Yes, you are right. The dean of the RC Cathedral hinted to me recently that it is quite difficult to say no to an exhibition that the city authorities would like to have in the cathedral if they have paid 20 million euros to restore it.
And yet there is simply the fact of finding the money to keep things going. Basically most churches cost more to run than people put in the collection plus the profit from candles, prosphora and bookstore.
In England the situation is saved by the fact that the Church still has property which it has owned for centuries (it does not always manage it very well). In Russia you have rich sponsors whom you can tap. In Belgium, all church assets were nationalized during the French revolution, and rather than return the assets (as is now happening in Russia), the state instead elected to pay priests' salaries and the basic upkeep of churches. Also, with heavy taxation (income above about EUR 35000 a year is taxed effectively at 65%, not 14%, there are not many people able to give a spare million to the church, as in Russia). So you are reliant on the state in one way or another. I personally would prefer some sort of Church tax on the German model or the ability to tax-deduct contributions to the Church.
In Belgium the Russian Orthodox Church functions with: - one church (the Cathedral) which has been ours since the start (with some sharp legal footwork in the 1930s to keep it out out of the hands of the Russian state); - three or four churches which we own outright (but 80% of the money came from Russia) - the rest are buildings we rent for almost nothing from the Catholic church: obviously not always the best - our church in Antwerp is a huge place, built in the late 19th century in what is now a mostly Jewish quarter, almost impossible to heat; our tiny wooden church in Namur has no running water or sanitation, and is unreachable by public transport.
On women priests, the real problem is perhaps not per se the fact of state intervention, but the introduction/imposition of democratic government in church life (In Sweden and Denmark this was synonymous with government control, but not in England, where the Church of England is largely self-governing). Once you have democracy, you have lobbies (of which the women's lobby and the gay lobbies are the most powerful) who twist the democratic system to their own (minority) advantage. In England the age of consent for homosexual practice is 16. My guess is that 80 percent of the population is against it (I certainly was with a very good-looking son of that age), but under the democratic process to organize a lobby against this is hugely time-consuming, in particular if you do not have the political establishment (morally more liberal than the silent majority) on your side.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 09:40 pm (UTC)And yet there is simply the fact of finding the money to keep things going. Basically most churches cost more to run than people put in the collection plus the profit from candles, prosphora and bookstore.
In England the situation is saved by the fact that the Church still has property which it has owned for centuries (it does not always manage it very well). In Russia you have rich sponsors whom you can tap. In Belgium, all church assets were nationalized during the French revolution, and rather than return the assets (as is now happening in Russia), the state instead elected to pay priests' salaries and the basic upkeep of churches. Also, with heavy taxation (income above about EUR 35000 a year is taxed effectively at 65%, not 14%, there are not many people able to give a spare million to the church, as in Russia). So you are reliant on the state in one way or another. I personally would prefer some sort of Church tax on the German model or the ability to tax-deduct contributions to the Church.
In Belgium the Russian Orthodox Church functions with:
- one church (the Cathedral) which has been ours since the start (with some sharp legal footwork in the 1930s to keep it out out of the hands of the Russian state);
- three or four churches which we own outright (but 80% of the money came from Russia)
- the rest are buildings we rent for almost nothing from the Catholic church: obviously not always the best - our church in Antwerp is a huge place, built in the late 19th century in what is now a mostly Jewish quarter, almost impossible to heat; our tiny wooden church in Namur has no running water or sanitation, and is unreachable by public transport.
On women priests, the real problem is perhaps not per se the fact of state intervention, but the introduction/imposition of democratic government in church life (In Sweden and Denmark this was synonymous with government control, but not in England, where the Church of England is largely self-governing). Once you have democracy, you have lobbies (of which the women's lobby and the gay lobbies are the most powerful) who twist the democratic system to their own (minority) advantage. In England the age of consent for homosexual practice is 16. My guess is that 80 percent of the population is against it (I certainly was with a very good-looking son of that age), but under the democratic process to organize a lobby against this is hugely time-consuming, in particular if you do not have the political establishment (morally more liberal than the silent majority) on your side.