"The priestly plutocrats"... LOL, of which century and which region are you speaking. Certainly not of the 21st in Europe.
"We may argue about how far the state should go to prevent religious coercion, and we may quarrel over the specific measures taken by the state to protect its citizens from religious coercion." But if you defend Turkey on that issue, you certainly think that Germany is run by Taleban. Are you advocating that NATO should bomb Germany until the minority, uhm, majority of people who are not strongly committed to any religious group are not forced to do what exactly? Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
To possess churches (the building in which the community meets) clearly gives not too much influence over the state. It provides a common room, without gov influence.
When, as was the case before the Danish reformation, they own more than a full third of the available farmland, I would argue that they do, in fact, exert undue influence.
I don't know the precise influence of the various Christian factions in the Ottoman empire, but I can find no principled reason to say that the Danish monarch's expropriation of Catholic property in the 1500-somethings was right and proper while denying the same propriety to Atatürk's reforms. When you make a democratic state, royalists, clergy and other plutocrats are going to take a hit in their wealth and influence. Which is probably why the Church has always been opposed to democracy, but I digress.
Based on the rules of Attaturk organisations were expropriated, who bought the ground well after the Republic was founded (e.g. in the 60s). This is nothing dubious.
Leaving aside the question of whether land ownership itself is dubious, simply having paid for something does not automatically whitewash your possession of it. If, for instance, a robber gang plunders the countryside and then buys land for the proceeds, their land should not be protected from expropriation simply because they didn't steal the land directly.
Again, I do not know the exact details of the Atatürk reforms so I'll be prepared to grant that specific instances crossed the line into the unacceptable, but I am not willing to accept as a fundamental principle that governments can never confiscate the property of religious organisations. There are simply too many examples throughout history where such confiscations have been entirely justified.
Further, in the case of the Catholic Church which you cite, wealth that they used to buy that property is itself dubious. It's based in no small part on Nazi gold, for one thing.
Your claim that the catholic church would have immense predemocratic power in the Ottoman empire is rather redicolous.
Uh, I didn't claim that. I claimed that if nothing had been done, religious groups would have had undue influence over the new Turkish state. Do you dispute that? So, if Atatürk was right to nerf Islam, why shouldn't he nerf Christianity in the same process?
In the Islam there is no big tradition of separation between clerics and non-clerics. Therefore as soon as the gov becomes secular the power leverage of any clerics, whoever this should be, is very small.
Except when they are filthy rich. There is an Arabian proverb: "A dog with money is called Sir Dog."
Turkey has an office for religious affairs, but this is clearly a way how the gov controls religion not vice versa.
And? So does Denmark, for the record.
The dubious predemocratic gains of wealth happened in western Europe, but here I'm not aware of any expropriation.
Uuh... Reformation, anyone? Desamortisation? Unification of Italy? French revolution? You'd be hard pressed to find a country west of the former Iron Curtain that didn't at some point between the 16th and 21st century confiscate the bulk of religious holdings.
21st cent. Vatican would fit the bill (except that calling them 'plutocrats' is entirely too kind - 'criminals' or 'gangsters' would be a better fit). As would most American televangelists, and a good swath of evangelical preachers.
"We may argue about how far the state should go to prevent religious coercion, and we may quarrel over the specific measures taken by the state to protect its citizens from religious coercion." But if you defend Turkey on that issue, you certainly think that Germany is run by Taleban. Are you advocating that NATO should bomb Germany until the minority, uhm, majority of people who are not strongly committed to any religious group are not forced to do what exactly?
Leaving aside the fact that I do not support military intervention in the affairs of sovereign countries, except in the case of ongoing genocide, and leaving aside the fact that I do not agree with all - or even most - of the measures currently taken by Turkey in the pursuit of secularisation, I do think that some areas of Germany (think Bayern) are unduly dominated by religious groups that do not have the best interests of Europe (or Germany) in mind.
I don't know how to fix that problem, though, and I'm pretty sure that bombing won't help (breaking the federation might be an idea, though).
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
And the office holder in Denmark claims to be the leading Bishop, despite assigned by the gov?
What is a religious holding? Is the gov confiscating church owned corporations or churches?
Again what exactly are you claiming is the Vatican doing? What and why should anybody there try to pile up money? I can't see any motivation.
Of what dubious groups you are speaking. I don't live in Bavaria, but I would really like to know, what is there happening. I have inly access to public statements, not to whatever you are referring to. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
So in Denmark a third of the whole country was full with churches? Where did people live?
A third of the land was owned by the Church. They did not, of course, build churches on all of it. Most of it was farmed, actually, although not quite as efficiently as it could have been. During the Reformation, this land - including churches and monasteries - was confiscated by the Crown, along with whatever wealth the Crown could get its hands on before the Church smuggled it out of the country. Are you saying that that confiscation was a wrong thing to do?
It is a different thing to expropriate old property or expropriate newly bought in a country. And this is not a small one.
That depends on whether the funds used to purchase it was acquired legitimately. If they were not, I fail to see why the property shouldn't be confiscated. And in the case of the Catholic Church, I consider all their funds illegitimate, for the reasons stated above.
Why not then forbid buying in the first place?
That would have been a more elegant solution, yes.
Have you any source for the claim that the catholic church has its income to a big part from Nazi gold?
