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Tax Morale and the Church: How Catholic Clergies Adapted Norms of Paying Taxes to Secular Institutions (1940s–1950s)

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Reassessing the Moral Economy

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

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Abstract

Paying taxes is a field of economic activity that has always been highly morally charged: the question of who pays how much or can avoid or evade the prescribed payments is always closely related to debate about a fair societal distribution of burdens. In the process of moralisation, therefore, faith communities such as the Catholic Church also repeatedly seized the floor to propagate certain norms. The article examines the contributions of theologians from Spain, the USA and West Germany in the 1940s and 1950s. It concludes that the norms of taxation they propagated differed greatly depending on the institutional and economic frameworks within which they operated. The analysis proves taxation to be a field of economic action and societal dispute where economics and morality are indissolubly interconnected.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For historiographical approaches concerning US Protestantism and public finances see Jones (2002); concerning Judaism see Likhovski (2017); concerning Islam e.g. Nienhaus (2007), Cizakca (2013, 55–77).

  2. 2.

    The sample of case studies covers three different types of tax systems described by Uwe Wagschal: the liberal-conservative (USA), the Christian democratic and continental European (FRG) and the peripheral-residual type (Spain), see Wagschal (2005). The sample also covers three different positions of the Catholic Church in society: Catholics as a minority of ca. 25% of the population in the USA, as nearly half (46%) of the population in the FRG and as a majority of 96% in Spain. Nevertheless, we must not overestimate the weight of these figures: In the young FRG, e.g. although Catholics were mathematically a minority, the Catholic Church had a strong position due to the power of “Rhenish Catholicism” with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as its representative.

  3. 3.

    Matthew 22, 21.

  4. 4.

    This distinction goes back to the Letter to the Romans: Political authority is “God’s servant, an avenger of punishment on him who does evil. Therefore, it is necessary to be subject, not only for the sake of punishment, but for the sake of conscience” (Rom. 13, 3–5), quoted in Bennett (1964, 12f).

  5. 5.

    Johannes Franz Miquel, Prussian Finance Minister 1890–1901; Matthias Erzberger, German Finance Minister 1919–1920.

  6. 6.

    From the mid-nineteenth century, neo-Thomism was an intellectual current in Catholic theology that called for the revival of Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy.

  7. 7.

    The Redemptorist Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer was founded in Italy in 1732 as a missionary society, conducting primarily so-called “home missions” geared towards Catholics.

  8. 8.

    Quoted from Willi Lausen (SPD) in Bundestag (BT), 145th session, May 31, 1951, 5741. The Bundestag minutes are available at: http://pdok.bundestag.de/.

  9. 9.

    Following e.g. Adolph Wagner. Tipke later distinguishes between “morality of taxation” and “tax morale”, cf. Tipke (2000).

  10. 10.

    The French Catholic social action movement was founded by two Jesuit priests in 1903. It aimed to give guidance to clergy directly engaged in social activities and to defend the rights of workingmen to establish their own trade unions in a Christian spirit, see Droulers (1969).

  11. 11.

    See e.g. the Carta colectiva de los obispos españoles con motivo de la guerra en España of 1937, cf. Ruiz Rico (1977, 50).

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  1. Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany

    Korinna Schönhärl

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  1. Karl-Franzens-Universität, Graz, Austria

    Tanja Skambraks

  2. Department of History, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Martin Lutz

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Schönhärl, K. (2023). Tax Morale and the Church: How Catholic Clergies Adapted Norms of Paying Taxes to Secular Institutions (1940s–1950s). In: Skambraks, T., Lutz, M. (eds) Reassessing the Moral Economy. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29834-9_12

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