November 2023 Print

By Fr. Ian Palko, SSPX

Ko wai kite atu?
Kei whea aku hoa I mua rā
I te tōnuitanga?
Ka haramai tēnei ka tauwehe,
Ka raungaiti au, e.  

Where are they now?
Where are the friends of former days
Who once lived in prosperity?
The time of separation has come,
Leaving me desolate.

From E pā tō au, a waiata tangi
(song of lament) of Ngati Apakura.

Legends of a long-ago sunken land, Atlantis, have persisted in Western mythology from the time of Plato even to the present. Ironically, though, the last major inhabitable land mass to be colonized, New Zealand—known to its discoverers, the Māori, as Aotearoa—turns out to be part of a massive sunken eighth continent, Zealandia. Polynesian settlers arrived on the shores of Aotearoa, which is the size of the state of Colorado, sometime between A.D. 1250–1300.

Unlike their often-associated neighbors, the Australia aborigines, these Polynesian Māori built a complex hierarchical culture with a respect for the role of tradition in passing on intricate quasi-religious mythologies and tribal and family histories. They built stable settlements which relied on fishing, hunting, and agriculture in the verdant lands. The arid climate of Australia provided barely enough for the smaller nomadic groups of Aboriginals, who were in that “Sunburned Country” long before the Māori landed in New Zealand.

After the sighting of New Zealand by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642, Captain James Cook sailed around the islands in 1769. Intermittent whaling expeditions had contact with the Māori, but it was not until 1815 that the first European settlers arrived along with Samuel Marsden, an Anglican Priest from the Church Missionary Society.

The first Catholics, the Irish couple Thomas and Mary Poynton, settled in Papakawau, in the rural Northern area called the Hokianga, in 1828. It is a vast, heavily wooded land along a massive estuary. Thomas set up a sawmill, making a substantial income, allowing a two-week-long voyage across the Tasman Sea to Sydney, Australia for the baptism of their first two children. In 1835 Poynton requested the visit of a Catholic priest for his family. The Congregation of the Propaganda of the Faith and newly-minted Marist Missionaries had in fact already been discussing plans for a mission to the South Pacific, and New Zealand in particular.

It was on January 10, 1838 that the French Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pompallier arrived in the Hokianga, saying the first Mass in New Zealand on Octave of the Epiphany, January 13. He would spend thirty years in New Zealand before returning to France where he died in 1871. Buried in Puteaux, near Paris, his mortal remains would return to the Hokianga nearly 164 years to the day after he first set foot on what one author called, “God’s Farthest Outpost.”

Despite its initial success, not only with the Poynton family and other Catholic settlers, but especially with the Māori, the Mission to New Zealand would, however, fail.

A metaphor for the failure can be found in the little settlement of Hiruārama (Jerusalem) about a day’s journey by waka (canoe) up the Whanganui River or an hour’s car ride up a remote one-lane road. There in 1892, despite Protestant opposition, Mother Mary Joseph (Suzanne) Aubert established a convent and foundlings’ house along with a new group of religious sisters—the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion. The convent and church buildings remain and are used for infrequent ceremonies and as an historical site. Long ago abandoning the habit, the order has had no vocations for a long time, and the last religious sister who lived at Hiruārama left years ago. A few of those living there and still practicing their faith occasionally visit the property—an empty shell of what it was or could have been. A visit to the marae (meeting house of the local iwi) by some group would in years past have drawn out at least a small pōwhiri (ritual greeting ceremony) with the women singing welcome, and men exerting a show of force, then welcoming the party onto the marae. Now a visit to the marae rarely turns up any of the customary hospitality, save the greetings of a few older women, the men nowhere to be seen.

Kei whea aku hoa I mua rā? : Where are the friends of former days?

For Msgr. Pompallier and the Marists, their purpose in New Zealand was to be missionaries. Caring for the European Catholics who had settled there was never shunned, but formed a very remote secondary goal. Thus, soon after the first Mass in the Hokianga on the North Island’s West Coast, Pompallier moved across the narrow top of the North Island to Kororāreka (later Russell) on the Bay of Islands, on the East Coast. There he established the seat of the Vicariate of Western Oceania and built a printing house, printing some of the first prayer books, Catholic scriptures, and catechisms in Te Reo Māori (the Māori language). He became so focused on the mission to the Māori that some of the Marist missionaries he left on other Pacific islands later complained they had been forgotten.

