Conference of Bishops (for the whole story the keyword is Causa Zapp) for it's practice to excommunicate everybody who declares the leaving of the Public Cooperation Roman-Catholic Church (which is according to the Concordate the legal entity in state law of the Holy Mother Church). Thus this practice was ended. The reason was, that the state authority is not competent in canon law means to receive such a declaration in a canonical sufficiant way.

The German Conference of Bishops now divest you of all rights as member of the church as if you were excommunicated, but don't name it so!

Only nitpickers like me, who recite "But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." Matth. 5, 37 or "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." John 14, 6, claim that this is a scam.

Re: Ecclesia Dei communities, surely it is no surprise that nobody is signing up to be the next Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate?

Re: Abp. Chaput, I am delighted by his skill in snark. Cf. his use of "paradigm", "ideal", etc. I will have to see how many of my own concordats I can smash.

The decree which brought the new practice referred to by Marcus of practically excommunicating non-tax payers without actually excommunicating them was recognized by the Congregation for the Bishops (August 28, 2012). Therefore the Vatican seems to be OK with this, paradoxical though it seems (the state is not competent to receive a declaration of apostasy, so you do not incur the sentence of excommunication, but you are still treated as if you had).

The idea to have the FSSPX or Ecclesia Dei communities take care of faithful who are not willing to pay their Church tax might solve the problem with regard to the sacraments received frequently (Confession, Communion) but faithful who do not pay their church tax need a dispensation from their bishop to marry, as would be the case with any non-Catholic spouse. I assume similar problems would arise in the case of vocations to Holy Orders.

It seems that the Vatican’s ‘dialogue’ with the Communist Chinese regime is similar to that of its pre-WWII negotiations with Nazi Germany – and it may have the same result. It should have been evident to the diplomatic ‘experts’ in Rome that ‘giving an inch’ to the Chinese regime is not going to result in better treatment for the Chinese Catholic faithful.

Rather, as with the Nazis, more concessions will be demanded until they have succeeded in completely neutralizing the Catholic Church in China and its relationship with the See of Peter. Unfortunately, they are emboldened in this by witnessing how Pope Francis refuses to stand up to other, similar regimes – like those of Cuba and Venezuela, to name but two.

Mouthing platitudes about ‘love’, ‘mercy’ and ‘pastoral accompaniment’ may work with the converted, but it is just seen as weakness by dictators. Two thousand years of martyrs for the Catholic Faith should have driven that lesson home. It appears the lesson needs to be re-learned by the current administration in the Vatican.