Holland will have its second nudist Roman Catholic church service in September (The pastor will be clothed)
Holland is a small country but it does make it into the international papers quite a lot. Most of these stories used to deal with our quaint habit to decriminalise things other countries prefer to keep as their favourite Bogeyman issues – things like soft drugs, prostitution, euthanasia and abortion.
The last few years, however, there have been occasions the country could have done without certain big stories: the assassination of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, for instance – or the latest home movie by one of our cuckoo right wing politicians: Fitna.
So, it is with both nostalgic and chauvinistic pride that I present you with the following, more old-fashioned and extremely Dutch story:
The Christian nudist site – Gan Eden – and the nudist park Flevo-Natuur in Zeewolde are planning a nudist church service for 28 September. This is a result of the great success of an earlier such service at the end of June in which 80 nude people participated. Only the pastor, who came from the Roman Catholic diocese of Utrecht, was clothed.
I do find it slightly disappointing that the pastor does wear clothes on these occasions. It would have been more fitting – and more fun – if he had worn his dog collar but nothing else. It is a minor miracle though that Rome did permit that first service at the end of June and will also tolerate the September encore.
If the Pope and/or the College of Bishops would decide to veto nudist church services they’d be able to make a fair doctrinal case against these happenings. You would have to go back a bit, to the book of Genesis, to be precise, but the Bible tells us that by eating from the forbidden fruit Adam & Eve (and all their descendants) both lost their innocence and the right to go around naked without dying from shame.
Me, I think all of that is a lot of naked bollocks but then I’m not a Catholic who wants to attend church services – naked or clad, I might add. So, this time I could even sympathise with any old-fashioned, spoil-sport cleric who would tell these nudist to go and have some naked beach volleyball tournament if they must but to put on some clothes whenever they want to enter the house of their Lord.
On the other hand, maybe it would be better to leave these things to God Himself. When the Lord was still our Landlord He managed to kick us off the paradisical premises the moment we’d outstayed our welcome, so I guess He would be able to remove a few nudists from a Dutch church if He so wished.
Still, it would be fun to watch these naked pilgrims, going to church and singing this old and venerable hymn:
Holy God, we praise Thy Name;
Naked here, we bow before Thee!
All on earth Thy scepter claim,
All in nudist heaven adore Thee;
Infinite Thy vast domain,
Everlasting unclad reign.
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