(Belgium) Willy Delsaert is a retired railroad employee with dyslexia who practiced intensively before facing the suburban Don Bosco Catholic parish to perform the Sunday Mass rituals he grew up with.
“Who takes this bread and eats,” he murmured, cracking a communion wafer with his wife at his side, “declares a desire for a new world.”
With those words, Mr. Delsaert, 60, and his fellow parishioners are discreetly pioneering a grass-roots movement that defies centuries of ancient Roman Catholic Church doctrine by worshiping and sharing communion without benefit of a priest.
Don Bosco is one of about a dozen alternative Catholic churches that have sprouted and grown in the last two years in Dutch-speaking regions of Belgium and the Netherlands. They are an uneasy reaction to a combination of forces: a shortage of priests, the closing of churches, dissatisfaction with Vatican appointments of conservative bishops and, most recently, dismay over cover-ups of priestly sexual abuse.
The churches are called ecclesias, the word derived from the Greek verb for calling together. Five were started last year in the Netherlands by Catholics who broke away from their existing parishes and more are being planned, according to Franck Ploum, who helped start an ecclesia in January in Breda, the Netherlands, and is organizing a network conference for the groups in the two countries.
At this sturdy brick church in a suburb southwest of Brussels, men and women are trained as “conductors.” They preside over Masses and the landmarks of life: weddings and baptisms, funerals and last rites. Church members took charge more than a year ago when their pastor retired without a successor. In Belgium, about two-thirds of clergymen are over 55, and one-third older then 65.
“We are resisting a little bit like Gandhi,” said Johan Veys, a married former priest who performs baptisms and recruits newcomers for other tasks at Don Bosco. “Our intention is not to criticize, but to live correctly. We press onward quietly without a lot of noise. It’s important to have a community where people feel at home and can find peace and inspiration.”
Yet they appear to be on a collision course with the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Belgium. The Belgian church has been staggering from a sexual abuse scandal with 475 victims, and the resignation of the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, who last April admitted to years of molesting a boy who turned out to be his nephew.
In the view of Rome, only ordained priests can celebrate Mass or preside over most sacraments like baptisms and marriage. “If there are persons or groups that do not observe these norms, the competent bishops — who know what really happens — have to see how to intervene and explain what is in order and out of order if someone belongs to the Catholic Church,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said.
The primate of Belgium, Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard of Mechelen-Brussels, has already raised objections to the alternative services, calling them “unacceptable practices.” But he declined to respond to questions, maintaining a pledge to keep silent until December. He was engulfed in controversy this month after he criticized prosecution of elderly priests for pedophile acts as “vengeance” and described AIDS as a “sort of inherent justice” for promiscuous homosexual acts.
For some Catholics in the ecclesia movement and academics at the Catholic University of Louvain, Archbishop Léonard is emblematic of a remote church disconnected from a flock that yearns for more relevant rituals and active participation.
“Something is beginning to crack,” said the Rev. Gabriel Ringlet, a priest and former vice rector at the Catholic University of Louvain, which is considering dropping the “Catholic” from its name. “I think the Belgian Catholic Church is starting to feel something exceptional for the first time in 40 years. A lot of Catholics are waking up and speaking out.”
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