"German Catholics lose church rights for unpaid tax"

From the BBC:

Germany's Roman Catholics are to be denied the right to Holy Communion or religious burial if they stop paying a special church tax.

A German bishops' decree which has just come into force says anyone failing to pay the tax - an extra 8% of their income tax bill - will no longer be considered a Catholic.

The bishops have been alarmed by the number of Catholics leaving the Church. They say such a step should be seen as a serious act against the community.

This is not really news, as the Kirchensteuer surcharge has been part of the German tax system since the 19th century. You have always been able to opt out, and when I worked there, none of my employers ever asked me whether I wanted to pay it, which saved me the hassle of explaining that a) I'm an atheist and b) I've no interest in paying a Pfennig more in tax than I have to.

The unanswered question always was: what happens if you do opt out? Surprisingly few of my clients ever did. The answer must have been that you are ex-communicated (or whatever the equivalent is for Protestants), meaning you can't go to Heaven, but then of course, the next question would be, what happens if you opt in again for the last few months of your life? Does that buy you a place in Heaven or would you have to pay back tax for the missing years? What if a German Christian were to move abroad for a few years and thus not be able to pay the tax? And so on.

Nobody ever really talked about all this, and as far as I am aware, people who opted out were no more likely to be killed by bolts of lightning or falling trees than anybody else.