Religious Congregations at Work in Education—With Special Reference to Belgium

This chapter provides an overview of the role of religious congregations in Catholic education in the Low Countries, in particularly in Belgium. Its focus is on the social context in which the religious congregations did and do their work. In the first half of the 19th century, a very large number of active religious congregations of brothers and sisters were founded throughout Europe.₁ The foundation of these active religious congregations constituted a reaction to the perceived secularization of European society, after the Enlightenment period of the 18th century. Many of the religious congregations were (very) successful in the late 19th and early 20th century. They were able to attract many members and play an important role in the field of Catholic education—as well as in other social fields, notably Catholic health care. In the second half of the 20th century, most of the active congregations in Europe experienced a rapid decline. Large numbers of brothers and sisters left their congregations; the congregations were and are also hardly able to attract new members. It is now clear that this particular form of religious devotion, which for the most part took shape in the 19th century, will not be continued in Europe in the 21st century. The major contemporary challenge that faces the religious congregations is to hand over their works of charity to lay people—that is, to “real” lay people (as, from the point of view of canon law, sisters and brothers are also lay people because they are not ordained).