479 - The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism, 1958-1974

The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism, 1958-1974
John A. Coleman
Berkeley, University of California, 1978. 328 pp. $20.00.

John Coleman, professor of social ethics and sociology of religion at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, does credit in this book to his mentors Robert Bellah and Thomas O' Dea whose writings it resembles. Based on Coleman's first-hand acquaintance with the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, the research judiciously blends sociological findings with theological reflection, in that creative sort of symbiosis so often urged by writers such as Andrew Greeley.

After a brief review of Christianity in Holland from the time of the Renaissance, the author analyzes the phenomenon of "columnization" (Verzuiling), the confessionalization of Dutch society into separate Christian blocks or columns (Zuilen), Roman Catholicism, Dutch Reformed, and Gereformeerden on which traditional Dutch society rested. Beginning in 1958, Dutch Catholics reduced their self-identities once based on negative out-group identity, democratized their own internal Catholic world, and distinguished between the church as a community of faith and the confessional apparatus separating Christians. Thus, a form of Catholicism that had been the most traditional on the continent soon became the seed-bed for much experimentation, institutional development, conflicts, and eventual consolidation. What occurred was a shift from a missionary model of church to a more cultural pastoral one.

Despite the unsettling events related to the Vatican's controversial appointments of two conservative bishops, Simonis and Gijsen, the author offers a generally optimistic prognosis for the future.

Apart from the intrinsic fascination of the topic, readers with other interests can learn much here about the phenomenon of change in religious bodies and how to preserve continuity amid discontinuity.

Michael A. Fahey, S.J.
Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec