Bundles of church privileges are no longer tenable

Following Benedict XVI’s speech in the Freiburg Concert Hall, Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany (HVD), believes that politicians and bishops should in future consistently comply with the demands of secular organizations to end traditional church privileges in Germany. In his address, Benedict XVI had called for “the worldliness of the Church to be courageously discarded” so that the Church, freed from “material and political burdens and privileges”, can in future “better and in a truly Christian way” address the world. “I am delighted with these words from Benedict XVI, because now the representatives of the Church in the clergy and in politics have an irrefutable duty to really implement the reform course that has now been outlined once again.” Last Thursday at Potsdamer Platz, Frieder Otto Wolf, together with other representatives of secular organizations, also called for the abolition of the churches’ now untenable bundle of privileges. To this end, the replacement of the historical state benefits provided for in the Basic Law since the founding of the Federal Republic must finally be carried out in order to comply with the almost 100-year-old mandate of the Weimar Constitution. Frieder Otto Wolf explained that the collection of church tax by the state should also be ended as part of the upcoming reform: “The note on income tax cards required to date contradicts Article 4 of the Basic Law, according to which no one may be forced to disclose their ideological or religious beliefs,” said Frieder Otto Wolf. Where the church is active as a provider of social and cultural institutions and is financed almost entirely by public funds, the special rules in the area of employment law must also be abolished. “The various forms of discrimination against non-denominational as well as religious people who adopt an attitude to life that is uncomfortable from the church’s point of view could thus be permanently removed,” said Frieder Otto Wolf. In future, the church should only be allowed to make its own moral concepts a mandatory rule where, as a religious community, it is prepared to consistently renounce public funds. Wolf emphasized that state benefits to ideological and religious communities to promote their role in the public sphere should continue to be maintained where the actual practice is implemented without discrimination. Wolf: “In our view, the Basic Law, the standards of EU law that are binding for Germany and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights should continue to be used as benchmarks.” Frieder Otto Wolf also referred to the Declaration of Principles of the Coordinating Council of Secular Organizations (KORSO), which was formulated in November 2008, with regard to the reforms required in the future. The HVD is a member of KORSO. Benedict XVI’s address yesterday, Sunday, finally showed, in the view of the association’s president, that a reorganization of the relationship between state and churches in the sense of genuine neutrality and a contemporary practice of equal treatment is now clearly required.