The statement of the humanist civic association Prometeus contains very good arguments for the financing of the church.

Secret preparations, ignoring the public

That is why in 2011, the then Minister of Culture Daniel Krajcer initiated the establishment of the Expert Commission to address the issue of financing churches as a platform for dialogue and preparation of documents for the draft of a new law.
The Commission met once or twice a year, most recently on May 25, 2016, according to the Ministry of Culture, without agreeing on a single solution for financing churches. In 2017 and 2018, the commission did not meet at all. Therefore, the claim of the authors of the bill in the submission report that the submitted proposal is the result of two years of cooperation between the ministry and representatives of churches is surprising. Who met, when, and where? With the expert commission or without the commission? What proposals did they actually discuss and what did they negotiate?
Until now, the Ministry of Culture has only discussed its idea of financial support for churches with their representatives. Today, it is certainly time to also consider the opinions of the public, members of churches, and secular citizens.

The public opinion survey on the financing of churches was ignored by the ministry.

According to the research of the Institute of Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences – Democracy and Citizens in Slovakia II, in 2014, 46.5% of citizens would agree with the adoption of a law that would finance the activities of churches only by allocating a portion of the tax from their members and sympathizers, while only 27.5% were against it. When asked about the ideal way to finance churches, 27.5% of respondents answered from the state budget as before, 16.2% agreed with allocating a portion of the tax from members and sympathizers of churches, and 28.3% believed that churches should live only from the income from their property and alms. However, these views are completely ignored by the expert commission and the submitted proposal of the Ministry of Culture. Why?

They point out that Christian churches receive a large number of types of subsidies.

What is most striking is the fact that the report does not even mention that the state contributes to the activities of the headquarters of the Catholic Charity, the Evangelical and Reformed Diaconia, while it does not contribute at all to the activities of the charitable headquarters of other churches.

The draft law on the financing of churches also expands the possibilities of using the contribution to educational, cultural and social activities of churches. As if this was not the case before?! At the same time, churches already draw special contributions from the state for their activities in many areas. In addition to the state contribution for the salaries of clergy and church headquarters, churches receive earmarked contributions from the budget of the Ministry of Culture for the restoration of cultural monuments. Church organizations receive support for cultural activities from the grant system of the Fund for the Support of Culture. From the budget of the Ministry of Defence, they have guaranteed funding for systematized positions of spiritual administrators in the armed forces of the state, and through the Ministry of Interior also in the police, prisons, firefighters, customs officers, and even the Mountain Rescue Service. The Ministry of Interior annually pays more than 84 million euros for primary and secondary church schools, the Ministry of Education provides further millions for theological faculties, seminaries or entire public Catholic universities, and pays for the teaching of religion in primary and secondary schools.
The budgets of regional self-governments and relevant ministries cover the costs of school, social, and health activities of church facilities. The Ministry of Finance does not record church collections, fees for masses, baptisms, weddings, or funerals (stole fees), nor does it tax them, just as it does not tax donations for the benefit of church activities. Local governments, in accordance with the law, exempt churches from property taxes on places of worship, with the churches themselves determining which buildings these are. Radio and Television Slovakia provide broadcasting of religious programs for churches and, as part of a contract with the state, guarantee their annual production at a cost of almost 1 million euros. Church non-profit organizations — foundations or civic associations — receive millions from citizens from 2-3% of taxes.
It is clear from this brief list that state support for the activities of churches in the educational, cultural, health, and social fields is multifaceted and significant, exceeding EUR 200 million annually. In many areas, state support for churches is also appropriate and useful; without it, many of these church activities simply would not exist. The question, however, is why the state should pay for clergy and church headquarters, and why it should contribute to their operation? After all, churches have had their property returned to them in an above-standard scope and time as part of restitutions precisely to fulfill the basic declared goal: to ensure their independence from the state and freedom of religion.

Subsidies for newly registered churches/religions are not possible.

