The Roman Catholic Diocese of
Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
is a
diocese of the
Latin Rite of the
Roman Catholic Church in
the Netherlands.
Description
It was erected on March 14, 1853, with
Johannes van Hooydonk being made its first bishop. The current bishop is Johannes Wilhelmus Maria Liesen. The current cathedral is Saint Anthony of Padua (in Dutch: H. Antonius van Padua) located in the center of
Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
.
Its canonical territory consists of the province of
Zeeland and part of the province of
North Brabant and is subdivided into 112 parishes.
Former Bishops of the Diocese are:
*
Johannes van Hooydonk (1853 – 1867)
*
Johannes van Genk (1868 – 1874)
*
Henricus van Beek (1874-1884)
*
Petrus Leyten (1885 – 1914)
*
Pieter Hopmans (1914 – 1951)
*
Jozef Baeten (1951 – 1961)
*
Gerardus de Vet (1962 – 1967)
*
Hubertus Ernst
Hubertus Cornelis Antonius Ernst (8 April 1917 – 19 May 2017) was a Dutch prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. A centenarian, he was the oldest Dutch Roman Catholic bishop at the time of his death in 2017.
Life
Ernst had his seminary years ...
(1967 – 1992)
*
Martinus Petrus Maria Muskens
Martinus Petrus Maria Muskens (December 11, 1935 – April 16, 2013) was the Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Breda, Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sove ...
(1992 – 2007)
*
Hans van den Hende (2007 - 2011)
*
Johannes Wilhelmus Maria Liesen (2011–present)
The Diocese numbers 136 secular and 159 religious priests and comprises 356 male and 1080 female religious. The number of church goers is nearly 25,000 or 2.2% of the population.
During the sixties of the twentieth century, the relatively strong
demarcation
Demarcation is the act of creating a boundary around a place or thing.
Demarcation may also refer to:
*Demarcation line, a temporary border between the countries
*Demarcation problem, the question of which practices of doing science permit the re ...
between the Catholic south on one side and the
Calvinist west and north on the other side of the Netherlands started to diminish. In the second half of the twentieth century a rapid secularization and strong loss of
religious affiliation have taken place in North Brabant.
In western North Brabant (
Diocese of Breda) is the number of people associating themselves with Catholicism strongly decreased, only 52 percent of the West Brabantians identify as Roman Catholic in 2006. Church attendance is low with only 1 percent of the West Brabantian population visiting churches. North Brabant is mostly
Roman Catholic by tradition and still uses the term and certain traditions as a base for its cultural identity, though the vast majority of the population is now largely irreligious in practice. Research among Dutch Catholics in 2006 shows that only 27% of the Dutch Catholics can be regarded as a
theist, 55% as an
ietsist
Ietsism ( nl, ietsisme () – "somethingism") is an unspecified belief in an undetermined transcendent reality. It is a Dutch term for a range of beliefs held by people who, on the one hand, inwardly suspect – or indeed believe &ndash ...
/
agnostic
Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. (page 56 in 1967 edition) Another definition provided is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficient ...
and 17% as
atheist
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
.
[God in the Netherlands' (1996-2006), by Ronald Meester, G. Dekker, ]
See also
*
Catholic Church in the Netherlands
*
Wikipedia page in Dutch about Saint Anthony of Padua Cathedral
References
External links
GCatholic.org
*http://www.ru.nl/kaski/virtuele_map/publicaties/ rapportnr. 550
*''Kerncijfers 2005 uit de kerkelijke statistiek van het Rooms-Katholiek Kerkgenootschap in Nederland''
{{Coord, 51.5875, N, 4.7774, E, source:wikidata, display=title
Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
Religious organizations established in 1853
1853 establishments in the Netherlands
Culture of North Brabant
Culture of Zeeland