Catholic Church in the Netherlands

Catholic Church in the Netherlands
St Catherine's Cathedral, Utrecht.
Type	National polity
Classification	Catholic
Governance	Episcopal
Pope	Pope Francis
President	Bishop Hans van den Hende
Primate	Archbishop Wim Eijk
Apostolic Nuncio	Aldo Cavalli
Region	Netherlands
Language	Dutch, Latin
Headquarters	St Catherine's Cathedral, Utrecht
Members	3,711,000
Official website	Episcopal Conference of the Netherlands

year	population	Catholics (based on registration by the church itself)	Percentage (based on registration by the church itself)
1970	12,957,621	5,320,000	40.5
1980	14,091,014	5,620,000	39.5
1990	14,892,574	5,560,000	37.0
1995	15,424,122	5,385,258	34.8
2000	15,863,950	5,060,413	31.6
2005	16,305,526	4,406,000	27.0
2010	16,574,989	4,166,000	25.0
2015	16,900,726	3,882,000	22.9
2016	16,979,120	3,832,000	22.4
2017	17,081,057	3,769,000	21.9
2018	17,181,084	3,711,000	21.5

The Catholic Church in the Netherlands (Dutch: Rooms-katholiek kerkgenootschap in Nederland) is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Its primate is the Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht, currently Willem Jacobus Eijk since 2008. In 2015 Catholicism was the single largest religion of the Netherlands. forming some 23% of the Dutch people, based on in-depth interviewing, down from 40% in the 1960s.

Although the number of Catholics in the Netherlands has decreased significantly in recent decades, the Catholic Church remains today the largest religious group in the Netherlands. Once known as a Protestant country, Catholicism surpassed Protestantism after the First World War, and in 2012 the Netherlands was only 10% Dutch Protestant (down from 60% in the early 20th century; defections are primarily due to rising lack of affiliation that started to occur two decades earlier than in Dutch Catholicism). There are an estimated 3.882 million Catholics registered (2015) by the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, 22.9% of the population down from more than 40% in the 1970s. The Catholic Church in the Netherlands has suffered an official membership loss of 650,000 members between 2003 (4,532,000 pers. / 27.9% overall population) and 2015 (3,882,000 pers. / 22.9% overall population), The number of people registered as Catholic in the Netherlands continues to decrease, roughly by half a percent annually.

Overview of Dutch dioceses

North Brabant and Limburg have been historically the most Catholic parts of the Netherlands, and Catholicism and some of its traditions now form a cultural identity rather than a religious identity for people there. The vast majority of the Catholic population is now largely irreligious in practice (in line with the rest of the Dutch population). Research among self-identified Catholics in the Netherlands in 2007 showed that only 27% could be regarded as theist; 55% as ietsist, deist, or agnostic; and 17% as atheist. In 2015 only 13% of self-identified Dutch Catholics believe in the existence of heaven, 17% in a personal God and fewer than half believe that Jesus was the Son of God or sent by God.

Sunday church attendance by Catholics has decreased in recent decades to less than 200,000 or 1.2% of the Dutch population in 2006. More recent numbers for Sunday church attendance have not been published (with the exception of the Diocese of Roermond), although press releases have mentioned a further decline since 2006.

In December 2011 a report was published by Wim Deetman, a former Dutch Minister of Education, detailing widespread child abuse within the Catholic Church in the Netherlands: 1,800 instances of abuse "by clergy or volunteers within Dutch Catholic dioceses" were reported to have occurred since 1945.

A planned visit of Pope Francis to the Netherlands was blocked by cardinal Wim Eijk in 2014, allegedly because of the feared lack of interest for the Pope among the Dutch public.

Dioceses

There are seven dioceses in the Netherlands.

For more demographic details by diocese, see the List of Catholic dioceses in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

These figures are the latest available as of Dec 31, 2010 from ecclesiastical statistics.

Number of registered people per diocese and church attendance (Dec 2010)
Diocese	Registered as Catholic in the population		Sunday Catholic church attendance in the general population (at least once a month)
	(registered by church as member)	(percentage)	(people attending church)	(percentage)
Groningen-Leeuwarden	± 107,000	5.9%	6,900	0.4%
Utrecht	± 754,000	18.8%	31,700	0.8%
Haarlem-Amsterdam	± 465,000	16.1%	24,300	0.8%
Rotterdam	± 513,000	14.2%	25,800	0.7%
Breda	± 437,000	39.1%	12,300	1.1%
's-Hertogenbosch	± 1,125,000	53.9%	38,900	1.9%
Roermond	± 765,000	68.1%	32,800	2.9%
Netherlands in total	± 4,166,000	25.0%	172,700	1.0%