In connection with the registration of new churches and the determination of the amount of their state contribution, the following questions arise in connection with the draft law: How much will the state contribution for a new church be determined according to the results of the census per believer – €9 or €117? What degree of solidarity will be shown to the new church, who will determine its degree and on what basis, what criteria? If the new church is not named in the census, will it not receive any contribution and will it have to wait 10 years for a new census? At the same time, its registration by the state requires 50,000 solemn declarations with the signatures of adult citizens of the Slovak Republic, including their name, permanent address and birth number, who confirm that they belong to the new church and know its teaching?! Will the state not accept their declaration according to the draft law on the financing of churches? Or is it just because the purpose of the current wording of the law on freedom of religious belief and the status of churches is de facto to prevent the registration of a new church?

In addition, the bill in its present form will cement this system without changing the percentage share of the total contribution for individual churches for 24 years.
In 2021, it is already €58,698,004. The bill does not set clear rules and a transparent distribution of contributions, it only ensures one thing: a permanent increase in the amount of the state contribution for churches while maintaining all inequalities and ambiguities. On the contrary, these become law…

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Miroslav Tížik, sociologist, blog about the new law

Miroslav Tížik emphasizes in the blog several times that although politicians presented the new law to the media as fairer and more advantageous for smaller churches, in reality the exact opposite is true. The change will be mainly advantageous for the Catholic Church.

Churches with the greatest support will receive the most from the small package intended for redistribution. And small churches, especially those with around a thousand followers, will continue to be at risk of having this part of their subsidy reduced in the future. While a reduction in the Catholic Church's contribution would only occur if the number of members decreased by hundreds of thousands of Slovak citizens in the next ten years, for the smallest churches, a decrease of just one hundred souls would be enough. It seems as if this principle of merit was taken from the workshop of the SaS party, which also presents a flat tax as fair.
The draft law clearly brings a distorted principle of justice, corresponding more to the neoliberal principles of market efficiency than to the principles of protection of religious rights and freedoms.
… . The state also resorted to several obfuscating formulations in the explanatory memorandum, calling the strengthening of privileges and increased inequalities greater solidarity and greater justice.
… With the anticipated reduction in the number of clergy in many churches, this is, in a way, the introduction of a perpetual motion machine to generate ever-increasing support for the churches, especially the largest of them.
… However, it is about maintaining the principle of solidarity only among those who have received financial contributions so far. Out of 18 registered churches, only 12 received contributions from the state, but in addition to the churches, several legal entities established by the largest churches (charities, the Ecumenical Council of Churches, and other entities that were not even legally registered as separate churches) also had separate budgets, the budgets of which will now be included in the amount for the parent churches.

Priests will also lose the last principle of freedom, independence, and autonomy that they have had so far. Bishops will be given even greater power; bishops will have even greater power to harass priests for their opinions. The bishop now has the option to punish a priest in the form of a lower salary and give a higher salary to a loyal, servile priest. The Church can now misuse funds for political campaigns (such as the controversial Alliance for the Family).

The proposed amendment brings several fundamental changes, which it either fails to highlight or cleverly obscures. The first is that it abolishes the current system of state contributions to the salaries of clergy. They were thus considered people working in the public interest. The draft law does not consider clergy as people working in the public interest. And by transferring financial support entirely to the church as an institution, it makes the church a public benefit institution.
                  This not only reduces the protection of the clergy from the possible arbitrariness of the hierarchy, and thus their freedom to perform their profession, but at the same time, their direct responsibility and connection to the public are symbolically lost. They will now be in a similar position to ordinary employees of a private company, which, although it also lives off state services, its employees are not public employees, and therefore do not have similar labor law protection and status. The clergy will only be responsible to the ecclesiastical authorities.
                  It remains unclear whether priests will retain their current fixed salaries, guaranteeing certain minimum standards, or whether they will be funded by the church on a "performance" basis. The latter would give superiors the "freedom" to give much more to the deserving and most productive, and less to the least productive than their current basic income. The guarantee of basic income for clergy and the introduction of their insurance were some of the reasons for the adoption of the now-rejected 1949 law. For this reason, dozens of priests, especially those of lower rank, came to support the law when it was introduced to parliament, as it meant guaranteeing a certain basic level of living income for them.