According to the report of the bishop, by November of the year he arrived, there were 44 Māori who received baptism, with Pompallier reporting nearly 5,000 were asking for instruction and the sacrament in the North.¹

The Bay of Islands was a hub of activity. Whaling crew and passenger ships regularly visited the sheltered harbor. The Māori saw some of the worst that Europe was able to offer in the visitors and others who stopped over. As J.D. Lang, an Australian minister once quipped, “with a few honourable exceptions, [the Bay of Islands] consists of the veriest refuse of civilised society.”² Because of these problems and complaints by Māori, in 1833, the British Crown sent an official Resident Minister, James Busby, who would serve as a diplomat and governor for the British subjects while in New Zealand. To stave off the French interest in the islands, Busby convinced thirty-four of the Northern tribes to make a declaration of independence and form a United Tribes of New Zealand. Later, Busby, who lived across the Bay of Islands from Kororāreka in Waitangi, would, along with Capt. William Hobson (soon to be Governor), oversee the making of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, widely considered the founding charter of the British Colony of New Zealand.

The fact of his being French and Catholic served as a particular annoyance to Busby and Hobson, but Msgr. Pompallier had been consulted by several of the Catholic Māori chiefs as the treaty was drafted. While he urged them to be very wary of the British, and not to sign anything without clearly understanding it, it became clear that if he were to help the Māori, and the cause of the Faith, he would have to insert himself into the discussions.³ Eventually the bishop joined the discussions, and when it seemed the Treaty would be approved, made a direct appeal to Hobson. The result was an added fourth article to the Treaty (which modern governments frequently downplay⁴), guaranteeing non-interference for Catholics, Anglicans, and “Māori custom.” This brought the Catholic chiefs to the table for their signature.

The original three missionaries (including Pompallier, Fr. Louis Catherin Servant, and Br. Michel Colombon) were joined in 1839 by seven Marist priests including Fr. Philippe Viard, future Bishop of Wellington. Along with four additional brothers, by 1843 mission stations were established in over fifteen different places throughout both the North and South Islands. Pompallier purchased a schooner, rechristened Sancta Maria, which flew under the standard of Our Lady (a Cross-surmounted ‘M’ with twelve stars around this emblem) as the bishop would travel to visit these missions. It was this schooner that would bring the body of St. Peter Chanel, martyred on the island of Futuna on April 28, 1841, to the Bay of Islands, where it would remain for eight years before being transported back to the Marist motherhouse in France.

The story of St. Peter Chanel itself is instructive and somewhat relevant to the New Zealand apostolate, though Chanel never saw New Zealand in this life. The bishop had dropped off the gentle priest on Futuna, nearly 2,000 miles from the Bay of Islands, in November 1837. King Niuliki welcomed Chanel initially, and conversions were few until the son of the king, Meitala, asked for baptism. Seeing this would undermine the role of the king as a pagan priest, a warrior was sent to stop this by whatever means necessary. Musumusu, this warrior, clubbed Chanel to his death. Within a generation, the whole island—numbering around 1,000 people—had converted to Catholicism, including Musumusu who, before his death, expressed the desire to be buried on the path to the church, so in walking over his grave, he could be shown dishonor when people went to venerate St. Peter Chanel. Even to this day, the island is almost entirely Catholic with laws based on Catholic morality and a haka-like penitential ceremonial dance of penance for the martyrdom of Chanel.

It does seem that Tertullian spoke correctly that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,” even in the South Pacific.

Similar success was initially seen in New Zealand, with Pompallier reporting that nearly 45,000 Māori had converted by 1843 out of an estimated 75,000 people. According to the first government statistics on Māori and religion eighty-three years later in 1926, however, Catholic Māori (including those with Māori ancestry) numbered about 12,000. At the same point in time, Catholics of European ancestry, mainly Irish, numbered nearly 175,000. Within less than 90 years, the Catholic mission to the Māori had become a failure, and the Church in New Zealand was an immigrant Church.

Ka haramai tēnei ka tauwehe : The time of separation has come

Msgr. Pompallier had much to be praised for in his missionary efforts. At the same time, he was a victim of an unfortunate activist approach to missionary work that contributed to the eventual downfall of the missions, leaving it with a shaky foundation centered mostly around his person. His activism became a point of tension between himself, his Marist companions, and their superior, Fr. Jean-Claude Colin, S.M. That conflict created between an understandable zeal for souls, and also the need for a grounding in a religious life, became a repeated refrain in the history of Catholic New Zealand and the various religious orders that would land upon its shores, and a repeated point of failure when later Franciscans, Dominicans, and other religious were brought in with an eye towards active works instead of their contemplative vocations.

