The Dominicans' Door

. . . The kingdom of heaven suffereth

violence, and the violent take it by force.

--Matthew 11:12

The plotters met by night, first in one farmhouse, then in another. The Central Action Committee kept its network of subcommittees informed of changes in the plan, and every man was suspicious of all but his oldest friends. An underground handbill proclaimed to the fainthearted: "The voice of the people is the voice of God!" Citizens of the little Dutch city of Huissen (pop. 7,340) had determined to break down the door of the Dominican chapel.

It was not that the staunchly Roman Catholic citizens had anything against the Dominicans. Ever since monks of the order founded their monastery in 1858, the farm folk had grown more & more fond of them. To Huissen's sandy soil the Dominicans brought vines and seedlings, and they persuaded the peasants to change from tobacco growing to truck farming. To Huissen's people they brought what seemed to be a wiser, less worldly understanding of the secrets of the confessional. Even those who still went to Mass at one of Huissen's two parish churches began to bring their sins to the Dominican fathers.

Axes or Ram? But the parish priests were grieved. How could they minister to the parish if they heard no confessions? On the last Sunday of December, they had the satisfaction of reading from their pulpits a letter from Bernard Alfrink, the archbishop coadjutor of Utrecht. The letter announced that thereafter the Dominican chapel would be closed to the public and that the Dominicans would soon be moved to another district. Huissen's worried citizens wondered what to do. The town council had an idea: it sent a unanimous resolution to the papal nuncio in The Hague, asking him to put the town's reaction before the Pope. Then someone--no one remembers who--recalled an old Dutch tradition: once the people break into a closed church, it has to stay open. That was all the action committee needed.

The committee thought first of chopping the door down, then of battering it in with a ram, finally of just taking it off its hinges. D-day was set for Sunday at 5 a.m. But as the day drew near, everyone got the jitters. The burgomaster, feeling his responsibilities, grew nervous and asked for police reserves; he was promised 30 men for Sunday morning. The action committee countered by shifting H-hour to 1 a.m. But on Saturday afternoon, three young men of Huissen met in a cafe, decided that the police might easily forestall everything by arriving even earlier. Over two sherries and a beer, they agreed on a plan of their own.

Tearing & Cracking. The hour was set for 9:45 Saturday evening. At 8:45 the three told two trusted friends of their plans. At 9:15 they told 20 more. Just before 9:45, the 25 conspirators crept along the dark lanes behind the chapel. With the help of a carpenter, they could have opened the locked door easily, but they foresaw that it would be just as easy for the police to close it again. They heaved at one of the double doors with a crowbar. Finally it came loose with a loud tearing and cracking, and they lugged it away to a nearby garden and dumped it among the cabbages. Then they went to a cafe and celebrated over coffee and Dutch gin.

The word spread like lightning, and by the time Huissen's Saturday-night moviegoers had left the last showing of For Whom the Bell Tolls, all Holland had heard it on the 11 p.m. newscast. Next morning before sunup, hundreds of bicycle lamps twinkled along the long, flat roads as the faithful rode to the Dominicans' early Mass and overflowed the chapel.

But ecclesiastical decisions are not swayed by broken doors nowadays--if indeed they ever were. Three days later, the ringleaders wrote a penitent letter to church authorities apologizing to the archbishop and explaining that they had been misinformed: apparently there was no old Dutch tradition about breaking into churches, after all. The Dominicans' door was repaired and tightly locked, the action committee renounced further action, and the people of Huissen settled down to nurse a last hope--that the nuncio in The Hague would plead their cause at the Vatican.

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