Disproportionate generosity to churches

The question that indicates the democratic deficit of this bill is why, in a religiously neutral state, churches should have better conditions for providing public benefit activities than other actors or even the state institutions themselves?
… No sphere of public life has seen such an unprecedented increase in state contributions as the churches in the last ten years, with expenditures growing by almost 40 percent. These figures on the growth of state support indicate that in recent years the churches have enjoyed exceptional attention and support from the state; one could say that they have become the most strategic area of state investment.
… Neither municipalities nor private providers of such services have such specific support for their activities as the churches have received. Nor does it mean that after the granting of such contributions, the churches will not be able to apply for further public resources as before in carrying out these activities.

Thus, according to this law, followers of religions that are not registered in our country, nor people without church affiliation (about a quarter of the population of Slovakia), among whom there are many adherents of humanistic principles, which are highly valued in our country and in the constitution, will not be able to develop their worldview under the same conditions.

More holiness for more money (Matthew is forever alive) Miroslav Tížik, sociologist https://zurnal.pravda.sk/esej/clanok/520059-viac-svatosti-za-viac-penazi-matus-vecne-zivy/

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FRANTIŠEK JEDINÁK

FRANTIŠEK JEDINÁK reformed the financing of the church in such a way that the Catholic Church "insured" itself – even if the number of believers decreases, the subsidies will remain the same:

Therefore, a new law on church financing was needed. The state is seemingly "prudent" in this regard. The number of believers changes over time, so it includes a clause stating that if their number decreases, it can reduce the church's funding. However, there is a paradox here. The reduction must exceed an average of 10% in two consecutive censuses. So, to illustrate, if the number of believers decreases by an average of 10% over 20 years, the church may lose some of its money. You won't believe it, but the RCC agrees with this. Well, it agrees because it knows that such a decrease could only occur if a large number of believers unexpectedly, in some mysterious way, went to the other world, where their eternal life supposedly continues.

The restitution of church property has already taken place to a sufficient extent.

There is another "bulletproof" argument for why churches should be financed. In the past, the state robbed them of their property. It is deliberately forgotten that restitutions took place and churches could, and did, request the return of "their historical" property according to valid laws, and it was returned to them.

Poland and the separation of church and state

In fact, for unknown reasons, even the example of Catholic Poland "cannot" be inspiring, although socialism was present there. Since January 1, 2014, believers in Poland have been financing their church themselves. The Polish government of Prime Minister Tusk managed to achieve what is still considered a utopia in Slovakia – cutting the church off from the state budget by introducing an assignable church tax.

Source:
https://www.noveslovo.sk/c/Neotravujte_s_odlukou_cirkev_potrebuje_peniaze_penize_penezi
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Politicians are buying bishops more and more openly.

It is time to take the state's blank check from the bishops. It will help the faithful and the whole society.
Author: Samuel Jezný
https://komentare.sme.sk/c/22164823/politici-si-kupuju-biskupov-coraz-otvorenejsie.html
The author is a theologian, a doctoral student at Charles University in Prague, and a member of Progressive Slovakia.

You probably remember how the representatives of the largest religious societies in Slovakia supported the presidential candidate Maroš Šefčovič. Now the government will increase the financial subsidy to the bishops to a record level.
It is hard to resist the idea that this is a reward for the faithful alliance of the ruling coalition and religious representatives.
This model of financing actively motivates religious leaders to support the hand that feeds them – that is, the parties of the current government coalition. At the same time, neither believers nor ordinary clergy have any real power in religious societies.
The leadership of religious societies has the funds for the salaries of all subordinates and can decide on their future.
Believers abroad can deny further funding to irresponsible religious leaders. This is not the case in our country – the state will contribute to the bishops without really caring about how the prelates handle the finances and what the believers actually think.

More and more prelates
Politicians are increasingly buying off the leaders of religious societies. Over the last ten years, state subsidies have increased only slightly, at best by hundreds of thousands of euros. This only changed in 2016, when the subsidy increased by more than a million year-on-year.
A similar increase followed a year later. In 2018 and 2019, the subsidy grew even faster, in both cases by more than three million euros year-on-year. It will be no different in the election year. This year, the bishops will receive just under 48 million euros. Next year it will be up to 52 million.
And this is not the final amount: churches receive further multi-million subsidies from the state. The state pays religion teachers in primary schools – but the bishops arbitrarily decide who will teach religion for state money.
The state also finances seven theological faculties. Again, it is only the bishops who decide who will teach at a public university. Religious societies also receive money from the state for activities that are in the public interest: for example, the state subsidizes church schools and social service facilities.
As a result, religious societies cost the state tens of millions of euros annually. The regular blank check, most recently at the level of 52 million, is supplemented by multi-million indirect subsidies, which are practically impossible to quantify precisely.

