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a Church Tower in Sight

The Secularisation of the Netherlands

On 6 March 2001, the national Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant publishedan interview with the Archbishop of Utrecht, Cardinal A. Simonis. The in-terview was announced on the front page under a heading taken from a state-ment by the Cardinal himself: `Purple is banishing religion'. `Purple' is thename given to the coalition of socialists, liberals and liberal democrats thathas been governing the Netherlands since 1994, the first government since1918 without any Christian representation. (The Catholic party, formerlya separate entity, merged with two Protestant parties in 1973 to form a sin-gle party, the CDA or Christian Democrats). The `purple coalition' had comeabout as a result of the staggering losses suffered by the CDA in the 1 994elections. Simonis' complaint was that the government was ignoring thechurches entirely; the Christian faith seemed to have not the slightest influ-ence on government policy. So the Prime Minister and the Cardinal gottogether over a traditional Dutch cup of coffee to discuss the Catholic alle-

Wim T. Schippers, gation. Not long afterwards, the mayor of Amsterdam officiated at the firstDrienerlo Tower. 1979. gay marriage and the euthanasia act was passed in the First Chamber, thePhoto courtesy of

Netherlands' upper house, with the Christian parties and the smaller extre-Univers iteit Twente. pp apme left parties voting against.

The Cardinal was both correct and incorrect. The government is indeedfailing to take Christian thinking into account, or rather the interests ofChristian thinking as represented in Parliament by the Christian parties,which are in opposition. You might say that that's the way it goes in politics— if the government's disregard for the churches wasn't almost symbolic ofthe disappearance of every scrap of Christian influence, as represented bythe churches, in public life. The Netherlands has become a pagan country,or to be exact a post-Christian country. There' s no denying that, not even af-ter two cups of coffee. The process of secularisation has taken about thirty-five years to complete, and it's most marked among the Catholics. Accor-ding to recent data, only ten percent of the Netherlands' Catholics still go tochurch on Sunday. Among the Protestant denominations (there are two largeProtestant churches and many smaller ones, varying in orthodoxy and strict-ness) that figure hasn't dropped quite so drastically.

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Reconstruction of the altar Closed ranksin a hidden Catholic atticchurch in Amsterdam. OnsLieve Heer op Solder, For centuries, the Netherlands has officially been a Protestant country.Amsterdam. Other religions, including the Catholic, were tolerated, but they were forced

to live sequestered lives. It wasn't until the mid-nineteenth century, whenthe Catholic hierarchy was restored in the Netherlands (almost at the sametime as it was in England and under as much protest), that Catholics couldpractise their religion openly and hold public functions. The Catholic faithbecame a religion of emancipation in the Netherlands; Catholics had toshake off centuries of deprivation. This not only drew the Catholic commu-nity together, it also filled them with enormous fervour. The character of theDutch Church became highly ultramontane, with the Pope being the objectof great devotion. The beliefs that were preached put great stress on moral-ity, especially sexual morality. Priestly vocations were extremely numerous,and vocations to the religious life — for women and men — were equally so.During the first half of the twentieth century the Netherlands produced thegreatest number of missionaries in proportion to its population, sendingthem all over the world. Countless churches were built in cities and villages,mostly in the neo-gothic style and many of them very large: the triumph overcenturies of practising the faith in secret. The community of faith wasa closed one; people segregated themselves among `their own kind', espe-cially in the north where, in contrast to the south, Catholics had always beenin the minority. A comparable focusing on identity occurred among otherpopulation groups as well — Protestants and socialists. Thus developed the

typically Dutch `pillar system', which was manifest in every area of life: K.J.C. Verlaan, Service of

politics, education, the radio (and later television), health care and even lit- the Seceders. C.1910.

