Understanding the Church in the NetherlandsPaul Graas: "Individualism is a great challenge for the Church in the Netherlands".Persecution of the Jews during the pontificate of Pius XIIAs we saw in a first article about the Church in Holland, after the Protestant Reformation there began a long period (1573-1795) in which the Dutch ecclesiastical province became a mission land, and Catholics were severely discriminated against, which resulted in a gradual decrease in their numbers and a decline in their level of education, their economic position and, therefore, their influence in society. When in 1853 the hierarchy was reinstated (38% of the population was then Catholic), Catholic bishops and priests, assisted by religious orders and congregations, launched numerous initiatives to help the Catholic population out of its grave situation of religious ignorance, underdevelopment and poverty.
Few lay people had the necessary formation, economic power and social influence to contribute to this spiritual and social resurgence of Catholics. Thus, from the beginning of the 'Catholic revival', a primary role was played - by necessity - by clerics and religious. Would this contribute to a certain passivity of the laity in building a more just and Christian society, and also in their personal responsibility as citizens and Christians? Probably.
Catholic revitalization
Be that as it may, the task of Catholic revitalization was tackled with vigor and the results soon materialized: they built churches, founded schools and hospitals, published newspapers and other means of information, and formed a political party to assert their rights. By the middle of the 20th century, Catholics had regained much of their cultural, social and economic rights over their Protestant compatriots. They had organized themselves in such a way that they came to form a fairly uniform group or project of political, social and media pressure, linked to the "Catholic column", which some called "the Catholic Cause" ("Roomsche Zaak's") in which the spiritual life gradually took a back seat and the social movement to help Catholics came first.
In this project, the Church -and the clergy in particular- acquired a lot of power, very useful to help the Catholic population, although not exclusively in the spiritual field. In some cases there were excesses and partisanship, and a group spirit was created that could easily suffocate the legitimate desire for freedom in temporal matters. This did not favor the development of inner freedom in Catholics, a freedom so deeply rooted in the Dutch idiosyncrasy. In many respects, the Dutch laity developed an unhealthy dependence on the clergy, since it exempted them - or so they thought - from personal responsibility.
True freedom
If freedom helps us to live the morals of Christ, it is logical that a lack of inner freedom (and an excessive dependence on the clergy) can lead first to an overwhelmed, embittered experience of faith, seen primarily as an obligation and, in the long run, to the rejection of Christian life and morals.
All in all, the prospects for the Church in Holland appeared to be excellent in the middle of the 20th century: about 400 priests were ordained every year (regular and secular, data from 1936-1945), there were about 4 million faithful obedient to the hierarchy, with an average Mass attendance higher than in the rest of Europe; there was one priest or religious for every 100 Catholics (in Spain 0.42, in Belgium 0.79, in France 0.45), with impressive structures of efficiency and organization, always at the orders of the episcopate. The Dutch Church appeared to be an indestructible fortress at the service of Rome, and this situation continued, at least externally, until well into the 1960s.
World War II
World War II, with the invasion of the country by the German army, was a hard test for all the Dutch. The bishops, led by the Primate of Holland and Archbishop of Utrecht, Johannes de Jong, as soon as they received news that the pro-Nazis were infiltrating the Catholic associations in order to use them for their own ends, they decreed that all Catholics should withdraw from them, which happened immediately. This way of offering resistance to the invader only increased the prestige of the bishops.
Bishop de Jong did not mince his words, and issued various messages so that Catholics would not collaborate in any way with the unjust measures of the invader: on Sunday, February 21, 1943, a declaration of protest against the Nazi crimes against the Jews and against Dutch citizens was read in all Catholic churches. In retaliation, the German occupation authorities reacted very harshly: the Reich Commissar in Holland, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, ordered the deportation of all baptized Catholic Jews (who until then had been spared). Although quite a few of them managed to hide, for many others (among them Edith Stein and her sister Rosa) this "razzia" meant death. In spite of the firmness of Bishop de Jong and other Protestant leaders, three quarters of the Jews living in Holland died during the war, mostly in concentration camps.
Postwar
During the war, the different groups of the population suffered together and had to cooperate with each other in order to survive and resist the oppressor. For many - not only Catholics - this experience was decisive in giving more respect and appreciation to those belonging to "the other columns". Although after the war the confessional associations began to function again and resumed their activities, the first cracks in the columns had already been caused. Especially among the intellectuals a process - known as "doorbraak" (rupture) - of openness began, of rapprochement with Protestants, liberals and - above all - socialists, which often went hand in hand with a critical attitude towards the Hierarchy, which seemed to remain attached to the Catholic "column".