According to the church administration, in 2010 two dioceses – 's-Hertogenbosch and Roermond – still had a majority of Catholics in the population. It is notable that SILA (Stichting Interkerkelijke Ledenadministratie) published precisely for these two dioceses a significantly lower number of Catholics in 2005. Based on the SILA-numbers, in the diocese of Hertogenbosch in 2010 the population has no longer a Catholic majority. KASKI (Katholiek Sociaal-Kerkelijk Insituut / Catholic Social-Ecclesiastical Institute) found 23.3% of the population to be nominal Catholic in 2014, based on registration by the Catholic church. These numbers are significantly higher than the numbers of Catholic adherence found by Radboud University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (11.7% Catholic in 2015). This shows a big disconnect between membership and actual adherence. Especially the Catholic Church often claims that a quarter of the Dutch population is Catholic, pointing to the official statistics, but when questioned, fewer than half that number associate themselves with the Catholic faith. A lot of people still registered as members of a church are actually not religious (anymore), but for various reasons have not officially renounced their membership (yet) – a phenomenon known as 'belonging without believing'.

Estimated number of Catholic sacraments and ecclesiastical rituals in the Netherlands (2003-2018)

Year	Infant baptisms	Communions	Confirmations	Conversions	Weddings	Funerals
2003	37,065	40,435	29,385	805	7,700	38,130
2004	34,580	38,535	27,600	825	6,800	35,570
2005	33,000	37,905	27,175	735	6,600	34,285
2006	30,705	37,665	26,105	690	6,455	33,435
2007	29,190	36,800	25,500	730	5,470	32,000
2008	27,880	35,400	24,230	740	4,990	30,910
2009	25,980	34,900	23,630	780	4,400	29,750
2010	23,840	32,410	21,220	760	3,865	28,630
2011	21,910	31,030	20,420	725	3,225	27,520
2012	19,680	27,460	18,900	530	2,915	26,260
2013	17,530	24,790	16,870	705	2,350	24,940
2014	15,840	21,700	14,810	475	2,105	22,570
2015	14,030	19,870	12,660	540	1,910	21,880
2016	12,470	17,850	11,410	450	1,720	21,100
2017	11,590	16,620	9,900	480	1,510	19,890
2018	10,380	15,110	9,020	430	1,290	18,970

According to the Church's figures, Catholics became a minority in the Diocese of 's-Hertogenbosch in 2014. The number of parishes in the Netherlands has dropped between 2003 and 2014 from 1525 to 760.

Churches and Parishes in the Netherlands

Year	Number of Churches	Number of Parishes
2003	1782	1525
2004	1761	1463
2005	1740	1442
2006	1721	1425
2007	1693	1420
2008	1661	1402
2009	1647	1382
2010	1629	1139
2011	1609	1044
2012	1593	981
2013	1571	895
2014	1556	760
2015	1513	726
2016	1484	700
2017	1464	690
2018	1384	686

Many remaining churches have found purposes outside the religious domain, like stores, apartment buildings and museums.

History

Religion in the Netherlands in 1849. Catholic-majority areas in green.

From the 4th to the 6th century AD The Great Migration took place, in which the small Celtic-Germanic-Roman tribes in the Low Countries were gradually supplanted by three major Germanic tribes: the Franks, the Frisians and Saxons. Around 500 AD, the Franks (who, at the time, resided between the Rhine and the Somme) converted to Christianity, during the reign of King Chlodovech. A large part of the area south of the Meuse belonged from the early Middle Ages to 1559 to Archdeacon Kempenland, which was part of the Diocese of Tongeren-Maastricht-Liege. From the center of the diocese, successively the cities of Tongeren, Maastricht and Liege, this part of the Netherlands was probably Christianized. According to tradition, the first Bishop of Maastricht, Servatius, was buried in this city in 384, though only from Bishop Domitianus (ca. 535) is it established that he resided in Maastricht. The Northern parts of the Netherlands were converted by Willibrord, the Apostle of the Frisians, and Boniface, who was martyred in Friesland. Both were active in the eighth century, having great impact on the conversion of the country. It would take at least until 1000 AD for all of the Netherlands to become Christian; although Christians had been a majority for some time before that, many traces of paganism long remained.

Since the War of Independence the Catholics were systematically and officially discriminated against by the Protestant government until the second half of the 20th century, which had a major influence on the economical and cultural development of the southern part of the Netherlands. From the Reformation to the 20th century, Dutch Catholics had largely been confined to certain southern areas in the Netherlands where they still tend to form a majority or large minority of the population. However, with modern population shifts and increasing secularization, these areas tend to be less and less predominantly Catholic. Registered Catholics still form a slight majority in the most southern province of the Netherlands, Limburg (refer to the overview by diocese above).

