{"id":1600,"date":"2015-04-08T16:36:18","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T20:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.242.160\/~stumbli4\/?p=1600"},"modified":"2015-04-09T11:25:49","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T15:25:49","slug":"as-an-entire-country-closes-its-churches-one-cardinal-mentions-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/?p=1600","title":{"rendered":"As An Entire Country Closes Its Churches, One Cardinal Mentions Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Presiding<\/a>

Presiding over the end of his Church?<\/p><\/div>\n

In the Netherlands a cardinal prepares his Catholics for the inevitable<\/a>:<\/p>\n

During Lent, Catholics in the Netherlands are getting accustomed to the vision of a future without churches.<\/strong> <\/span>In this year\u2019s Message for Lent, the President of the Episcopate of the Netherlands <\/span>Willem <\/span><\/span>Cardinal <\/span><\/span>Eijk, announced that he will <\/span><\/span>take on one of the most painful problems of the local Catholic community, i.e. the necessity to close the vast majority of churches in the country, in the near future.<\/strong> <\/span><\/span>As a result of mistakes made by the local Church after the Council and the actual abandonment of evangelization, there has been a <\/span><\/span>dramatic reduction in the number of faithful <\/span><\/span><\/strong>in in recent decades.<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In all fairness Cardinal Eijk may not mean exactly what he seems to be saying here, but one couldn’t think of a more exact description of the problem, not just in the local Church, but the entire Church itself.<\/p>\n

Card. <\/span>Eijk stressed, that he never takes an initiative in this regard alone. For the \u201cdeconsecration\u201d of a sanctuary, it is the parish council that writes a simple request stating that only a few faithful attend a church and therefore the parish does not have the necessary funds for its maintnance. The <\/strong><\/span><\/span>Utrecht ordinary stressed that the decision to deconsecrate is always taken with a heavy heart.<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Card. <\/span>Eijk therefore understands the bitterness of the faithful who find that their village or district will no longer have a church. He however cautions that this should not <\/span><\/strong>cultivate these sorts of negative feelings, because they can lead to permanent bitterness. <\/span><\/strong>It is important, however, to be open to God and to other Catholics, and with them deepen their faith through prayer, the Word of God and catechesis. <\/span>Although church buildings might disappear, our faith and the will to be the Church does not disappear from our villages and districts \u2013 Cardinal <\/span>Eijk writes in his message for Lent.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No the Faith won’t disappear.\u00a0 They just won’t need very many Churches to hold it.<\/p>\n

One would imagine that someone must have had this result in mind back in the 1960’s.\u00a0 Was everyone misguided hierarch behind it just in the grip of some fantasy?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Netherlands a cardinal prepares his Catholics for the inevitable: During Lent, Catholics in the Netherlands are getting accustomed to the vision of a future without churches. In this year\u2019s Message for Lent, the President of the Episcopate of the Netherlands Willem Cardinal Eijk, announced that he will take on one of the most …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[130,132,134,131,133],"class_list":["post-1600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cardinal-eijk","tag-catholic-church","tag-church-closures","tag-netherlands","tag-vatican-ii"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1600"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1605,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions\/1605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}