The American Spectator

Reader Mail

This Time of Year

12.29.03 @ 12:01AM

(Page 4 of 4)

Recently left- and right-wing proponents of gay rights have re-ignited this political stream, but it might be of interest to you to know that Joke (Johanna) Swiebel, a lesbian rights activist, elected for the Labor Party as backbencher, has never been a visible politician in the Netherlands; her activities on this point seem to have totally missed Dutch mainstream press.

The activities of Henk Krol, during the seventies spokesman of Hans Wiegel, former vice-prime minister for the Dutch Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy (the largest liberal party promoting the political ideas of Friedrich von Hayek), widely regarded as the most visible and influential Dutch conservative politician for decades, can be considered as a typical representative of libertarian political ideas.

Anti-papism in the Netherlands is thus a far more subtle issue from a political point of view than you represent it. It is not only the ballpark of libertarians, liberals, social-democrats or socialists promoting Enlightment principles of separation of church and state. Even a substantive number of conservative Protestants tend to subscribe to proposals to reduce the remains of secular power of the Vatican.

It is rather difficult in this case to assess who is more out of touch with their constituencies today in this non-discussion: the Vatican or the gay rights activist. But it is outside any discussion that the historic track record of the hierarchical driven political influence wielding of the Holy See in Europe has not allways been as beneficial to the European people as the last decades' activities of Pope John Paul II in Eastern Europe.

Too many Dutch Catholics have experienced during the two decades after World War II the pressure of priests to procreate at any price and received episcopal prescriptions on how to vote in democratic elections with the threat of religious exclusion. This attitude of the Catholic clergy changed in the seventies with large scale public approval. However, since the restoration of conservative Vatican moral doctrine under Pope John Paul II has set in, Catholicism has experienced a strong backlash and church flight. As a consequence, all recent attempts of the Catholic Church to translate religious doctrine into a political-moral position is met with serious scrutiny or even distrust.

America is probably too remote from the Vatican and politically too much dominated by the religious and social norms and values of Protestantism and the freedom of religion, established against Catholic moral doctrine in the sixteenth century, to be aware of the sometimes peculiar kinds of social pressure and political behavior of the Vatican during the last five decades that alas involved several rejectable anti-democratic positions, like the support offered to the German Nazi government and Mussolini's Fascists and the Franco (Spain) and Salazar (Portugal) dictatorships.

As all these activities have been presented in religious moral cladding, it is these kinds of moral missteps in the recent past that cause the continuous scrutiny of Vatican political activities and the ongoing intent of many political groups to reduce its powers. The position of the Holy See on homosexuality is simply the new stick found to restart Vatican-bashing. As might be clear from the above, this has been put aside as nothing more or less than an instance of Dutch political folklore and was not even mentioned in the Dutch mainstream press.

It did not go quite so far, in particular as the current political climate in the Netherlands has moved substantively into a conservative direction. The Dutch (Protestant Christian Democrat) prime minister is also pushing for a reference to [Europe's] Judeo-Christian roots and even in Miss Swiebel's own LaborP party her Vatican-bashing stance is not more than a faction position.

France, as always is a very different case. The Bourbon kings suppresed Protestantism and religious freedom fiercely before the French Revolution, which partly created the strong political secular tradition in the French republic since that event. Chirac's opposition against referral to Judeo-Christian roots must be earmarked as simply conservative. As his Gaullist party is indeed a conservative republican one.

As far as I can see, you are overstating the importance of the specific event but also underestimating the general suspicion of the Vatican's political moves in the (conservative) Protestant countries of Northern and Western Europe and republican France. Your link at the end of the column of anti-papism with attempts to rooting out conservative republicans is therefore not appropriate.

With kind regards,
-- Hendrik Rood

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Religion, Catholicism, Protestantism, Law, United Nations, NATO, Unions