After the Dutch Republic banned the Catholic religion in the 1580s the Netherlands became a mission territory under the canonical authority of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (the so-called Dutch Mission). The episcopal hierarchy was not restored until 1853.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Catholics formed a separate social pillar, with their own schools, TV and radio broadcasting, hospitals, unions, and political party. They formed a coalition with orthodox Protestants, who also felt discriminated against. This pillarization and coalition government was important in emancipating the Catholics from their social exclusion. In the period between 1860 and 1960, Catholic church life and institutions flourished. This period is called "The Rich Roman Life" (Dutch: Het Rijke Roomse leven). During this period, the number of Catholics in the Dutch population grew to approximate parity with Protestants, as in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, and Germany. After 1970, the emphasis on Catholic concepts and traditions such as hell, the Devil, sin, Confession, kneeling, catechesis, having the Host placed on the tongue by the priest, and the doctrine about widows' remarrying, divorce, and premarital sex rapidly disappeared; these concepts and traditions are rarely, if ever, found in modern Dutch Catholicism. A cultural divide is still found between the "Catholic" south and the "Protestant" north, but with a total of 1.5 million people and 20% of the industrial production in the Netherlands, the southern "Catholic" area BrabantStad has become one of the major economically important, metropolitan regions of the Netherlands.

In the 1980s and 1990s the church became polarized. The conservatives' main organization was Contact Roman Catholics. The liberals' main organization was the Eighth of May Movement (Dutch: "Acht Mei-beweging"), founded because of disputes about the papal visit in 1985; the Movement had a difficult relationship with the bishops, and disbanded in 2003.

  Catholic membership according to the Catholic Church registration

  Catholic adherence according to indepth interviewing

21st century

Currently, Catholicism is still the single largest religion of the Netherlands with around four million registered members, 22.9% of the Dutch population in 2015. In 2006, in the Diocese of 's-Hertogenbosch (in the eastern part of North Brabant and in part of Gelderland), only 45,645 residents, mostly people over 65, attended Mass, only 2% of the total population in that area. In western North Brabant (the Diocese of Breda), the number of people associating themselves with Catholicism also strongly decreased. Church attendance is even lower in the west with only 1% of the West Brabantian population visiting churches in 2006.

Most Catholics live in the southern provinces of North Brabant and Limburg, where they used to comprise a majority of the population until at least the late 1980s. According to the church administration in 2010, two dioceses, s-Hertogenbosch and Roermond, still had a Catholic majority; it is notable that in 2005, SILA (Stichting Interkerkelijke Ledenadministratie) listed a significantly lower number of Catholics in these two dioceses. This shows a big disconnect between membership and actual adherence.

Child abuse scandal

In December 2011 a report was published by Wim Deetman, a former Dutch minister, detailing widespread child abuse within the Catholic Church in the Netherlands: 1,800 instances of abuse "by clergy or volunteers within Dutch Catholic dioceses" were reported to have occurred since 1945. According to the report "The risk of experiencing unwanted sexual advances was twice as great for minors in institutions as the national average of 9.7%. This finding reveals no significant difference between Catholic institutions and other institutions." In March 2012, however, it was revealed that left out were the cases of 10 children being surgically castrated after reporting being sexually abused to the police. It also emerged that in 1956 former prime minister Victor Marijnen, then chairman of a children's home in Gelderland, had covered up the sexual abuse of children. According to the Telegraph newspaper, he "intervened to have prison sentences dropped against several priests convicted of abusing children." The factuality of these claims is unclear, though. The Commission rejected all the claims.

Structure

Within the Netherlands the hierarchy consists of:

Archbishopric Bishopric

• Utrecht - Archbishop Willem Jacobus Eijk (since 2007)
  • 's Hertogenbosch - Bishop Gerard de Korte (since 2016)
  • Breda - Bishop Johannes Liesen (since 2011)
  • Groningen-Leeuwarden - Ron van den Hout (since 2017)
  • Haarlem - Bishop Jozef Marianus Punt (since 2001)
  • Roermond - Bishop Frans Jozef Marie Wiertz (since 1993)
  • Rotterdam - Bishop Johannes van den Hende (since 2011)

Notable Dutch Catholics

Notable Dutch Catholics throughout history include Pope Adrian VI, Ruud Lubbers, Henry of Gorkum, Hadewijch, Cornelius Loos, Jakob Middendorp, Hieronymus Bosch, Piet de Jong, Jan Harmenszoon Krul, Dries van Agt, Jan Steen, Casimir Ubaghs, Maxime Verhagen, Erasmus, and Joan Albert Ban.