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	Deetman Commission Report Deetman Commission Via Bishopaccountability.org December 26, 2011 http://bishopaccountability.org/reports/2011_12_16_Deetman_Seksueel_Misbruik/Deetman_Report_English_Summary.pdf [excerpt] 2. The historic context This study covers a period of 65 years starting in 1945. The decade immediately after the end of the Second World War was a period of social, cultural, economic and political change in Western Europe, during which a process of internationalisation also occurred. For a long time the Roman Catholic Church had played a prominent role in the daily lives of many Dutch people. Although Catholics formed a minority in the Netherlands, in the first half of the twentieth century there was an extensive Catholic education system, Catholics had their own media, there was a Roman Catholic political party and a strong trade union federation founded on Roman Catholic principles. According to the census in 1947, there were 3.7 million Catholics in the Netherlands in a total population of 9.6 million (38.4%). In 1967 there were 13,500 priests (4,000 secular in seven dioceses and 9,400 regular in 34 orders and congregations) and 40,000 brothers and sisters in 111 orders and congregations in the Netherlands. Emancipation and concern for moral decline in the 1950s and 1960s In the pre-war years there was great concern in Dutch society and in the Roman Catholic Church about moral decline, particularly among young people. There also seemed to be legitimate cause for that concern. Up until the 1950s there was a steady increase in the number of sexual offences, in particular indecent acts with minors and sexual abuse in relations of dependency. The proportion of cases involving Catholics was always above average.
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