Fr. Maxine Petit, in an 1840 letter complained to Fr. Colin that

The bishop’s zeal and good heart makes him rush out at all times and do all sorts of things. He looks askance at us when we—more than he does—divide our time between duty to neighbour and to ourselves. In the early days here, Fr. Épalle and I did our spiritual exercises as much as possible at moments we thought he [Msgr. Pompallier] would not notice. Not that he stopped us from praying, but because on several occasions he reproached us for praying all the time.

Māori mythology recounts the history of their people in stories passed down from generation to generation, but focuses on great deeds and actions. Even in explaining origins through parable and metaphor, forces are personified and their deeds spoken of. Thus, it is not surprising that for the Māori, the idea of a Catholic religious life of contemplation and reflection did not seem as important as the active works the missionaries would do. In a sense, the activism of Msgr. Pompallier was a pastoral necessity, and one to which he firstly bound himself. He would undertake great journeys himself, and burn himself out for those to whom he was sent, but with an emphasis that did not agree with the Marist religious life. Already, there was difficulty when then-Fr. Pompallier was in charge of the Marist Tertiary Brothers before his missionary days, where he gave them the motto: “Be exemplary Christians in public, religious in secret.”

This was the spirit of the missionary age at which Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O. in his Soul of the Apostolate would later that century take aim. “Our Lord is looking for, above all, is adorers in spirit and in truth, but these activistic heretics, for their part, imagine that they are giving greater glory to God in aiming above all at external results,” the Trappist monk writes.⁵

These difficulties in the approach of Pompallier and Colin developed into a question of jurisdiction. Pompallier, as a bishop and the Vicar Apostolic for the territory, was the Pope’s direct appointee and held territorial jurisdiction over the lands in which the Marist missionaries worked. The missionaries, as religious, were subject to their Superior General, Colin. As one historian puts it, “religious priests were in the schizophrenic situation of belonging to a superior general by their vows and a bishop by their ministry.”⁶

The problem was not Pompallier’s alone, however. Colin founded the Society for the missions, and tried to imbue it with a spirit which merged the notion of the missionary and religious, but never provided any fixed rules approved by the Holy See for the guidance of the Marists, neither at their founding, nor during his tenure as Superior General.

This tension over the role of a religious as a missionary was not the only complaint about Pompallier, who was not the best judge of character or the best accountant. Severe privations had to be undergone because the good-natured bishop was overcharged on property, or funds sent from Rome and meant for the missions became tied up in failing English banks on the way to the antipodes via the regular ships sailing from England to New Zealand.

In part because of these tensions, but also because of the vastness of the territory of New Zealand and its rapid growth, the Holy See decided to suppress the Vicariate and establish in the country two dioceses. The territory north of the 39th parallel would become the Diocese of Auckland with Msgr. Pompallier as its first ordinary. The remainder would go to Fr. Viard, who would become the Bishop of Wellington. Viard, a Marist, would receive all of the Marist brothers and priests under his jurisdiction, and Pompallier would have to get new missioners.

Pompallier was in Rome at the time of this decision, and quickly worked to secure 11 priests to replace the Marists he would lose upon his return to New Zealand. He also secured several Franciscan friars to come and substitute for the Marists. The Franciscans would stay only a short while, and their work was performed in the midst of the New Zealand Wars—land disputes and actual warfare between the British and various Māori iwi (tribes). These wars caused great distrust between the Māori and Pakeha (non-Māori New Zealanders), causing many Christian Māori to form new religious-political sects founded on “revelations” to so-called prophets. The Franciscans, in particular, were noted for their intransigent opposition to the Hauhau sect, protecting many Catholic Māori from their influence. The Mill Hill Fathers also were invited in to help in the Auckland Diocese with the Māori missions.

I te tōnuitanga : Who once lived in prosperity

The approach of Pompallier and the Marists was very much like the Jesuits in Paraguay. Unacceptable pagan elements of the culture were removed, while the Faith was taught and integrated into the existing culture through education. The result was a nascent Māori Catholic culture and church and a country that had a promise of becoming a Catholic nation, or at least one with a heavily Catholic influence.

The influx of settlers, however, eroded the missionary efforts, and began to place the focus of the clergy on the Catholic immigrants, mainly Irish. Signs of this changing dynamic can be seen on many fronts, including the liturgy.

