As Dutch churches shut, sacred art finds new use abroad

Reuters ^ | May 3, 2012 | Tom Heneghan

[NYer]

‘S-HERTOGENBOSCH, Netherlands (Reuters) - When Christianity fades, it doesn't just leave empty pews behind. With each church that shuts, the statues, crucifixes, chalices, paintings or vestments that were part of regular Sunday services suddenly have no liturgical home.

In the Netherlands, where faith has faded more dramatically than in many other parts of Europe, two churches close down on average every week. The sacred art left over is piling up in cellars and storerooms around the country.

Some congregations elsewhere have the opposite problem. New Catholic and Protestant churches are springing up in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and pastors in eastern Europe are seeking to refurbish churches used for decades as warehouses or factories.

A pioneering network of Dutch religious art experts, concerned by the accumulation of objects with both artistic and spiritual significance, has been struggling to match some of their supply to this new demand.

Thanks to their work, a Roman Catholic cathedral in the Dominican Republic now boasts a marble altar from a church in Eindhoven that is being turned into a health centre.

Another Catholic church slated to become a municipal library and theatre has donated pews, statues and crucifixes to a church in Lviv, Ukraine, that was used as a gas mask factory during the communist era. A Dutch Reformed church has donated a silver communion set to a Protestant parish in Romania.

"If we have something we can't use, there is nothing better than to know it is being used in another church," said Rev Martien Mesch, who has sent truckloads of surplus items to Ukraine from two Catholic churches he had to close down in the town of Vught, near the southern Dutch city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

[NYer]

(Van Deutekom inspects one of many rows of shelves with surplus statues in the basement of the Museum for Religious Art in Uden, Netherlands, 20 March 2012/Tom Heneghan)

(St John Vianney Catholic church in Eindhoven, which has been closed and is being transformed into a health centre. Since the hall is so large and expensive to heat in winter, the exercise rooms are being built in this modern structure inside it. 20 March 2012/Tom Heneghan

(Eugene van Deutekom inspects statues stored in the basement of the Museum for Religious Art in Uden, Netherlands, 20 March 2012/Tom Heneghan)

[NYer]

(Van Deutekom shows old Mass vestments out of fashion in western churches but still in demand abroad, especially in the Baltic states. A surplus gold chalice and silver ciboria are on the shelf at the diocese headquarters in 's-Hertogenbosch. 20 March 2012/Tom Heneghan)

[MeganC]

Sad to see Europe piss away their Christian birthright without even a fight.

[cloudmountain]

Sad to see Europe piss away their Christian birthright without even a fight.

There WAS a fight: Satan was the general, Euro-trash were his soldiers. Tools: promiscuity, pornography, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, glorification of sex, especially out-of-marriage sex, money, power, stuff, glory of self.

However, it IS sad, very sad, to see said Christian birthright THROWN away.
It WILL come back, especially when people, one person at a time, realizes the empty promises of Satan and his earthly minions. People will wake up one morning and...PRAY for that birthright. We aren't more (or less) evil, happy, smart or sad than we were 10,000 years ago,
There ARE 6 billion of us now (and counting) so it seems that there is more sin, but the percentage is still the same ole story.

You KNOW, nothing has changed since Adam and Eve. There are still good folks, who sin and bad folks who keep sinning and sometimes repent.

[EEGator]

There’s two things I can’t stand. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures...and the Dutch!

[Zetman]

Some of those traditional vestments are beautiful. The Church(s) where we attend the Traditional Latin Mass right here in the USA could probably use some of those. It might be interesting for our Priest to get in touch with them, and obtain a copy of the English language version of their catalog. I think I will mention this to him...

[Our man in washington]

Hey, Europe, you are like someone sitting in a tree. The things you like—your freedom, your prosperity, your art—are like the beautiful leaves in front of you. The Judeo-Christian tradition is the trunk of the tree. Keep that in mind.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

There is an irony to this. Amsterdam is known for what used to be legal drugs and prostitution. However, it is also a hotbed for religious missionaries. I have no idea why, but the place is a magnet for them.

[Kriggerel]

The space is needed in order to make room for all the new Victory Mosques.

[ReformationFan]

That’s good. Amsterdam needs missionaries. I’ve also read that in rural Holland, there is more conservative vestiges of their Dutch Reformed past.

[stevio]

LOL.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I think that much of the popular rejection of religion in Europe can be laid at the feet of the bad idea of combining religion and government.

For a long time, government and religious leaders thought it was a great idea, both expanding the power of government and the church into the lives of people. Yet from the people’s point of view, the only thing worse than a bureaucrat was a priest-bureaucrat.

It really soured people on the whole idea of religion.

A lot of the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution was based in rejection of this nasty church-state business in favor of democracy. I like to point out that “We the people...” is a rejection of the European “We are kings and princes because God wants us to be and ordained us as such. If you reject that, you reject God.”

Europe still has a lot of this “nobility-elitism” attitude, and Americans for the most part still sneer at it.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-—I think that much of the popular rejection of religion in Europe can be laid at the feet of the bad idea of combining religion and government.-—

The European “combination of religion and government” worked pretty well in supporting religious faith for about 1800 years, so, identifying it as a cause of religious decline is dubious, especially in consideration of the fact that the past 200 years of religious decline in Europe correspond to the ascendancy of secular government.

In broad outline, Europe descended from Catholic kingdoms to to kingdoms including those which supported Luther’s doctrine of the private interpretation of Scripure. This necessarily increased the power and jurisdiction of the State, since the status of the Church had been diminished.

This seed of anti-authoritarianism grew, and its first fruit was free-thinking Rationalism.

From there, the rate of cultural decline increased through the atheistic philosophies of the 1800s. To fill the vacuum created by the eclipse of the natural law as a basis of law, the all-powerful State came into view, reaching full-flower in the nightmare of the 20th century.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-—However, it IS sad, very sad, to see said Christian birthright THROWN away.——

It gives me pause when I consider what C.S. Lewis predicted about a post-Christian Europe —that it would be worse than pre-Christian pagan Europe, since the pagans were ignorant of Christ, while the post-Christians have rejected Him.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

It was to this latter 200 years I was referring. Before then, royalty and government were affirmed and authorized by the church, but it was the change in this relationship, that royalty and government was the *source* of religion, was where things went south.

The nobility no longer wanted to obey religious authority, they wanted religion to obey their authority. Mostly by not standing in the way of their princely ambitions. It was a long process, most identified with “state religions”. From that point, as royalty declined, it dragged its state religions with it.

[AnAmericanMother]

Yikes! Those vestments are modern. The concentric squiggle designs and the fringe (fringe!!!) give them away.

Here are some OLD vestments:

This one dates from around 1480.

1260.

The older the better as far as I'm concerned. :-D

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks NYer.

In the Netherlands, where faith has faded more dramatically than in many other parts of Europe, two churches close down on average every week. The sacred art left over is piling up in cellars and storerooms around the country.