Hindus critical of German Catholic Church for denying rights to devotees over Church tax

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Hindus have criticized the Roman Catholic Church in Germany for reported Vatican approved decree denying of religious burial, rituals, becoming godparents and other church rights to adherents for not paying a special church tax.

Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, asked: Why would the German Roman Catholic Church want to deprive devotees from religion who could not (or do not want to) pay special church tax as religions primarily spoke against greed and advocated inclusion instead of exclusion. It was simply a step in the wrong direction, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, added.

Global child abuse scandal had already engulfed the Roman Catholic Church and now came this tax decree. Roman Catholic Church needed to show some maturity as such serious allegations leveled against a large denomination/religion affected the whole religious spectrum in the world, raising distrust among believers in general and eroding faith of the faithful. Moreover, with non-use of religiosity, there was always a danger of its diminishing, Zed argued.

Rajan Zed further said that religion was important for the world as it was a mean to relate to ultimate reality, provided hope, gave us value-systems and moral power, held people together and made them accountable/responsible, and transmitted high value information that transformed lives. Moreover religion, which was the heart and soul of humanity, had various dimensions—ritual, emotional, narrative, philosophical, ethical, social and moral; and religious prayers connected us to God.

But if we kept isolating the faithful, the devotees might lose faith in religion or start directly approaching God without the intermediation of church or other religious institutions, Zed stressed. Vatican should come out of its bureaucratic web and reset its priorities and undertake complete reform, Zed noted.

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who is of German descent, heads the Roman Catholic Church, which at about 1.2 billion adherents is the largest of the Christian denominations. Catholics constitute about 30 percent of German population. Hinduism, oldest and third largest religion of the world, has about one billion adherents and moksh (liberation) is its ultimate goal.

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