This individualism accounts for the many sects found among the Dutch
Reformed. The Roman Catholic Church, the only episcopacy in Holland,
numbers only two sections: those--the majority--who admit the
infallibility of the Pope, and those--a small minority--who, although
recognizing the Pope as chief of the Church, do not agree with the
decisions of the Vatican Council of 1870, proclaiming this papal
infallibility. The Roman Catholic Church is a tolerably prospering
institution, thanks to the absolute freedom which it, like all the sister
Churches, enjoys in Holland, where, ever since the revolution of 1795, a
State Church has been an unknown thing. On the whole, however, its growth
is not keeping pace with the increase of the population. A former census
indicated that the Roman Catholics numbered two-fifths of the whole
population, but the latest puts them down at only one-third, and in the
Second Chamber of the States General there are only twenty-five Roman
Catholic members out of a total of a hundred representatives. Their
present organization dates from 1853, when the Liberals agreed to the
appointment by the Pope of one Archbishop in Utrecht, and four Bishops in
Haarlem, Bois-le-Duc, Breda, and Roermond. The bishoprics are divided in
decanates, and in 1858 the Pope completed the organization by instituting
chapters, each governed by one provost and eight canons. The Archbishops
and Bishops do not officially participate in political life in Holland,
although, as a matter of course, nobody can help noticing their influence
upon the electorate; the minor clergy as a rule are less discreet in this
matter than their chiefs, whereas the political leader of the Roman
Catholics in the Second Chamber is Dr. Herman Schaepman, a priest, a
professer at the Seminary of Rysenburg, a statesman, an orator, and a
poet, whose quintuple attainments are equally admired, although his
scientific importance is not generally considered to be quite as weighty
as the rest of his remarkable personality.
Far more significant for Dutch religious life are the other two-thirds of
the population, Protestants to the back-bone. The former State Church, the
Netherlands Reformed Church, was left in a most awkward position when, in
1795, disestablishment was forced upon it. Up till 1848, when Jann Rudolf
Thorbecke saved Holland and the Royal House from another revolution, by
imposing a Liberal constitution upon the reluctant King William II, the
Netherlands Reformed Church had no sound, well-regulated status; but not
before 1870 was the last tie Connecting State and Church severed. The
State now no longer exercises spiritual or other supervision, but merely
pays a yearly allowance to the various clergymen, without vindicating or
claiming any rights in return.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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