For the first time in 5 years of trying to chronicle what is happening in the Church around the world, I failed this year to put together a round-up of how Christians celebrated the Nativity - I did not have the time to do it, what with trying to keep abreast on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of any follow-ups to the the 'attack' on the Pope, followed by my PC's viral mishap. I am sorry for my failure, because I always found the photos very inspiring....
Yesterday, Sandro Magister posted a Christmas article of sorts - about how the Dutch have effectively given up Christmas. And it's depressing that the first Christmas article I can post on this thread would be so negative.... even if it does have its hopeful note.
The Dutch have no room for the Baby Jesus
Churches are no longer churches, but condominiums, stores, or mosques.
Catholicism is in danger of disappearing.
A reportage from Amsterdam with an interview with an emeritus Dutch cardinal
who says 'We have to start all over'
by Sandro Magister
ROME, December 30, 2009 – Until half a century ago, Dutch and Flemish Catholicism seemed to be in solid shape, strong in its traditions, active in mission.
One of its symbols was Fr. Jozef Damiaan de Veuster (1840-1889), an apostle to the lepers on an island in the Pacific, who was proclaimed a saint by Benedict XVI last October 11.
A few days ago, just before Christmas, another great symbol of this Catholicism died at the age of 95 in Nijmegen, Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, Flemish by birth, Dutch by choice.
However, he was a symbol not of the flourishing but of the astonishing deterioration that the Church of Flanders and of Holland has experienced over the past half century.
Schillebeeckx reflected this metamorphosis in his own life as a theologian. In the years of Vatican Council II and of the period immediately after the council, he was a star of worldwide impact, a champion of the new theology in step with the dominant culture. But then, after his last publication in 1989, he fell into oblivion, even by the Catholics who had acclaimed him.
This disregard for him went hand in hand with what was happening in Dutch Catholicism, increasingly secularized, increasingly in danger of disappearing.
A recent survey provides a snapshot of the current profile of the Catholic Church in Holland. 41 percent of the population say that they have no religious faith, and 58 percent no longer know what Christmas is.
A Church in which there are Dominicans and Jesuits who theorize a bout and perform Masses without priesthood or Christian sacrament - those present "consecrate" collectively, around a "table that is also open to people of different religious traditions."
At the same time, a city like Rotterdam has been thoroughly Islamized, as
www.chiesa showed in a shocking article a few months ago.
The survey that follows is by Marina Corradi, and was published on December 23 in
Avvenire, the newspaper owned by the Italian bishops' conference. Its epicenter is Amsterdam.
Corradi's reportage is accompanied by an interview with Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, archbishop emeritus of Utrecht.
What's left of Christmas
in Amsterdam
by Marina Corradi
Translated from
Amsterdam is festive this Christmas season. Dazzling light displays illuminate the Damrak and Dam Square. Skating rinks crowded with laughing children, Santa Clauses, and the strains of "Jingle Bells" coming from the big, crowded stores.
But what is left of Christmas in one of the most secularized countries in Europe, where 58 percent of the population, according to one survey, does not know exactly what happened that day? In a country with 900,000 Arab immigrants out of 16 million inhabitants, and twenty mosques in Amsterdam alone?
The Oude Kerk, the oldest church in the city, built in 1309, stands solidly in the heart of downtown. Around it is the red-light district. From the windows in which they are displayed, the South American and Eastern European prostitutes knock on the glass in order to attract the attention of passersby. A few of them wear Santa Claus hats.
You look at them and you try to imagine what kind of story brought them here. They smile, winking. But the thousand lights of the city are an intoxication that covers the false delight of these alleyways.
You go further. The Neuwe Kerk, the church where the kings of Holland were crowned, is a museum. The only "church" in the city that attracts crowds is the church of Scientology, a six-story building in the thick of the city center. "Institute of religious technology," reads a sign inside. They offer free stress tests. And people come in droves.
It's strange, this string of churches that aren't churches anymore: but condominiums, pubs, mosques.
You look at the trash collectors, the laborers in the streets, the waiters in the pizzerias: almost all of them are Moroccan or Turkish. Almost one million hands.
And even if nearly as many immigrants come from Christian countries, the Dutch are afraid of all of these Muslims. The populist right-wing party of Gert Wilders is in second place among voters, and the election is in a few months.
Two thirds of the Dutch say that there are too many immigrants. In the suburbs there are neighborhoods like Slotervaart, completely Muslim ghettos, where it is almost impossible to find a Dutchman. They've all gone.
Rotterdam has an even higher percentage of Muslims, and a Muslim mayor. One American newspaper has called it the "Eurabian nightmare" - even if you see fewer veiled women in Dutch city centers than in some neighborhoods of Milan.
And although the murders of Van Gogh and Fortuyn have deeply shaken the Dutch, and fundamentalist imams do exist, the great majority of Muslims seem to want to work and live in peace.
In reality, the fear of Eurabia seems to be simply a consequence of an even more radical phenomenon: the almost complete secularization of a country that, until the last war, was Catholic or Protestant, but in any case Christian.
There has been a collapse: only 7 percent of Catholics now go to Sunday Mass. 16 percent of children are baptized. Holland has been a pioneer in gay marriage and euthanasia.
"After Vatican Council II," says Professor Wim Peeters, a teacher at the seminary of the diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam, "the Dutch Church entered a profound crisis.
The generation of the 1950's is gone, and it forgot to educate its children."
[One can almost call it a crime!]
In 1964, religious education in the schools was abolished. Two generations of Dutch have forgotten the ABC's of Christianity. In the register of the seminary of Haarlem, the number of priests plunged at the end of the 1960's. In 1968, there isn't even one.
"I believe," Peeters says, "that we would have nothing to fear from Islam, if we were Christians. And it often seems that today the Dutch are afraid of everything: of having children, as they are of immigrants. But fear is the exact opposite of faith."
Still searching for Christmas, at number 40 on Oudezijds Voorburgwal, in the red-light district, there is a little gate. At the top floor of the Museum Amstelkring is a church, a clandestine church, dating back to the time of the Calvinist persecution that prohibited Catholic worship.
In the attic are an altar, an organ, and ten pews to which the faithful came secretly. "Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder" is the name of the church: our dear Lord in the attic. Christ in the attic, you wonder, is this Christmas in Amsterdam?
And yet. In the seminary of Haarlem-Amsterdam, there are 45 seminarians, in part the reflection of a strong Neocatechumenal presence.
Bishop Josef Punt explains that today, something has changed in comparison with the hardest crisis, twenty or thirty years ago.
"If in 1968 not even a single priest emerged from the seminary," he says, today every year in Holland as a whole 15 new priests are ordained, who keep the numbers at a stable level.
"In this diocese, a few hundred people each year ask to be baptized as adults. A new yearning can be perceived, generated by the sense of emptiness. Of course, we are talking about small numbers.
"We are a missionary Church. Everything has to be started all over again. In the monasteries outside of the city, we are creating centers of evangelization for those who, far from the faith, want to rediscover it. In our Catholic school in Haarlem, we are not able to accept all the requests for enrollment.
"I have the feeling that these parents, although they are no longer believers, are fascinated by the beauty of Christianity, and want it for their children."
It takes trust to believe this, in this city where from the bell towers of churches that are no longer churches, the bells play cheerful Christmas melodies.
A thousand Santa Clauses, and no Nativity scene. Except for a tiny one in the Salvation Army branch near Centraal Station, in the soup kitchen for the poor. Twenty homeless people numbed by the cold, giant thermoses of hot coffee, and that little Nativity scene.
And then again, at Egelantinstraat 147, almost in the suburbs, a shabby house. You ring, and one of Mother Teresa's sisters opens the door. There are four of them. Here there is Mass every morning, and vespers every evening. An undecorated chapel, two sisters in adoration. Beneath the altar, the manger of the Nativity.
