ABSTRACT
How do parishes respond to a setting in which individuals tend to make limited choices from what is offered? Half of the Dutch Catholics do not identify themselves as belonging to a church, but some do regard the Church as a useful institution. They regard themselves as persons to whom the Church delivers services, even sacramental services. A survey among Roman Catholic parish councils explored whether these councils are going along with this trend and express the attitude of a service organization (‘Anyone is welcome to celebrate their relation here’) or rather the attitude of a membership organization (‘You are welcome to enter the marriage course of our parish’). It turned out that parish councils are not inclined to make choices in this respect. The results showed an overall agreement with statements expressing the accessibility of the parish and disagreement with statements that contained references to God, Christ, or the Bible whatsoever. This general pattern indicates that parishes find themselves in the transition from a mass mobilizing membership association (fitting with solid modernity) to a service organization, without being equipped to articulate what services they actually provide. Most bishops that have been appointed since 1980, however, have stimulated them to take on another strategy: to urge people to make a firm choice for the Roman Catholic Church by committing to local parish life. A complication of this model is that the Dutch parish of today is a cluster of historic parishes, merged into one, supervised by one parish priest. This strategy would therefore represent a clerical version of the sect scenario, not unlike Bauman’s fundamentalism.
