• I am not defending all of Turkey's policies from Atatürk onward. I am defending Atatürk's secularisation reforms (or, more accurately, a subset of those reforms).

• I am not saying that confiscating churches is always legitimate. I am saying that it is not always illegitimate. This is not a trivial difference.

• I have very little patience for whining complaints about how the Catholic Church is persecuted, as long as the Church enjoys privileged legal status i Spain, Italy, Latin America, Malta, Poland and a slew of African countries. It is blatant hypocrisy to whine about persecution of the Catholic Church in non-Catholic countries as long as the Church is actively defending oppression of non-Catholics in Catholic countries (I am, of course, using '[religion] countries' as a shorthand here - I don't accept the notion that countries can align themselves with a religion).

• Furthermore, given the Catholic Church's position on reproductive rights and reproductive health - a position which is nothing short of genocidal - (as well as their reprehensible homophobia and general male chauvinism) I would have precious little sympathy to spare for the Church, even if it wasn't blatantly hypocritical on the subject of religious discrimination.

• Note, however, that the Catholic Church is not the same as 'Catholics,' however much the Church may want to encourage that notion - I do not condone the persecution of Catholics, but I have no tears to shed for persecution of the Catholic Church or clergy ranking Bishop or higher.

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?

And the office holder in Denmark claims to be the leading Bishop, despite assigned by the gov?

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.

What is a religious holding? Is the gov confiscating church owned corporations or churches?

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.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.