Pluralism and Assimilation in the

with Reference Netherlands, Special

to Dutch Catholicism *

J. M. G. THURLINGS

Katholieke Universiteit, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

THE WORD verzuiling ("pillarization") is used to designate the pattern by which the various ideological groupings (secular or religious) in the Dutch population constructed a complex of associations and institutions in nearly every sector of the society. As a consequence, most of each person's social life was conducted within the limits of his own ideological circle. Interpillar con- tacts, whether cooperative or conflictive, were cut down greatly and were in fact more or less limited to persons at the top. The main pillars were the Catho- lics, the Orthodox Calvinists, the Dutch Reformed, the Socialists, and the Humanist Liberals (the last group opposed the pillarization but still unwill- ing to be left out of the system). The Catholic pillar was the most extensive, including 35-40 percent of the Dutch population and covering every sector of life except economic production and distribution and the government bureau- cracy.

Pillarization

This segmented social structure was the result of a voluntary institutional segregation. Apart from some earlier partial versions, it arose in the struggle for equal rights, including monetary, for denominational education that broke out in the second half of the nineteenth century. The proximate cause of this so- called schoolstrijd (or "school conflict") was that the Orthodox Calvinists and the Catholics were disgruntled with the Liberal Party's policies. During the prior decades many, though not all, Catholics had placed their hopes in the administration by Liberals. For the Catholic sector, which had been equal under the law only since the French invasion of 1795, was granted many advan- tages in the Liberal Constitution of 1848. For instance, the Catholics were finally able once again to have their own bishops, and the freedom of education was clearly mandated. It was not surprising, then, that an increasing proportion

* Translated from the Dutch by William Petersen and Ingeborg W. Knol. The paper is based in considerable part on archives of the Catholic Documentation Center at the University of Nijmegen. 83 of Dutch Catholics saw the Liberal Party as the instrument by which they might be freed from the traditional Calvinist hegemony. It soon became clear, however, that the Liberal interpretation of freedom of education differed from the Catholic, and that the Liberals were hardly eager to effect the Catholic principle. In 1857, a bill was passed that in fact gave the neutral (or nondenominational) school a virtual monopoly, and by an amendment any subsidy for denominational education was rendered im- possible. Thus began the period, definitive for the time being, of a constant trend to the right by Dutch Catholics. This shift was entirely in line with the encyclicals of the period, in which step-by-step liberalism and democracy were denounced. In 1868, when the Dutch bishops officially condemned the Liberals' education policy, their pastoral letter put an end to much internal bickering. The final proof that the Liberal-Catholic cooperation was no longer tenable came in 1878, when a new Liberal education law forced the public (or neutral) school on the whole nation. A political regrouping was called for, and remarkably the Catholics and the Orthodox Calvinists, each of which had been the "natural enemy" of the other, found themselves together in a coalition. For, like the Catholics, the Calvinists saw themselves threatened by Liberal modernism, as they termed it. Still, this triangle was not new. During the Eighty Years' War of 1568-1648, the Dutch population had been more or less divided into three ideological (that is, Christian) groups: Catholics, Orthodox Calvinists, and Humanists who followed Erasmus and Arminius. In this tripartite structure the Catholics had always been the weakest element. Until 1795 they suffered from a constitution- ally specified discrimination and had no freedom even of religion. On the other hand, they could take advantage of the permanent power struggle between the Orthodox Calvinists and the more tolerant (or flexible) Humanist Protestants, who reacted well to flattery and especially to bribes. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Orthodox Calvinists and the Humanist Protestants were almost completely absorbed into the Dutch Reformed Church, which in 1849 comprised 55 percent of the population, with the Catholics making up 38 percent. But within the Dutch Reformed Church there was a permanent struggle over religious modernism. Around 1880 this controversy culminated in a series of schisms, leading ultimately to the founding of the Orthodox Calvinist "Reformed Churches of the Netherlands" and the associated Anti-Revolutionary Party. The first item on this party's program was to support denominational schools, and in the same spirit the Orthodox Calvinists founded a "Free University" shortly thereafter. The Catholics were less resolute. A Catholic State Party came into being only very gradually, but even before it was officially founded, Catholic rep- resentatives in Parliament seemingly found ways to cooperate with the Anti- Revolutionaries. In 1887 this coalition had its first victory: a new education law permitted state subsidies for denominational primary schools. This did not end the "school conflict" but marked the beginning of a period during which de- nominational educational institutions and the number of their students would