Tithing

I am not much for tithing, which is giving a fixed percentage of your income to, in this case, the church.  I have always thought of it as an optional thing, unless a pastor made it a rule for his particular parish.  But I have found out that tithing has a fascinating history, of not being so optional.  A local church council in 585 A.D. made tithing a rule or else you were subject to the threat of excommunication.  Wow.! Now it was not automatic excommunication, but it was  threat.  A few hundred years later, Charlemagne, an Emperor type person, made tithing a civil law.  It was initially limited to food.  Money as we know it was not common.  But still, a civil law!  Then in the Counter Reformation of the Catholic Church's answer to Protestantism, The Council of Trent, 1545-63, said tithing was due God, and if you did not do so it would lead to excommunication.  Way harsh, you think?  Our 1983 Code of Canon Law eased off on the excommunication part and said we were obliged to assist the Church by providing what is necessary for charitable works.  That is pretty broad.  Today Catholics rarely tithe.  I wonder if anyone was ever really excommunicated, and if so, when they died in such a state, not tithing, did God have to close the gates of heaven to them?  And when we eased off the rule, did such people then get into heaven?  Excommunication is unfathomable to me, given how we change things in ecclesiastical circles.