TO HOLLAND, WITH LOVE

...For this purpose a "Secretariat for the Unity of Christians" was created of which Cardinal Bea became the President...

...But being Archbishop of the diocese of Utrecht may be the easiest of Willebrands' tasks...

...and others who together were to constitute the first Vatican antenna directed at the World Council...

...It welcomed Willebrands as a favorite son and guarantor of a new period of law and order in the noisy Dutch church and hence in the country...

...The new archbishop, Johannes Gerardus Maria Willebrands, was born in 1909 in the small village of Boven-karspel, a part of Northern Holland the inhabitants of which are often referred to by the rest of Holland as kaaskoppen, "cheese heads...

...Are we Dutch Catholics actually still so totally conditioned that we can only mumble 'Thank you, thank you very much!' the moment a Curia cardinal, even though Dutch, is delegated to make it crystal clear that there is no one to be found in this province of the church, who has the competence to be our archbishop...

...Not only in Holland, but also elsewhere, in France for instance and by no one less than Yves Congar, O.P., Willebrands is being mentioned as a most suitable candidate for the Chair of Peter...

...Rumor had it that the American conservative Cardinal Wright would succeed Bea at the Secretariat...

...Jan van Kilsdonk, S.J., founder of the Amsterdam Student Parish and famous for his steadfastness when called on the carpet by the Holy Office in 1965, admits that the choice of Willebrands was "a constructive gesture in Roman policy after so many destructive ones...

...It is not forgotten here that it was Willebrands' protest that prevented Holland's Catholic poet-laureate, the ex-Jesuit Huub Oosterhuis, from leading the liturgy at the Bangkok Conference of the World Council in 1974, that he condemned publicly Oosteihuis' poetry as being "in no way any longer Catholic...

...Van Kilsdonk believes that Willebrands may well be able to reestablish a certain unity in the Dutch Bishops' Conference, but he questions the quality of a unity which might politely circumambulate both the real tasks and the real problems...

...Then there is a third group, fairly large and mostly intellectual, whose concept of the church has really changed radically since Vatican II...

...There will be no lack of contact with the home office...

...The bien-pensant press, whether Catholic or secular, was all smiles...

...What are Rome's instructions to the Pope's right hand...

...The Protestant and the liberal press expressed astonishment at the meek attitude of AVz million Catholics in accepting Rome's decision so passively...

...According to an interview given by the Cardinal to the Volkskrant: "I have no specific instructions...

...When Pope John in January 1959 revealed his plans for the Second Vatican Council to a shocked audience of cardinals, these new and promising ecumenical activities made it possible to integrate the "separated brethren" into the structure of the Council...

...Willebrands as its Secretary...

...But then he emphasizes: "I am accepting my new task with confidence and with love...

...There are other straws in the wind...

...No doubt Willebrands' appearance, his carefully chosen words, his very tone of voice will make him a respected, perhaps a beloved archbishop...

...I am particularly afraid," he said, "that the concept of 'unity,' as is so often the case in Catholic as well as in Communist discussion, is going to be used as an instrument of blackmail against all honest opposition...

...Whether Willebrands will be able to keep a Bishop Gijsen in check, whether the line is going to be softer or harder remains to be seen...

...He continued: "What the right-wingers have essentially always held against John XXIII is that he took Christianity so seriously, that he threatened to scuttle the world's first multi-national...

...Arrighi...

...Various clerics in Rome describe the cardinal as autocratic and rigid under a very smooth surface...

...During these years his interest in ecumenical matters was awakened...

...He even inspired Bishop Simonis of Rotterdam to declare: "The Holy Father loves Holland so deeply that he is willing to part with his right hand in letting Willebrands depart from Rome...

...Reactions range from jubilant to cautiously favorable...

...As social director, guide and interpreter for the non-Catholic Observers at the Council, he became known as an epitome of courtesy and efficiency...

...The appointment of a new Dutch Primate must have been a ticklish problem for Rome...

...They got a distinguished Curia cardinal as governor of the province, who can be counted on to keep the rattle-tattle in its place...

...Rome treated him like a dog," is the general opinion...

...The press reactions have been fascinating...

...Secondly, there are the right-wingers, whether Catholic or not, who are of course delighted...

