Netherlands, Feb 9, 2019: The Netherlands is becoming the land of death, and that’s not just physical death with its permissive euthanasia laws, but spiritual death with the Catholic Church in decline. It is, in fact, in freefall.
Archbishop Wim Eijk, one of the country’s most steadfastly Catholic bishops, revealed last year that within 10 years, there will be less than 20 parishes left in the Utrecht archdiocese — the largest diocese in the Netherlands in terms of area.
He noted that, of the 280 churches in the archdiocese, only 10 or 15 still have Mass regularly and that 10 percent of the parishes in his diocese are actually bankrupt, 10 percent are still rich and the other 80 percent are somewhere in between.
Due to the aging Catholic population, church attendance decreases by 5 to 6 percent every year and fewer people support their church financially. Despite the fact that Catholics make up nearly a quarter of the population, only 1 percent of the population attends Mass on Sunday.
A 2015 report by Vatican Radio revealed that Dutch Catholics are “embracing the vision of a future without churches.”
The Netherlands was the first to dive head-first into the spirit of Vatican II, and now, its fruits are obvious. It’s become a warning to other Christian countries about what happens when the priests, bishops and laity give in to the world.
It became the first European country to embrace and legalize euthanasia in 2002 — something the rest of the civilized world demonized the Nazis over. A recent report by The Guardian revealed that one in four deaths in the Netherlands are induced or caused by doctors.
But when God’s laws are disregarded, human souls — and human life — are considered cheap and meaningless.
(churchmilitant.com)