Bishops love the communist law
It is remarkable that both bishops and government politicians have embraced a funding model introduced by the communist regime with a single goal: to subordinate religious societies to the totalitarian regime.
In 1949, the communists adopted a pair of laws that significantly restricted the church. It is absurd that today only one of them has been repealed, and the other remains in force.
"There is no mechanism to force religious leaders to be accountable to society – and too often they are not accountable to their own believers either."
The first law established the feared State Office for Church Affairs – an office headed not by an official but by a minister, which in the 1950s was responsible for gross violations of religious freedom and the harsh persecution of clergy who did not collaborate with the new regime.
The second law, in its amended form, is still in force today: it introduced state funding for churches, and many representatives of religious societies considered it dangerous in that era.
To this day, the law does exactly what it was intended to do: it entrusts finances to a narrow group of representatives of religious societies, with whom state officials can agree relatively easily – today, even without the need for communist repressive practices.
Especially in the case of large churches, ordinary clergy are financially dependent on their superiors, and the faithful have practically no power, even in those associations that formally elect their leaders.
Today, we are replacing the communist law with a new one – but it has exactly the same impact, and it cements the communist solution that harms everyone except some politicians and top representatives of religious societies.
Until now, leaders of religious societies have received subsidies based on the number of clergy. Now, the amount of the subsidy will be based on the number of people who state their affiliation with a given religious society in the census.
The prelates will thus receive a blank check, also thanks to people who formally declare their faith, although their status is of no interest to their religious society and they do not participate in religious life.
However, especially in the case of the largest religious societies, a much healthier functioning would be possible if the leaders had to take into account the opinion of active believers.
The arrogant attitude of the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church towards the faithful who protested against the dismissal of Archbishop Bezák would not have been possible if the angry faithful could have denied Archbishop Zvolenský and his team further funding.
A similar situation exists in the Evangelical Church. Participation in the life of the church and in the election of bishops is negligible. General Bishop Elko was elected with 8,300 votes. He will receive a subsidy for more than 300,000 citizens who declared themselves members of the church in the census.
And when thousands of Evangelicals rebelled against the practices of the former church leadership headed by Miloš Klátik some time ago, they could do little more than sign a petition. So they had to wait for the end of his long, six-year term.
Similarly, many Slovak-speaking members of the Reformed Church did not like how the church leadership was getting closer to the Reformed Church in Hungary, which is inclined towards Orbán.
And the most bizarre story is the so-called Old Catholic Church in Slovakia, led by Augustín Bačinský. Bačinský declared himself an archbishop (Old Catholics do not have archbishops, except for the one in Utrecht), broke off contact with Old Catholics abroad, and the "church" is more reminiscent of a company based in a family home.
It has a single parish in Nitra and, apart from the family members of the clergy, it does not have many other members. And yet this year it will receive 127,000 euros from the state.
On the other hand, Old Catholics are also active in Slovakia today, who do not claim the church of Bačinský's abduction, but they do not have any registered church and do not receive any state subsidies.

The worst of all solutions.
The current model of financing harms religious societies in Slovakia. However, it benefits the bishops of large churches, giving them power at the expense of the faithful. (And also the archbishop of one local curiosity.)
This registered partnership of government power and prelates costs taxpayers 50 million euros a year. There is no mechanism to force religious leaders to be accountable to society – and too often they are not accountable to their own believers.
Churches should function exactly like all other citizens' associations: there must be a discussion among active members, the funding model must be at least partly based on the active participation of believers, and the leadership of religious societies must be able to account to their own community.
And yes, if religious societies carry out activities in the public interest, it is completely legitimate for the state to provide them with financial assistance. However, this must be done transparently and in such a way that religious leaders cannot trade their political activities for subsidies from the current government coalition.
Both the current and the "new" slightly modified model of financing directly calls on bishops to cooperate with the political power that feeds them. We cannot then be surprised when prelates act as a backdrop for a candidate of the ruling party a few days before the elections.
Today, for 52 million euros, we are buying the worst of all possible solutions.