In 1954 the Dutch bishops promulgated the "Mandement" (literally "commandment" or "mandate"), a document in which they exhorted Catholics to remain united and faithful to their faith and, in order to achieve this, to continue to support - even with their vote in case of elections - the confessional institutions. The bishops warned the faithful against the enemies of Catholicism, specifically naming liberalism, Godless humanism, Marxism and the Dutch Association for Sexual Reform. The exhortation ended by threatening Catholics affiliated with or sympathetic to socialist unions with canonical penalties.
"Mandement"
One of the reasons that motivated the publication of the ".MandementThe "The Catholic Church" was formed by the symptoms of sickness that for some decades were beginning to be glimpsed among Catholics. With this writing, the bishops believed they could stop the process of "rupture" or dissolution of the Catholic column that was being consummated. But according to some prominent Catholics, the evolution in the Dutch Catholic Church was unstoppable, and the "Mandement" was already outdated from the day of its publication.
Regardless of the "Mandement" of the bishops, it is certain that the post-war period was characterized by a new optimism: the conviction - or the desire - that the old, the old-fashioned, the closed (the "columns"?) had passed and now a new stage was coming, a new modern, open society. To this optimism contributed in large measure to the strong international cooperation and economic development, facilitated by the Marshall Plan, which brought prosperity and prospects for lasting peace after many years of renunciation due to the two great wars and the interwar economic crisis.
A time of change in the Church
This attitude of openness to the new was certainly not unique to the Netherlands; it also influenced scientific, philosophical and theological thought worldwide. The position of Catholics towards the human sciences took a remarkable turn, and the social sciences and psychology became the subject of studies and publications, especially in some countries with a stronger philosophical tradition.
During the 1950s, a series of ideological innovations caught the attention of numerous theologians and philosophers, including Dutch ones. The French "nouvelle théologie" and later, in parallel, the transcendental theology of Karl Rahner's school in Germany, were widely read and transmitted to the Dutch public in an informative way, thanks to the arsenal of publications and radio and television channels available to the Catholic "column".
Both theological currents wished to establish a dialogue between the Catholic tradition and "the world". To this end, they sought a new scientific foundation in the historical-critical method applied to biblical and dogmatic theology. One of the theologians who most assimilated these new ideas, and who had the greatest influence on public opinion in Holland, was the Belgian Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx, professor at Nijmegen.
Consequences of the new theology
The great respect of the Dutch Catholics for their institutions and bishops, and the scarce speculative-theological tradition of the faithful people, perhaps explain how it was possible that these innovative ideas were so suddenly accepted by the great masses with hardly any critical sense and without being able to integrate them into the tradition of the Church, drifting in numerous cases towards positions that were not exactly Catholic or even Christian.
In addition to theologians, the most influential Catholic intellectuals-including some lay people-were soon changing their philosophical frameworks of thought. The new frame of reference came to consist almost exclusively of existential phenomenology. This was the name given in Holland to the set of philosophical and psychological currents of an empirical nature, in which the social sciences and anthropology had a prominent place, but without the ontological anchor of metaphysics.
In addition to contributing to the renewal of thought and theology - an undeniable merit - existential phenomenology and the new theological ideas caused many thinkers to break with the traditional Catholic cultural legacy. This change of intellectual frame of reference began already before the 1950s to erode the theological foundations, until then neo-Thomistic, which had become outdated because they had not really been assimilated, but perhaps only mechanically repeated.
Summary of the Church in the Netherlands
In short, one cannot suppress the impression that Dutch Catholicism, in the midst of its exuberance of organizations and external apparatus, lacked interiority. Already in 1930 one could read in a Catholic magazine an interesting analysis of Dutch Catholicism: "What is it that we lack? Could it not be 'the Spirit that gives life'? Is it not possible that we have allowed ourselves to become lethargic because of external success, and have therefore neglected the interior too much?"
We could conclude by saying that the Church in the Netherlands appeared to be an imposing edifice until the 1960s, but within it a series of impetuous changes were taking place that were to have disastrous consequences: a crisis that we will discuss in a following article.
