Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) stunning victory in Saxony-Anhalt has sent a shockwave through German politics — and through the country’s Catholic establishment.
It is particularly interesting to note how the victory of the party, which leftist media outlets decry as “far right” and “ultra-far right,” has actually exposed the motives of the German episcopate. Thus far, it seems that it is not so much the AfD’s ideology that concerns the bishops, but rather how it may impact their revenue stream.
Led in the state of Saxony-Anhalt by 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD won about forty-four percent of the vote in this past Sunday’s election, more than doubling its 2021 share and coming tantalizingly close to an outright parliamentary majority.
The governing Christian Democrats suffered a crushing defeat against what was the AfD’s strongest result yet in a German state election. The performance also showed that a political transformation, based on people’s rejection of the insanity of the left and fecklessness of conservatives, is underway in the formerly communist east.
It should be noted, however, that the AfD is headed by Alice Weidel, a 47-year-old lesbian who is “married” to a woman who was born in Sri Lanka, with whom she is raising two young boys. Many conservatives across the world see this as an unacceptable arrangement and also argue that the AfD is just another “controlled opposition” group loyal to Jewish power.
Headed for a collision with the Church
Germany’s progressive and liberal Catholic and Protestant leaders reacted with alarm to the AfD’s victory and, in a joint statement, said their “worst fears” had materialized. They indicated that they accepted the democratic result but called on the incoming representatives to respect Germany’s Basic Law, the state constitution and the “unconditional dignity” of every human being no matter their “origin, religion, lifestyle, performance or position.”
This is somewhat predictable given that, ideologically, the AfD would be a thorn in the side of the woke liberal German Catholic Church. Founded in 2013 initially as a Eurosceptic party, the AfD has moved sharply towards nationalist, anti-immigration politics, with the party advocating tougher border controls and remigration. It also opposes multiculturalism and many progressive social policies and includes factions regarded as “extremist” by German domestic intelligence authorities.
Clearly, the AfD holds convictions that are almost antithetical to Leo XIV’s Synodal Church, never mind the even more out-of-control German Synodal Way. Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg has accused the party of promoting an ethnic nationalism incompatible with Christianity’s insistence upon the equal dignity of human beings. What Magdeburg actually meant was that it was incompatible with the Synodal Church’s cosmopolitan agenda which Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò called in 2025 a “monomaniacal obsession with indiscriminate immigration and miscegenation.”
Will funding for the Church dry up?
But the political confrontation seems to be secondary to the real, underling issue: money.
Germany operates what is known as the Kirchensteuer, or church tax. Under this tax, registered members of recognized religious bodies — including Catholics — pay a surcharge generally equivalent to eight or nine percent of their income-tax liability.
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The state collects the money, takes about three percent and passes the rest on to the churches. The system provides Germany’s Catholic Church with billions of euros annually and has helped create one of the wealthiest ecclesiastical structures in the world.
In principle, state support of the Catholic Church is a good thing, indeed laudable, and even is the ideal relation between the two powers. However, the AfD has long attacked this financial arrangement between Church and state and calls, in its own national economic platform, for an end to paying senior church representatives from general taxation. It is therefore clear why the bishops are rattled by the victory.
Earlier this year, the AfD also introduced federal legislation aimed at terminating separate historic state payments to the churches, as envisaged by Germany’s constitution. The aforementioned Archbishop Viganò drew attention to the party’s efforts in an X post, noting that it is worrying the clergy.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD’s planned approach is even more radical. It has proposed restructuring historic state payments to the churches and imposing greater controls over their use, which is a direct threat to the financial bottom line of the German Catholic Church.
The way the German Episcopate chooses to operate under the Kirchensteue may cause Catholics to face an unjust and wicked dilemma. A Catholic who wants to stop paying it must normally make a formal civil declaration of departure from the Church — the Kirchenaustritt. Under a 2012 decree of the German Bishops’ Conference, that declaration is considered a “grave offense against the ecclesial community,” and the consequences are extraordinarily dire.
Except in danger of death, the person may no longer receive Confession, Holy Communion, Confirmation, or Last Rites, and cannot serve as a godparent, hold ecclesiastical office, or sit on parish and diocesan councils. Permission is also required for a Catholic marriage, and even an ecclesiastical funeral may be refused if the person dies without showing a sign of “repentance.”
Despite the bishops’ insistence that this is not punishment for refusing to pay a tax, but the consequence of “leaving the Church,” it is clear that access to the Church’s sacramental life is being conditioned upon remaining inside a state-administered financial system that benefits the episcopate financially.
It is important to note that Canon 848 states that ministers must ensure that the poor are never deprived of the sacraments because of poverty, and Canon law treats simony — buying or selling spiritual things — as a serious offense.
The German church tax in itself might not be simony, but when withdrawal from the compulsory fiscal mechanism equates exclusion from several sacraments as per the bishops’ decree, the arrangement comes — in the eyes of some — uncomfortably close to exactly that.
AfD leader Ulrich Siegmund, baptized and raised Catholic, himself fell victim to this paradox when he conscientiously registered his departure in 2017. He insists that he still carries Catholic values “in his heart” but rejects the German ecclesiastical institution.
If tax revenue ultimately dries up, the German Synodal hierarchy would be without vital resources to spread its errors. In this regard, the confrontation in Saxony-Anhalt seems driven less by the bishops opposing the AfD’s nationalism and immigration policies and more about their love of euros.
