Auxiliary Bishop Rob Mutsaerts of
’s-Hertogenbosch spoke with AdVaticanum.com on August 22 about the Synod
and the decline of Catholicism in the Netherlands. Main quotes.
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“Walking together” is valuable only if the Church knows where she is
walking. The destination is not increased participation but Christ.
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Consultation, participation, pastoral structures and synodal methods
all have their place. Once the means start occupying more attention than
the end, something has become inverted.
- The Church possesses
something unusual among institutions: she has received a Revelation
which she did not invent and cannot rewrite.
- The missing words in the Synod are repentance and conversion.
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The synodal process did not create the Western European crisis. But
after several years, there is little evidence that it has found an
effective remedy for it. The medicine resembles the disease!
- Nobody needs Christianity in order to learn that meetings should be inclusive.
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Dutch statistics report that there were 3.448 million registered
Catholics in 2024. Yet the sacramental statistics are even more
depressing. From a Catholic perspective, this points towards a
catastrophic failure to transmit the faith from one generation to
another.
- If millions remain nominally Catholic but only a tiny
proportion regularly encounter the Eucharistic Christ; if baptised
children disappear before Confirmation; if Catholic marriage becomes
statistically exceptional; then it is insufficient to say that new
consultative structures have been created.
- Adult reception into
the Catholic Church in the Netherlands increased by nearly 40% in 2024:
more than 500 adults were baptised and more than 100 others entered the
Church without baptism because they had previously been baptised.
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