But if the sense of Christmas is anticipation, then you will still find it in the streets of this city.
It is in the empty stocking that the children hang in the chimney on the eve of Saint Nicholas, December 5, expecting a gift.
It is in homeless people, and, if you look into their eyes, in those young prostitutes in the windows of the red-light district.
It is in the lonely elderly people walking hesitantly over the snow, afraid of falling down and ending up disabled in the hospital, where they may be seen as dead weight.
It is in the girls at the table of an Italian pizzeria behind the Dam, holding hands and singing, "I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year," Yeah, a happy year.
"In spite of everything," Professor Peeters says, "the desire for happiness, and therefore for God, is always there, in the heart of man."
'Two generations have been lost':
Interview with Cardinal Adrianus Simonis
Translated from
The archbishop emeritus of Utrecht, Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, 78, is the "old stalwart" of the Dutch Church. He is well known and loved in the country, including by the Muslims.
"Maybe because," he explains, smiling, "I said that Muslims who are faithful to God will go to the highest heights of heaven."
But the cardinal, who now lives in a town in Brabant, Nieuwkuijk, seems less optimistic about his Holland.
"Yes, there may be signs of a new trend, but we're talking about extremely small numbers," he says. "There remains that figure, that 58 percent of Dutchmen who no longer know exactly what Christmas is. There are some who, looking at Holland, are disturbed by the number of mosques. I can understand that, but the real problem here comes before immigration: it is that we have gotten lost, we have lost our Christian identity.
"Yes, there is a problem with Islamic fundamentalism in Holland, but most immigrants don't follow it. More than extremism, what worries me about the young Muslim generations is the advance of secularization. I am afraid that they will end up converting to the true religion that dominates the West: relativism."
(And in effect, looking at the young Moroccans at the McDonald's in Amsterdam, and their sisters in leggings, the question arises whether the new Muslim generations are not already assimilating, in every sense, to us).
[But how general is this trend in the West? One gets the impression that self-ghettoizing and anti-assimilation are the preference of most Muslim immigrant communities - even here in the United States. And from what one reads, very much so in Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany.]
Your Eminence, aren't racism and xenophobia problems here?
I don't think so. The Dutch are a tolerant people. I don't see a wave of racism on the horizon.
In Haarlem, the bishop says that one is beginning to notice in the young people a sense of emptiness, the absence of that which has been forgotten . . .
It is true, many are aware of the emptiness. But they don't know how to go beyond it, they don't know what to ask, and of whom. They have not been taught to recognize and perceive the desire of their heart.
In this sense I am convinced, like Bishop Punt, that the Dutch Church is truly called to be missionary.
Two generations have been lost. It is a matter of starting over from the beginning, and within a culture that is indifferent to Christianity, among less than friendly media.
You are 78 years old. You were a child aduring the Second World War. At the time, wasn't Holland a strongly Christian country? And afterward, what happened?
It was probably a Christianity too strongly marked by rigid moralism. It was followed by a rebellion that was radical, just as the character of the Dutch is radical. They are not capable of believing just "a little" in something. Aut, aut. They have become the opposite of what they were.
Nonetheless, there are 45 students in the Haarlem seminary today, and a few hundred adults asking for baptism. In Amsterdam, I found the sisters of Mother Teresa in adoration in front of the Crucifix. The Catholics here are few, but strong . . .
It's true. Of course, in a situation like this, the salt is forced, so to speak, to become more salty . . .
What do you intend to say, at the Christmas Masses, to the faithful?
That perhaps they have forgotten the Christian message, the one that is its essence: God became man, he came to the world in poverty, humble and fragile like a newborn child, out of love for us.
Did you know, Your Eminence, that a short time ago in the little town near here, Drunen, I saw a hundred children come out from the Catholic church where there had been a Christmas ceremony?
It must be that young priest who just arrived, who's hard at work . . ." So the story starts over, again. To start over, all it takes is the face of a Christian.