In Holland there came a turn in the tide of the relationships between the Churches as early as the end of the first world war, though this war itself, unlike the later one, had but little influence on the religious climate in Holland. In the winter of 1919 the Dominicans of Zwolle started giving ‘conferences for non-Cathohcs’ in which they consciously abandoned the polemic tone for a quiet and objective explanation of the Catholic faith. On the Catholic side this was the first swallow which did not indeed make a summer, but at least announced it. Looking at it now it is easier to understand that the spiritual climate still had to change considerably before the age-old process of ossification in polemics and apologetics could be reversed.

In Holland, if anywhere in the world, one has to reckon witn non-theological factors in the relations of churches and confession.