Randomiser wrote:dan92677 wrote:Originally didn't 90% of the local tithes go on to Zion?
If so, 2% or 3% kept at home would be an increase (locally)
I doubt it very much. The church was/is responsible for local churches and all their clergy, hospitals and just about all doctors, schools, legal expertise, welfare, clergy at diocesan level, cathedrals, agricultural advice, controlling heresy and innovations etc. There is no way that could possibly be done if 90% of the main income stream was going on to 'Zion'.
Definitely. Although one other way to tap local resources to cover local needs while letting more of the tithes head upward would be to have some Church services that'd otherwise need tithes to pay for them come from "volunteered" labor from minor orders. Be a nun/monk, and time after what the monastery stakes to provide for itself may go to: help with the sanctification of border lands, teaching local kids, nursing support for the local Pasqualites, cathedral maintenance, parish church construction, etc. But that's still likely to contribute only a modest bit.
Zion may have controlled a large chunk of it, RFC never made clear how much IIRC, but clearly, a good deal of it must have been actually spent locally. Even remembering that one of the legitimate points of the tithe is that God's richer children should help support the church's services to his poorer ones so that there will definitely have been some'cross subsidy' going on, most of the church's money was probably spent 'locally'. The point is that the church was so rich that even the Vicars' lifestyles just didn't amount to a huge percentage of its income, IMHO.
Right. The 'cross subsidy' point is important: dirt poor parishes aren't going to be able to pay for all the Church-provided services they are due as God's children under the Writ, and wealthier ones - which may not be close - are going to be able to support more than they need.
Unfortunately, one other way the Church had so much to spread around the vicarate probably came from tithes that
did start going upward instead of providing all the Writ expected of the Church for God's children. Certainly that's the picture in Zion itself til Duchairn woke back up to his responsibilities and set himself to working hard on the responsibilities he could serve without Clyntahn killing him. (Darn shame about that bit where an increasing percentage of God's children got declared heretics and Shan-wei worshippers with the remainder set to kill them. Conscience isn't anything comfortable for Vicar Rhobair.)
That sort of flow upward isn't a part of the Church of Charis, I'm sure. Chances are that the tithes aren't doing much flowing from one nation to another in the EoC, but then, I doubt there was ever
much of that in the CoGA though. (Sodar probably got something from other states' tithe base, just for being a whole poor country.) The CoC seems to leave a lot more power in the hands of the national components than the CoGA - it may well be modeled as a kind of federation of national churches, which would be an excellent model for the CoGA itself, if the mainland wants to opt for a nominally orthodox church after the jihad but recognizes (heck, maybe insists on!) that Zion's power is broken and that each state has a wide authority over its own Church affairs.
