The reorganisation of the poor relief system in Dutch cities in the second half of the seventeenth century marked a new manner of confessional coexistence in which dissenting communities were entrusted to care for their own poor co-religionists. In the negotiations to solve the financial problems of Utrecht from the 1620s to the 1670s, which led to the separation of charity along confessional lines in 1674, Catholics did not remain passive. They were one of the actors, along with the Dutch Reformed Church and the political authorities. All the actors attempted to defend their own interests by referring to the term ‘public’ based on their own definition. Catholics actively created room for survival by participating in the delimitation of the ‘public’. The public sphere was a much more dynamic space and Catholics had much more active agency in the delimitation of the ‘public’ than previous studies have assumed.