Joop Roeland

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Father Joop Roeland OSA (born March 23, 1931 in Haarlem , † March 18, 2010 in Vienna ) was a Dutch pastor and writer living in Vienna .

Life

Education and origin

Roeland was born in 1931 in the Dutch city of Haarlem, the son of a bank clerk. Joop graduated from an Augustinian school (middle school) in his home country. His career aspirations at the time were either to become a journalist or a high school professor of geography and history. Encouraged by a priestly teacher, despite his father's skepticism, he entered the order of the Augustinian hermits immediately after graduating from high school . He couldn't cope with the fascinating but strange life there and wanted to leave the monastery soon. But because of his father, he wanted to hold out until Christmas. "And then, over time, a deeper inspiration came." His mother was said to have been a cheerful person who was shaped by the rather cheerful Amsterdam mentality. Joop had an older and a younger brother and a younger sister.

Academic years

Roeland studied philosophy and theology at the Universities of Eindhoven and Nijmegen . After ordination at the age of 25, he studied German at the University of Utrecht and taught German literature at a grammar school in Utrecht.

In order to get out of the Narrow Netherlands, he went to Munich to continue his German studies there. The lectures he attended with Romano Guardini gave him an inkling of the coming awakening of the Catholic Church. Back in the Netherlands he became a German teacher in Schiedam near Rotterdam .

Vienna years 1967 to 1986

In 1967 Roeland decided to go to Vienna in order to pursue the dissertation he had begun in a sabbatical year , which remained unfinished, which prevented him from obtaining an academic doctorate. In various later publications he was therefore listed as Drs. (PhD student) Joop Roeland . In 1970 he became a student chaplain and in 1971 was appointed head of the Catholic University Congregation . His first book, Kommunikationversuche, came out in 1972 .

In December 1984 Joop Roeland celebrated the Christmas service with the occupiers of the Hainburger Au . For 16 years and three generations of students, until 1986, Roeland was this friend and pastor. In the university milieu of the universities, in the spirit of Vatican II, he tried to build up Christian communities within the Vienna Catholic University Community. Then he withdrew from university operations in order to devote himself to other directions in student pastoral work and to push these in the context of the church official zeitgeist of that time.

Rector of the Ruprechtskirche and other offices

In 1986 Roeland was appointed rector of the Ruprechtskirche , the oldest church in Vienna . Together with some fellow campaigners, he built up a progressive Catholic community, "where the liturgy and the careful word are cultivated as a healing language to this day." "For many people his poetic language became a bridge from everyday life to celebrating the liturgy together."

As a result, Roeland became clergyman assistant to the Literary Forum and Catholic Academic Association. He was also cathedral curate in the parish of St. Stephan , which is the parent of his rectorate parish , where he also regularly performed confessional services . In 1998, he was given the pioneering role of pastoral care for gay men in the Archdiocese of Vienna - in the language regulation as pastor for same-sex people.

At the beginning of 2006, after about 20 years in charge of the Ruprechtskirche, he handed over the rectorate to his successor, Father Gernot Wisser SJ. Just a few days before his 79th birthday, Joop Roeland died.

Quotes

“May the Church learn to smile again. We don't need so many reminders. The church should have fewer fears, but more trust in people and probably also in the grace of God. When Günter Grass says that people have invented once against all fears of life the whistle. Christians should start whistling again. The church should offer courses where you can learn how to whistle again, trainings in the carelessness that Jesus recommends, introductions to forgetfulness, where all cramps in life are let go, conferences where seeing is learned again and the eyes and the heart recreate open freely for good and beautiful. "

- Joop Roeland

“The language of the prayer is much more the language of the poet than that of a theologian. It is a poet who says: ›From the depths I call ...‹; the prayer would add: ›God, hear my voice!‹ «- Joop Roeland, Dutch Augustinian priest in Vienna, has been concerned with such a religious language, which is neither content with everyday banality nor reflects the style of official doctrine, since 1970, when he came to the Danube city from the north, tried hard: [...]

Joop Roeland's books - most recently: »Lost Words«, 2009 - bear witness to his decades-long endeavor to propagate something like mindfulness for the word in the current flood of words and to recommend this also and especially to his church. With loving observation and gentle humor, he translated everyday life into poetry, and the Christian message also found a language in his words that turns out to be neither humiliating nor authoritarian. "

- Otto Friedrich

Works

  • Attempts to communicate. Veritas, Vienna-Linz-Passau 1972.
  • After the rain, green grass . Poems, Styria, Graz 1984, ISBN 3-222-11514-1 .
  • The voice of a thin silence. The source, Feldkirch 1992, ISBN 3-7867-8487-6 .
  • Have been in places. Texts to move on. Prose texts and poems, Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg 1999, ISBN 3-7013-1007-6 .
  • How words learned to fly. Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg-Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-7013-1118-8 .
  • Lost words. Wiener Dom-Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-85351-208-1 .
  • Various articles in the magazine Fragmente, Rektorat St. Ruprecht (Ed.), 1986–2005 Vienna.

literature

  • Ignaz Knöbl: From Haarlem to Vienna. For Joop Roeland's 60th birthday. In: Fragments, Rectorate St. Ruprecht (Ed.), Edition 2, Vienna 1991. ( Article online .)
  • Otto Friedrich : If even God goes for a walk. Hope book for the longing. In: Fragments, Rectorate St. Ruprecht (Ed.), Edition 3, Vienna 1999. ( Article online .)
  • Beatrice Eichmann-Leutenegger: Arriving in the moment. Leading article in: Schweizerische Kirchenzeitung , issue 6/2000, February 10, 2000. ( Article online .)
  • Otto Friedrich: Do you dream in prose or poetry? On the occasion of Joop Roeland's 70th birthday on March 23, 2001. In: Fragments, Rektorat St. Ruprecht (Hrsg.), Edition 1, Vienna 2001. ( Article online .)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Otto Friedrich in his obituary for Joop Roeland, 2006.
  2. ↑ Identical in: the weekly newspaper Die Furche , September 16, 1999, on the occasion of Roeland's book publication In Orten Have been. Texts to move on. (The author Otto Friedrich is in the Furche responsible editor for the areas of religion, film and media.)
personal data
SURNAME Roeland, Joop
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch pastor and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Haarlem
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 2010
Place of death Vienna