...Alfrink has no successor," he snapped back...

...However, dissonant voices are audible...

...Indeed, Bernardus Alfrink's tenure is already looked back upon with nostalgia by all but the staunchest conservatives...

...It was also he who prepared Paul VI's visit to the Headquarters of the World Council in 1969, the year of Cardinal Bea's death at 86...

...Others remind one of his complete silence when the polemics raged around the Dutch Catechism and during various other painful conflicts...

...His colleague of Roermond, Dr...

...Such questions may well have been stimulated by articles like the one in the Protestant Weekly Hervormd Nederland: "An adult province of the church is being treated as if it were a naughty and incompetent child...

...Is this not the phraseology that would sound perfect from the balcony of the Piazza San Pietro...

...Does it express a long-repressed nostalgia for dependency on Rome...

...The typical kaaskop considers himself to be a nuchtere Hollander, and is very proud of the adjective nuchter, for to be nuchter counts as the highest virtue in the local value system...

...After surviving the Council, it was greatly expanded...

...So let him...

...However this may be, the majority of Dutch Catholics has heaved its sigh of relief: at the very least they had been spared a continuation of the Simoms-Gijsen line...

...One of these, Bishop Simonis of Rotterdam, has acted with more common sense than had been expected...

...According to the prominent Msgr...

...It is generally assumed that it was especially Willebrands' efforts which resulted in the annulment of the mutual anathema which since 1054 had pitted Rome against the Orthodox Church...

...To them, cardinals are of very little importance...

...Look," he said, "there are three distinct attitudes...

...The liberal, Dominican-edited De Bazuin ("The Trumpet"), a great deal more reserved, headlined its announcement of the nw archbishop: "Under Guardianship...

...Its 900,000 members are predominantly lower-middle-class with a negligible ultra-conservative fringe, and the far left has lost all interest in confrontations with the institution...

...Willebrands has clearly been sent to represent the multi-national...

...More difficult will be the reestablishment of a modicum of real cooperation in the Bishops' Conference...

...Gijsen, however, is generally considered as a disaster, somewhat of a savonarolean monomaniac...

...Its work during Vatican II had been as important as it had been successful: the Secretariat may be credited with the documents on Freedom of Religion, the Declaration on the Jews and on the Non-Christian Religions...

...This man of almost superhuman integrity, gentlemanly tact and wisdom, is generally regarded as having been rewarded quite shabbily for his many troubles...

...It is generally felt that as far as his own archdiocese of Utrecht is concerned, he might well be the right man...

...Moreover this- "right hand of the Pope" is staying on as President of the Secretariat of Christian Unity in Vatican City...

...The ground has been admirably prepared by Alfrink, who seeing that the Church could only survive (the number of priests decreased by 20 percent since 1965 and of the remaining ones almost 50 percent are between 50 and 60) by integrating a considerable number of laymen in diocesan work, formerly done by priests...

...The right-wing weekly Elsevier, a successful pastiche of Time or Newsweek, celebrated the occasion with 6-pages of applause in its cover story entitled "A Born Conciliator...

...Cardinal Alfrink is in retirement after reaching the age limit so convenient in disposing of prelates who do not enjoy Rome's special admiration...

...Indeed, as soon as the sees of Rotterdam and Roer-mond became vacated by their "open-minded" bishops, they were filled by arch-conservatives, against the clearly expressed wishes of the local church...

...But others explained that ever since the imposition of the bishops of Rotterdam and Roermond, the prestige of bishops and even the interest in hierarchical politics has apparently waned to the point of indifference...

...Questions De Bazuin asks itself a number of interesting questions: "Is the generally favorable reception of Willebrands a symptom of the weakening in self-confidence and of trust in the potential for renewal from within the Dutch church...

...Have we become frightened by our bold declarations of emancipation and proclamations of adulthood...

...In the succeeding years Willebrands, however, was able to gain the full confidence of the most ultra-traditionalists...

...A prominent member of the Utrecht Pastoral Council called the appointment in a radio broadcast "a slap in the face of the local church...

...In that same year Professor Willebrands became President of the Willebrord Society, the first Dutch Catholic ecumenical organization, which brought him in working contact with other ecumenical pioneers, as the German Msgr...

