The Italian government is looking for some help from the Roman Catholic Church, according to Christian Today:
Thou shalt not steal…from the state.
That’s the message Italy’s prime minister wants Catholic priests to preach from their pulpits to help him stamp out rampant tax evasion robbing the state of sorely needed cash.
“A third of Italians heavily evade taxes,” Romano Prodi lamented in an interview with Italy’s prominent Catholic magazine, Famiglia Cristiana, widely quoted in Wednesday’s newspapers.
“Why, when I go to Mass, is this issue almost never touched on in the homilies?”
Italy is struggling under the weight of Europe’s largest debt pile in absolute terms. The government estimates the cost of tax evasion at 7 percent of gross domestic product, or about 100 billion euros ($137 billion) a year.
It says this is nearly double the rate of evasion in France, Germany and Britain and nearly four times that of Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland.
Now, I have always made clear in my preaching that dishonesty on a tax return breaks both the Eighth and Ninth Commandments. But isn’t there something kind of pathetic when a government has to ask the Church to help it enforce its own tax laws?
August 2, 2007 at 12:09 pm
If the priests are to act as economists, why don’t they tell the state to quit stealing by the imposition of a growth-curbing tax burden! If the labor unions were to halt their advocacy of expensive pension programs and settlement fees, I’d be willing to bet that they could reduce their national 8% unemployment rate!
When will socialists ever learn…..