Canvas, 82 X io6 cm.erature. Rijksmuseum Het

It could be argued that there has been very little development, certainly Catharijneconvent, Utrecht.

within the Catholic faith. Until the second half of the twentieth century, it In 1843 a group of tradi-

was abundantly clear that its period of ascension had been the nineteenth,tional Calvinists, led bya number of ministers, split

This meant that great emphasis was placed on observing commandments from the Dutch Reformed

and obligations within the collective, under the authority of the clergy. Church — a move they

There was hardly any appeal to the individual sense of responsibility, asregarded not as a separationbut as a return to the old

there was among the Protestants. In such a closed community, self-satisfac- seventeenth-century

tion was no stranger. Reformed Church ofDordrecht (see p. 1 44)•Dutch Protestantism had already had a taste of modernism and had en-

tered into a confrontation with the `outside world' in the nineteenth centu-ry, exactly when the Catholics had just stepped into public life. The resultwas the separation of the more orthodox groups. Modernist tendencies hadalso manifested themselves in the Catholic Church at the start of the nine-teenth century, but they were suppressed. The ranks were kept closed, whichmay have proved fatal: it led to isolation.

Porous walls

What applies to the Catholic Church as a whole applies to the Dutch Catho-lic Church as well: ever since the eighteenth century, the entire culture had

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Drawing of a Dutch been developing independently of the Church. This process continuedCatholic procession, by through the nineteenth century, and in the twentieth it moved so fast that byPetrus van Geldrop(I truc I an the fifties the split between Church and what I call `the world' was com-

plete. The cultural language as it exists outside the church walls — in litera-ture, in the visual arts, in music — is entirely different from the languagewithin. At the root of this situation is the fact that the break with major cul-tural traditions was never greater than in the twentieth century. The artsseem to have started from scratch in many respects. Such a development iscertain to ignore church culture, which by its nature is embedded in a tradi-tion encompassing the last twenty centuries. The isolation seems complete.

In the end, the emancipation of Dutch Catholics was one of the causes ofthe Church's decline. No longer were the seminaries the exclusive, stronglyprotective centres of secondary and higher education. Catholic secondaryschools were established everywhere, and in 1923 a Catholic University wasfounded in Nijmegen. Growth isn't something you can tie down. Openingsto the outside world began to appear in the Church's intellectual and cultur-al isolation, and the faith proved unable to seal them back up. Its efforts onlymade the openings bigger. Starting in the 1960s, great pieces of the wall —which had become porous long before — began to fall away.

What very gradual process had led to this porosity? The massive aban-donment of the Church that has been taking place since the late sixties can-not be explained without looking at prior history. I think one of the majorcauses was the absence of any profound spirituality. The Catholic faith hadbeen reduced to a small number of obligations: attendance at mass on Sun-day, confession and reception of Communion at least once a year (aroundEaster), not eating meat on Friday and fasting on fast days, to name a few.Simplifying the faith to the keeping of five commandments turns it intoa faith of externals — and of minimalism. No shirking of obligations without

the threat of punishment. That the obligations were able to survive for a longtime was due to the fear of punishment and Hell. A system of obligationsturns believers into a collective group, and very little was done to ministerto individual spiritual needs. But the fear of damnation began to give wayand it became possible to fulfil the so-called Sunday obligation on Saturdayas well — a decision by Rome that may have had more far-reaching reper-cussions than any other because it made all the other obligations seem de-ferrable, too, until they were just swept aside, almost as a matter of course.It was then that Catholics began to leave the Church, not just individually,of course, but collectively. For many of them the religion of obligation hadhad little content, so that leaving caused them no pain. The only change wasin their external circumstances. The big question may be whether their faithhad ever meant as much to the Catholics as the success figures from the thir-ties, forties and fifties suggested. For many Protestants, with their personalresponsibility and their personal relationship with God, abandoning religionwas an agonising process, in keeping with the seriousness of their belief.

A people with a poor memory

For many, the cultural rift placed them in an almost schizophrenic situation.People felt that they belonged to two irreconcilable worlds, and the mod-

Catholic procession, ernisation of the liturgy failed to bring about a reconciliation. Even worse,Eijsden, 14 June 1998. the high-handed approach to the search for new forms drove many more tra-Photo by Marie CécileThijs. (From Roomse ditional believers out of the Church. An entire generation was in exile,Rituelen. Ad Donker, churchless, left alone with their memories. A wilfulness similar to that in-Rotterdam; volved in liturgical change became visible in the Dutch Catholic archdio-mariececilethij s.com.)

cese. The Netherlands seemed to be leading the field in everything: in theirview of the dominating central power of Rome (and only thirty years earlier

The austere church of theBenedictine abbey inMamelis near Vaals. It wasdesigned by architect-monkHans van der Laan.

