Cardinal Eijk Warns Against Certain Synod Positions

The Cardinal begins by considering the situation of the Dutch Church.

Secularization in the Netherlands

Cardinal Eijk reports that a survey in 2022 revealed that, for the first time, over 50% of Dutch people declared themselves to be atheists or agnostics. The break came during the 1960's. “Between 1965 and 1975, church attendance halved,” and at the same time “Catholic associative life rapidly collapsed.”

“In 2012,” he adds, “we still had 250,000 churchgoers. After the pandemic, that figure dropped to less than 90,000, and now it is around 100,000, which represents around 2.5% percent of [self-identified] Catholics.”

And he points out the main cause of this secularization: “Secularization began with increasing prosperity,” he states. “Prosperity leads to individualization, and individualization to secularization,” he goes on to explain. “In the Netherlands, this happened when prosperity increased at an unprecedented rate,” starting in 1965.

The Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht then offers an analysis of this process. “The State is making more and more decisions about fundamental rights.” The idea that man was created in the image of God, which protected him from the excesses of the State, has disappeared, and “it is now the State that replaces God.” He gives as an example the “legalization and widespread use of abortion.”

He then cites the increase in euthanasia, which is expected to reach 10,000 cases this year, and the fact that almost 40% of marriages end in divorce, as well as embryo research and the plan to allow children aged 16 and up to choose their sex on their identity papers. In particular, he accuses the UN and WHO of encouraging these changes.

The result is “growing individualism leading to loneliness, particularly among the elderly,” and the disorientation of “many young people suffering from psychological problems, often due to a lack of values.” And he concludes: “The social experiment of establishing an ethical order without God will end in collapse in the long run.”

Criticism of the Synodal Process

Cardinal Eijk was asked a question that takes the example of Germany thinking that what must be done is “overcoming blockages to change.” He responds: “You can learn from the Church in the Netherlands that this is a mistake. Those who sow confusion drive people away from the Church. You won't bring anyone back that way.” And he adds the example of the “Dutch Pastoral Council.”

This “Council,” which has been described by this website before, is seen as similar to today's synodal movement: it had begun “with great enthusiasm,” but ended up rather weighed down. The Cardinal points to a problem that will eventually erupt in the current Synod: “There were also excessive expectations at the time, for example, in regard to the abolition of celibacy.”

Belatedly, Paul VI tried to intervene. But the vote on the abolition of celibacy was held under the authority of Cardinal Bernard Alfrink and won an almost unanimous majority. But Paul VI intervened again—he had just written an Encyclical on the subject—and that was the end of unfounded hopes. The Dutch Church lost its credibility.

As for the burning issues at the Synod, the Cardinal recalls that “last year's votes showed that the majority of participants were not so enthusiastic about subjects such as gender or the consecration of women.” He adds that “Europe is only a small—and shrinking—part of the worldwide Church,” and elsewhere “there are strongly divergent opinions on these issues.”

Finally, he affirms that unity in the preaching of the Church must not be lost, as “the Church then loses her credibility.” He cites the experience of the Netherlands over the last 50 years, which created ambiguity and confusion. “People had the impression that the Church itself didn't really know” the truth.

He refers to the Instrumentum laboris, (no. 102), which proposes that “Reflection on the forms of exercise of the Petrine ministry should also be conducted from the perspective of ‘sound decentralisation’ (EG 16), as urged by Pope Francis and requested by many Episcopal Conferences.

“According to the formulation provided by the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium (19 March 2022), this entails leaving ‘to the competence of Bishops the authority to resolve, in the exercise of "their proper task as teachers” and pastors, those issues with which they are familiar and that do not affect the Church’s unity of doctrine, discipline and communion, always acting with that spirit of co-responsibility which is the fruit and expression of the specific mysterium communionis that is the Church.’ (PE II, 2).”

Such a provision would lead to total confusion in the Church in the short term, which is exactly what Cardinal Eijk fears.