Msgr. Pompallier had dedicated New Zealand to the patronage of Our Lady of the Assumption upon his arrival. When he became Bishop of Auckland, he purchased two acres of land for a cathedral in what is now downtown Auckland, and built a small church there out of locally-quarried scoria. Thirty years later, in 1884, the building was reconstructed and opened as a cathedral, dedicated to St. Patrick. One finds, as well, that the local feasts listed in some Missals include March 17 as first-class, not as patron of the diocese, but simply as “Patron of Ireland.” Similarly, other Irish feasts, like that of St. Brigid, find their way into the local calendar, though no Māori, nor Marist, nor Msgr. Pompallier had any notable devotion to the cache of Irish saints, powerful as they are.

The Irish influx also grew political and drew the Church into several political fights in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Famous among these conflicts was a St. Patrick’s Day address Msgr. James Liston, Co-adjutor bishop of Auckland, gave in 1922 on the Irish fight against the British. In it he described Irish rebels as having been “murdered” by “foreign troops”—i.e., the British. The Crown put him on trial for sedition. An all-Protestant jury found him not guilty.

The Irish Catholics brought their own culture and customs which, in large part, pushed out the Māori Catholic customs that the Marists and Pompallier had helped to develop. The two cultures were wildly different with only a common Faith uniting them. Thus, Māori art and carvings, which, to European eyes appear somewhat pagan and unintelligible, were shunned by the immigrants. In the Auckland Museum, for instance, sits a carved Madonna, but in a form that an Irish priest, upon being offered it by Pataromu Tamatea, found it so offensive he refused to accept it. Richly symbolic, the Virgin in Māori symbolism bears a full facial moko (tattoo), which no women wear except an Ariki Tapairu—the firstborn daughter in the family of a high chief. Such a one would be forbidden to marry or be touched, considered tapu (sacred)—a kind of consecrated virgin.

When the Education Ordinance Act 1847 was passed, it established English as the “normal” language of schools. Later, the Native Schools Act 1867 required instruction for Māori students in English “where practicable.” While neither law made Te Reo Māori use illegal, by the late nineteenth century most schools banned the language, including many Catholic schools, and caning or strapping awaited those caught speaking the language.

This attitude in the wider New Zealand church, established after Pompallier’s departure in 1868, did not reflect the principles of the missionaries. While he tried to stay out of politics, “Pompallier tried valiantly to intervene and prevent these wars from which Māori struggled to recover, as their numbers and health had already declined to such an extent that they were not expected to survive as a race.”⁷ He insisted that the missionaries learn and speak the language, and taught it to them himself, and he “lamented his inability [in his later years] to visit his beloved Māori more, due to the excessive demands on his time and poor health.”⁸

Despite the demographic changes and Hiberniation of the church, mission stations remained open, particularly under the Mill Hill Fathers, though they slowly lost the support of the hierarchy which was focused on the growing number of settlers and the anti-native zeitgeist.

Ka raungaiti au, e : Leaving me desolate

Msgr. Liston was never the Primate of New Zealand, nor even an Archbishop. That honor belonged to the Diocese of Wellington and her bishop. Nevertheless, Liston, by dint of longevity in the episcopacy, de facto led the hierarchy. He was ordained a priest at age twenty-three. By the sixth year of his priesthood, he was already rector of the national seminary in Mosgiel. He was bishop by age thirty-nine after sixteen years as a priest and before turning fifty, he would be enthroned in the Cathedral of Auckland in 1929, where he remained Ordinary for forty-one years. As a late recognition of his silver jubilee as a bishop and the most senior bishop in New Zealand, Pius XII awarded him the personal title of Archbishop in 1954, at the age of seventy-three.

It was clear to historians and faithful that, “primary focus was always the welfare of the Catholic Church in New Zealand and in the diocese of Auckland.”⁹ It was also clear that Liston, though born in Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand, was an Irishman. His parents were immigrants, he studied in Ireland and in the Irish College in Rome, and his ideal for the New Zealand Church was a microcosm of the continental model, and conversion of the barbarians as happened with the Celts and the Germanic tribes.

His relations with the Mill Hill missionaries was, on the surface, cordial, but his actions show he had no interest in keeping the missions alive. It was the antithesis of Pompallier’s vision of the work in New Zealand.

