Heling en heiligen. De ontwikkeling van de belangstelling voor sacrale plaatsen van genezing in katholiek Nederland sinds het midden van de negentiende eeuw

Abstract

This article investigates the development of the popularity of pilgrimage to holy catholic places of healing in the Netherlands since 1850 and the factors that contribute to it. This development is divided in three periods: a period from 1850 till about 1960, from 1960 till about 1980 and a period from 1980 up till now. In the first period, the interest in making a pilgrimage to holy places of heating showed a strong increase, but in the 1960s this interest dropped. However, since the early 1980s some (official and unofficial) devotional sites have come up again and the interest in (individual) pilgrimages has been slightly growing again. Starting from a mobilization approach, this development is related to contextual and institutional factors. With regard to the context, the growth and decline of the power of organized religion, the pillarization and de-pillarization of Dutch society, as well as the rise since the 1960s of a culture of health, fitness and healing are significant. Beside, the style of functioning of the Catholic movement is a very important factor, which is characterized with regard to the three periods by an attitude of mobilization and militancy in the first period, one of openness and assimilation in the second period and one of presentation in the third. The development of this attitude is connected to changes in the power and cultural position of Cathoticism in Dutch society. It is argued that devotional practices of healing are not an anachronistic element in Dutch and Western European culture, but a normal phenomenon with the strength to survive in modern times.