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the church had been ultramontane ! ), of the place of the laity in the Church,and of the value and worthlessness of priestly celibacy. Conclusions weredrawn from the Second Vatican Council that were far from the conclusionsbeing drawn in Rome. What was most devastating, in my opinion, was thequestioning of the sense of almost everything. `Sense' is easily identifiedwith 'usefulness'. Not only are the Dutch a highly practical people, but theirculture is characterised by the absence of a feeling for tradition — unlike thatof, say, the English or the French. The Dutch have the worst memories inEurope. In fact, the Dutchman is a 'momentalist'. I believe that this momen-talism, combined with the conviction that upon examination religious val-ues and practices serve no useful purpose, has been partly responsible for themassive departure from the Church. It cannot be denied that the many priestsand religious who have abandoned their vocations have impressed the laitywith the seeming ease with which they did it.

Naturally, what happened in the churches cannot be separated from whatwas happening throughout the Netherlands from the mid-sixties on: a revoltagainst every kind of authority and a struggle to break free of it. As usual,the arts led the way. In revolutionary movements in poetry and the visualarts, traditions and norms that had seemed indisputable were done awaywith. These movements took place within a highly conformist society (in theNetherlands, the pre-war spirit seemed to have survived the war). It wasn'tuntil the sixties that the freedom and anarchy of the arts got the society theyhad envisioned. The conclusions were drawn. The gentlemen's hats, profes-sors' berets, policemen's caps and priests' and bishops' birettas were blownto smithereens. The word `control' was the `liberté' of this revolution.Every group found itself participating in this craving for control, and pil-larised Dutch society began to break down. The late date at which this alltook place (in the Netherlands, the nineteenth century continued deep intothe twentieth) explains the vehemence and somewhat exaggerated characterof many of the movements involved. And the small size of the Netherlandsis the reason why so many movements were affected. Amsterdam, a citywith a mind of its own throughout Dutch history, did its best to set an ex-ample.

Religion a la carte

Society and the Church, always governed from above, began to feel thepower from `below' (and it goes without saying not for the first time). Atfirst ecclesiastical authority — from the parish priest to the archbishop — wasjust under pressure; then it began to lose its power altogether. Increasingly,the Catholic Church found that its hierarchy seemed to be suspended ina vacuum. The grassroots had discovered personal responsibility, which de-veloped into what I call a philosophical eclecticism, or a religious eclecti-cism as regards church life. This was reinforced by the growing sense of in-dividualism during the 199os, a quality whose influence is only absent to-day among football supporters (sport as the new church — that's a whole newchapter). Many people who say they're still religious are selecting froma variety of spiritual goods based on usefulness or on what matches theirparticular feelings. Many Dutch people have put together a religion a la

carte, with choices made more from the dessert trolley rather than the maincourse menu. Most people are completely indifferent. Personally, I thinkthat what is called tolerance is in fact indifference; and that ties up with theabove-mentioned momentalism of the Dutch culture.

This entire history is necessary to understand the present situation. It allboils down to the fact that within the society and culture of the Netherlandstoday the churches have almost no authority, nor are they able to compel it,not even at the level of the religious leadership. It should also be noted thatbecause of the very large influx of immigrants from Surinam, Turkey andMorocco and many other countries, Dutch culture is becoming more andmore heterogeneous. It's far from simple. The whole world is represented,and both the Church and all of Christian culture occupy only a small placewithin it.

The only thing that has managed to remain intact in the Netherlands isanti-Papism, which seems fiercer than ever but at the same time betraysa Don Quixote character: more and more protest against something that nolonger exists.

The last of the faithful

The history of a single place may be better at proving my point than theories

`The feeling you want toshare': advertisementwhich was part of a cam-paign mounted by theCatholic BroadcastingOrganisation KRO in 2000.