You mean documentation apart from the Reichskonkordat of 1933 and the equivalent agreement with Mussolini in '29? Apart from the Ratlines? Apart from the economic and political alliance between the Church and Franco? The fact that the Vatican was in the Axis from the formation? Aside from the fact that everything the Vatican possessed in 1945 must have been gifts from the Axis, because the Vatican did not exist until it was created by Mussolini in 1929 (the Papal States were abolished and their land confiscated during the unification of Italy in the 19th century)?
None of this is particularly secret information, available only after diligent searching. So I'm a bit confused as to why you'd ask for clarification?
In the last ten years e.g. Germans paid about 50 bn Euro to the catholic church. How many billions of Nazi gold has the church hidden?
I don't know, because the Vatican has refused to release its post-WWI archives, but the most reliable estimates I've seen cite a figure with between seven and nine digits (in 1945 US$ - you can probably add a digit or two to get to current €). Note that this does not include capital gains from that wealth - if one includes those, which could easily be argued, the number becomes a lot bigger.
Yes, I dispute that religious groups had a huge amount of property. And no mosque actually was confiscated. So its not a byproduct of nerfing (my dictionary don't include that word) Islam.
Inasmuch as Wikipedia can be trusted on the matter, you're wrong about that. Money quote:
The policies directly affecting religion were numerous and sweeping. In addition to the abolition of the caliphate, new laws mandated abolition of the office of seyhülislam ; abolition of the religious hierarchy; the closing and confiscation of Sufi lodges, meeting places, and monasteries and the outlawing of their rituals and meetings; establishment of government control over the vakifs, which had been inalienable under Sharia; replacement of sharia with adapted European legal codes; the closing of religious schools; abandonment of the Islamic calendar in favor of the Gregorian calendar used in the West; restrictions on public attire that had religious associations, with the fez outlawed for men and the veil discouraged for women; and the outlawing of the traditional garb of local religious leaders.
Now, are all of these 'reforms' reasonable? No. Most of them are pretty horrible, actually. Are even the majority of them reasonable? Probably not. Are they worse than what happened during the Reformation and the French Revolution? You'd be hard pressed to argue that convincingly. So why do you hold Turkey to a higher standard than France and Germany?
There is no such thing as a 'leading bishop' in Denmark. We don't have a synod. That being said, all priests - including bishops - of the majority religion are government employees, and the minister of the church does have the power to fire out-of-line clerics, although it is very rarely exercised (more importantly, s/he has the power to retain clerics that the bishops think are out of line - a power that has been used rather more liberally). It works very well, and is a system that I believe should be extended to other religious groups should they wish to join it.
The line can get fuzzy. But in the case of the Catholic church, with a well-defined hierarchy and quasi-state/quasi-corporate structure it becomes a lot easier.
Again what exactly are you claiming is the Vatican doing?
Protecting child molesters, for one thing. Cheating on taxes (remember the concordat with Mussolini? Tax exemption was one of his gifts, and it's never been rescinded). Berlusconi. Bush. Hiding valuable historical information for no good reason. Abetting the murder of homosexuals. Aiding and abetting the denial of human rights to women. Refusing to pay compensation to victims of the Holocaust, despite being an Axis state during the War. Refusing to pay compensation to the victims of clerical child molesters. Obstructing justice re. said child molesters, even after they are caught. Oh, and let's not forget the Vatican's genocidal policy re. condoms and AIDS.
Just to take a top-of-my-head list. I could probably dig out a handful more points if you want me to, but is that really necessary?
What and why should anybody there try to pile up money? I can't see any motivation.
You mean apart from greed and corruption? I don't know. But then again, I never understood why Marie Antoniette was eating cake while the peasants were starving either.
Of what dubious groups you are speaking. I don't live in Bavaria, but I would really like to know, what is there happening. I have inly access to public statements, not to whatever you are referring to.
Oh, the lobby groups that still try to deny women full equality, just to take one example (think daycare, think reproductive rights) - they're Protestant as well as Catholic, of course; you might say that they're equal opportunity bigots. The same lobby groups that fight against full equality for homosexuals. And some religious groups are even so backwards that they are opposed to contraception. The extent to which the social safety net is still in the hands of religious groups is also... disturbing.
Oh, Bayern isn't Poland or Russia. I'm not claiming that homosexuals are being systematically assaulted and abused. But it wouldn't hurt the image of Christianity in general - Protestantism as well as Catholicism and Orthodox churches - if they would lay off the organised, doctrinal homophobia.
And I forgot to add a highlight in the quote:
The policies directly affecting religion were numerous and sweeping. In addition to the abolition of the caliphate, new laws mandated abolition of the office of seyhülislam ; abolition of the religious hierarchy; the closing and confiscation of Sufi lodges, meeting places, and monasteries and the outlawing of their rituals and meetings; establishment of government control over the vakıfs, which had been inalienable under Sharia; replacement of sharia with adapted European legal codes; the closing of religious schools; abandonment of the Islamic calendar in favor of the Gregorian calendar used in the West; restrictions on public attire that had religious associations, with the fez outlawed for men and the veil discouraged for women; and the outlawing of the traditional garb of local religious leaders.
On the other issues, well, on some I agree on others I disagree, but I don't think its worth debating here any more. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
For the record, I would personally I rank Atatürk somewhere in the vicinity of Churchill as greatness goes. Like Churchill, he did a lot of things that were arguably necessary, but like Churchill he used methods that I often find it hard or impossible to condone, or which were unduly harsh compared to the nature and severity of the problems he faced.
