Utrecht; confronting.

Of all Pope John Paul II's foreign travels, his May 11 to 15 trip to Holland is probably the most difficult visit he has yet paid to a Roman Church in the West. Dutch Catholics have long been in the vanguard of liberal opposition to Rome and in particular to the conservative rulings and orientation of John Paul II. In the last twenty years, Dutch laymen, priests, and theologians alike have tended to regard ecclesiastical modes as part of the social revolution that has made Holland a cockpit of domestic strife. The crisis of the Dutch Church cannot be blamed entirely on this pontificate, however. Between 1966 and 1972, for example, attendance at Mass dropped from 64 to 40 per cent of registered Catholics, and is now at an even lower figure. The Dutch are indignant about the conservative character of the Pope's episcopal appointments; however, there is a new papal nuncio in Holland, the Australian Archbishop Edward Cassidy, who presents himself as a "force for reconciliation," and reconciliation is certainly the theme of the papal visit. The Vatican hopes the dutch will see in John Paul II the emblem of the historic papacy, the strongest appeal that can be made in these circumstances.