...If, for instance, I am committed to reconciliation of contrasting attitudes, this is simply part of the general mission of any bishop...

...He also adds darkly: "The problems of Humanae Vitae have not yet blown over...

...Vermeulen, would almost certainly have been unable to end the paralysis...

...Fr...

...The new archbishop of Utrecht and Primate of the Dutch Church Province, Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, 66, has-in these first three months since the Pope entrusted him with the stewardship over his native country and after a phenomenal career in the Curia-been given more than just the benefit of the doubt...

...The ecumenical boom of the postwar years involved Willebrands in intensive contact with non-Catholics of the caliber of Sweden's Nathan Soderblom, the Metropolitan Ger-manos, the Patriarch Athenagoras and his fellow Dutchman Visser 't Hooft...

...The candidate proposed by the Chapter of Utrecht's Diocese, Alfrink's respected and popular assistant, Dr...

...Prominent among these was the German Cardinal Augustin Bea, the Director of the Biblical Institute and confessor of Pius XII, a man of the noble spirit of John XXIII, whose intimate friend and collaborator he became...

...It is perhaps a coincidence that meanwhile in 1948, another Dutchman, the Protestant Minister Visser 't Hooft founded the World Council of Churches...

...But, contrary to these expectations and all precedent, indeed against the wishes of some ultra-conservative cardinals, the Pope appointed Secretary Willebrands as its president It was a remarkable choice at a time when Dutch stock was quoted very low on the Vatican exchange: to be Dutch was to be suspected of heresy if not treason...

...The Secretariat consisted at the time of only Cardinal Bea, Willebrands, the American Paulist Father Thomas Stransky and the Corsican Msgr...

...What do you think of Alfrink's successor...

...I asked Wim Tepe, O.P., who after a serious illness is now Pastor-Emeritus of Amsterdam's progressive inner-city parish...

...Closest to it is "sober...

...He said of himself that he would have preferred to return to his native land in order to just "live quietly, to meditate, to study and to write...

...Even if it should happen that a good man has been selected by this purely hierarchical, undemocratic process, it should not blind us to the fact that essentially the appointment is an act of humiliation...

...Seen from the outside, however, it also implies a certain rigidity, self-righteousness and above all a conspicuous absence of flights of the imagination, of poetic sensibility...

...He in turn appointed young Msgr...

...This he did...

...Even a radical mind such as Fr...

...No artist, no mystic, would feel flattered by being praised as a nuchtere Hollander...

...First you have your run-of-the-mill Catholics, still uncritically identified with the institution...

...Dommicus...

...There is also more than a little suspicion that in deference to highest politics he has recently put the brakes on ecumenical progress and that this resulted in the resignation of two of his important collaborators in the Secretariat...

...An ex-Dominican acquaintance summed it up...

...Whatever his chances may be, a careful study of his interviews, his utterances, show that this erudite kaaskop of supreme intelligence has blossomed into a thoroughly and reliably romanized prelate after an exceptional career...

...Jo Willebrands, an exceptionally brilliant student at Hageveld Seminary, after his ordination in 1934 was promptly sent to Rome for further study at the Angeli-cum asd Gregorian, where he received his doctorate in 1937...

...A. C. Ramselaar: "The Pope expects no doubt from Willebrands that he will take corrective steps in matters like the education of priests and the functioning of married priests in theological education...

...For the next three years he did pastoral work in Amsterdam, until in 1940 he was appointed as professor of philosophy at Wannond Seminary, then served as its Director until 1958...

...Hofer, the Roman Frenchman Charles Boyer S.J...

...The word is not easily translated...

...He was foisted on both his diocese, his colleagues and on Alfrink, who had to be personally humiliated by being summoned to Rome to attend Paul VI's consecration of this man, whose appointment has paralyzed the conference of Dutch bishops ever since...

...Is it possible, as some speculate, that his present stint in Holland is a final internship in pastoral experience...

...They accept any new cardinal as they accept sunrise...

...In his first interviews and contacts the new archbishop has been both energetic and, as could be expected, extremely diplomatic...

...But it is a sobriety combined with pragmatic horse-sense, forthrightness, industry and thrift...

...A highly diplomatic talent was needed here...