Orbi Universo?

Fr Ray Blake writes:

Germany/Austria is in the unique situation where being a Catholic depends not on practice, or even belief, but the paying of the Church Tax. The Church is supported therefore through the state, hence the German Chancellor feels she has a right, even a duty to lecture the Pope, and local officials expect to be able to decide on Church policy and appointments. In certain parts of Germany/Austria, it is no wonder "We Are Church" is a serious force within or in opposition to mainstream Catholicism, no wonder too why in the Nazi period the Church, with a few glorious exceptions, became supine to the State rather than offering it a moral compass.

Of course, the last bit is a touch unfair. The more Catholic an area of Germany was, the less likely it was to vote Nazi, absolutely without exception. The German-nationalist Lager in Austria was, and is, extremely anti-Catholic. And so forth. There might even be something to be said for church tax, which makes the churches Germany's largest employers after the several tiers of government, routinely providing the sorts of services the mere suggestion of which causes fits of the vapours in the allegedly much less secular United States.

This is very much of a piece with the fact that no Western European country has on paper, and few have in practice, the American system of abortion on demand at every stage of pregnancy (for that, one has to look to the Bush Administration's friends in Eastern Europe). There are 10 sacral monarchies (11 if one includes the Vatican), monarchy being an institution for which no purely secular argument can ever be constructed. National events are routinely conducted in the form and course of church services. Church schools, maintained at public expense, are normal in many European countries, while at least broadly Christian Religious Education and (although this law is widely flouted) a daily collective act of Christian worship are compulsory in all British schools.

Anglican bishops sit as of right in the British Parliament (where in 2006 they played a key role in blocking physician-assisted suicide); and while the House of Lords might one day be abolished entirely, no one seriously suggests that it might ever remain with only the bishops removed.

And so one could go on.