THE RELIGIOUS FORMATION OF YOUTH. CATHOLIC YOUTH MOVEMENTS IN THE NETHERLANDS FROM 1900 TO 1941

Abstract

Youth movements were a popular phenomenon at the beginning of the twentieth century. Various political parties and religious denominations faced with the question of how best to organize youth took up this model. Why did adults make this very choice? The author tries to answer this question by means of the history of three catholic youth movements for boys aged thirteen to eighteen in the Netherlands: the Catholic Scouts, the Young Guards and the Crusaders. These Catholic youth movements came into being rather late. Until the end of the 1920s, the educational style of youth movements had been considered to be incompatible with a solidly religious and moral education. There were not only objections against the autonomy and the absence of adult supervision, but also against the style and form of the youth movement. The Catholic authorities found it hard to imagine that education could also take place in another way than in the form of schoolish instruction, memorizing the Catechism and preaching the faith from the pulpit. But traditional youth work did not succeed in attracting the mass of Catholic youth. The success of youth movements elsewhere showed that important means could be found there to bring together youngsters. Since the middle of the 1920s, the youth movement has been defended by the clergy for the sake of its “character‐forming function” and for the reason that its method of operating is in keeping with the “psyche of adolescents”.