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I had never heard of this before[1] (as a sheltered obtuse American) - this seems like exactly the sort of thing that the US separation of church and state was

I had never heard of this before[1] (as a sheltered obtuse American) - this seems like exactly the sort of thing that the US separation of church and state was established for. It looks like the church can opt you into their fold using deceptive dark practices - if this were the US, it would be like if registering with ancestry.com opted you into mandatory Mormon tithes[2]. [1] https://allaboutberlin.com/glossary/Kirchensteuer https://allaboutberlin.com/glossary/Kirchensteuer [2] https://www.pbs.org/mormons/etc/genealogy.html https://www.pbs.org/mormons/etc/genealogy.html

whstl 3y ago
In Germany's case it's only the Catholic Church that does this shady stuff. It should have been like other churches, that only charge you if you frequent them in Germany. But the Catholic Lobby is strong, so if you have a register of baptism in Papua New Guine they will chase you and charge back taxes, even if your parents left the church, forgot to tell you about baptism, and were adopted by a family of another religion. Ooops.