Innocent Tax Evasion

The refusal of the Roman Catholic Church  to volunteer to pay property taxes has been dubbed 'innocent tax evasion'.  Of course it is nothing of the sort.  There has been every sort of pressure applied to the lay State not to levy property taxes on the Church, not least the threatening claim that the Church 'does good' for the poor and deprived and it should not be interrupted in this undertaking  by having to pay taxes like everyone else.  If it paid taxes like everyone else there wouldn't be so many poor and needy because they could be supported better by all of us and not subjected to Church requirements before qualifying.

This outrage, being presented as a defence of charity by the Church, has given rise to an enormous outcry - the web has resources that have never before been available to those who oppose the primitive internet of the pulpit. 

So, just in case our efforts to assert the lay governance of Italy and its people might succeed,  a further layer of defence of the politocreligious privileged has been inserted into the  the Salva Italia provisions.   The revision of property values by the land registry (up, of course) will not be applied to ecclesiastical property:  churches, vicarages (or whatever they call them - the priest here has a house big enough for an army) hotels posing as monasteries and convents, city centre commercial developments on Church land, monuments, .....on and on goes the recitation of untaxed riches,  while the faces of the poor are being ground unless they pray (and vote) correctly.