John Valentine's coverillustration for the Catholicweekly De Tijd (i i January1980): the Pope tries togather the Dutch bishops,his `fallen angels'.

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The Chinese Buddhisttemple on Zeedijk inAmsterdam. It was official-ly opened by Queen Beatrixin 2000.

and speculations. I'll choose my most personal spot: the church of my youth.My church was located in a very densely populated neighbourhood ofAmsterdam. It was built around 1924, and its first priest would later becomebishop of Haarlem. The building seated eleven hundred. Many youngCatholic couples came to live in the area around the church, my parentsamong them. Gradually, the church became the centre of the neighbour-hood, regardless of the number of non-Catholics who came to live there.Nearby were a Catholic nursery school and girls' school, both run by nuns,who lived in great numbers in a huge convent. At late mass on Sundays thechurch was packed, attended by what in retrospect turned out to have beena largely faceless mass coming to fulfil their obligation. The church calen-dar imposed shape on time, both inside the church and at home. In the for-ties and fifties the church had five priests.

My mother, who remained in the neighbourhood for a considerable time,lived to see the beginning of the drop in church attendance. More and moreof the eleven hundred places in the church remained unoccupied and thenumber of priests grew smaller. New people moved into the neighbourhood,people who had no contact with any church, and later many people from oth-er countries who now even form the majority. About twelve years ago I wentback to the church one Sunday. I sat there with only a handful of people,many of them reliable churchgoers whom I recognised from the past, nowgrey and elderly. These were the last of the faithful, the remains of what hadbeen — or rather, had seemed to be — a blooming community (the number hadbeen keeping up appearances far too long). The church is now closed, theconvent was locked up years ago (religious communities now mostly con-sist of elderly members). Another decade, and all traces of what was oncea vigorous monastic life in the Netherlands will have disappeared.

My church will be demolished, as so many other churches in Amsterdam,and indeed throughout the Netherlands, have been closed or demolished inrecent decades, including some built less than forty years ago in new neigh-bourhoods. One of the largest mosques in Amsterdam was once a Jesuitchurch. Islam is the only religion that is growing in the Netherlands. OnFriday evenings you can see many Muslim men on their way to the mosque.Sunday has changed from the Lord's Day to `koopzondag' — ` shopping

Sunday'. And many people are completely ignorant of the meaning of mostChristian holidays.

Not a word of regret

Perhaps the most bewildering thing is this: the ease and the noiselessnesswith which this total change has taken place. Naturally this applies to ourwhole social existence, in which the year of my birth, 1929, seems closer tothe seventeenth century than to the twenty-first. And perhaps the noiseless-ness of secularisation is less bewildering than the way it was accepted asa matter of course. This must mean that the roots in the sacred soil did notrun very deep. The process began with the defection of the working class,evident from early on, and later of the intellectuals. The middle classes heldout the longest.

It's easy enough to say that material prosperity has taken the place offaith, setting economic riches against spiritual poverty. It's undeniable: thestructure of life in anticipation of a hereafter remains the same, except thatnow the hereafter is what comes after one's working life is over. And ad-vertisements which in every respect recall the language of the old-time saleof indulgences promote the paradise of the carefree life as up for sale. `Enjoylife' — that's what it's all about. The notorious frugality of Calvinism seemsto have disappeared.

The only possible explanation for what has taken place is that the struc-ture of Church and faith have simply become historical. And since the struc-ture is regarded as the substance, the faith disappeared along with the age-ing of the structure. None of my numerous friends and acquaintances, onceCatholic or Protestant, has ever uttered a word of regret. It was nice as longas it lasted. Their children still recognise the inside of the church, but theyleft it very early on. Their grandchildren will be the first with absolutely nomemory of religion or church. Then secularisation will be complete. Nota church tower in sight. We'll be the Low Countries once and for all — ex-cept for the pointed towers of the minarets; they're growing thick and fast.

KEES FENS

Translated by Nancy Forest-Flier.

New towers in theNetherlands: the SultanAhmet mosque in Delft.This Turkish mosque wasbuilt in 1995.

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