“Liston’s priority was assimilation,” writes historian Nicholas Reid.¹⁰ “His ideal was that, as much as possible, Māori parishioners should be absorbed into the pākehā church, though perhaps being sometimes addressed in special ‘missions.’”¹¹ As such, Liston would modify parish boundaries and close certain places so that the churches became majority non-Māori, and then would remove them from the Mill Hill missionaries and turn the work over to a diocesan priest. From 1931-1948 the missionaries were withdrawn from seven different sites. In the closing of the mission at a Māori settlement (called a Pā), Liston severely rebuked Fr. Gerrit van Beek for saying Mass in the village, writing, “The good Maoris at the Pah [sic] can easily come to the church at Whakatane and have been doing so, as well as taking their proper part in the activities of the parish.”¹²

When the Māori complained and the Mill Hill fathers tried to accommodate the faithful by offering a monthly Mass on the marae, Liston forbade this. He also forbade a Rosary Crusade by the faithful praying for the reopening of the church built on Māori land and which nourished their ancestors. “Māori were to worship like other Whakatane parishioners or perhaps not worship at all.”¹³ Such actions, for a people deeply connected to their ancestors, the land, and sacred places, showed Liston did not understand the Māori—terribly ironic for an Irishman tried for sedition over comments about the loss of one of the “Four Green Fields.”¹⁴

The provincial for the missionaries wrote to the Superior General in 1933 that Liston’s “policy seems to be one of slow strangulation of the Māori mission.”¹⁵ Meanwhile Liston was reporting to the Apostolic Delegate that the missionaries were refusing to learn Māori and were more concerned with the Europeans to explain why he had to close the missions and why the Fathers needed to leave. Liston later eased his stranglehold on the missionaries, provided the new missionaries be Irish and not Dutch, as many had been to that point.

Fr. Peter Ryan later would say that, “Liston didn’t really understand what mission meant in the eyes of the church… He didn’t understand that to be a missionary meant to understand the faith in their ways and in their language. His ideal was for a Māori to be as like an Irish Catholic as possible.”¹⁶

Liston was, theologically speaking, relatively conservative, though his loyalty to the Pope and anticipation of what was coming, despite being “uncomfortable” with the vernacular Mass,¹⁷ made him “quite ahead of Vatican II and the changes it called for.”¹⁸

Liston was slow to introduce changes into the liturgy, incensed at the notion of Mass facing the people, and reserved in ecumenical dealings until he saw Paul VI setting the example, and then he fell into line. Whereas he was slow to allow permission for the Mass or Breviary in English before 1967, once it was clear the faithful were expecting this, he capitulated and accelerated the process. But for Liston, the language of the Mass was English, for the same reason as the closure of the missions: integration.

In a 1976 survey commissioned by the New Zealand bishops, several notable Māori Catholics lamented the liturgical changes, indicating that because of the English Mass and departure from the Latin they knew with Māori catechists reading certain prayers in Te Reo Māori, they were “no longer attracted” to the Church or her worship.¹⁹ According to Diane Taylor, “Traditional Catholic liturgical practices were loved by Māori… Diminution of Catholic tradition inevitably affected some Māori, due to their strong sense of tradition.”²⁰ A Māori-language Novus Ordo followed, but this was not what Māori were asking for, even if it was a gesture to the emerging zeitgeist of a revival of the language, and the reception of the new vernacular Mass was milquetoast.

At its peak the number of Māori priests in New Zealand reached nine in the 1990s, with one Māori bishop. It has since declined.

In the last published census in 2018, Māori composed 16.5 percent of the population, closely followed by those of Asian descent by immigration who were 15.1 percent of the population. There were about 47,000 Māori (8 percent of the total) who claimed to be Catholic—almost half of what Pompallier reported within five years after his arrival.

Further statistics show the impact of Liston’s approach, a consistent governmental and societal policy of assimilation, and the decay of what was a rich heritage that was well on its way to being Catholicized. Regular Mass attendance of those claiming Catholic heritage based on statistics from the Diocese of Christchurch sits at about 10 percent. In the same 2018 census, 18.5 percent of Māori—whose culture places great emphasis on their lineage and ancestry (whakapapa)—did not know from which iwi (tribe) they descended.

Nau mai anō Haere rā : Ave atque vale

Despite the massive decay of the Catholic Māori, those who kept the Faith had great gratitude and love for their “Pikopo,”²¹ as he did for them. Taylor relates several stories in her interviews with kaumatua (elders) passed down to them, and describes the process by which Māori petitioned to have the mortal remains brought back to New Zealand and placed in the church of St. Mary’s, Motiti, in the Hokianaga near where he first set foot on the shores of New Zealand.

In their customary manner, Māori organized a “hikoi” or customary pilgrimage around the country to petition the Church and French to exhume the remains of Pompallier and return him to New Zealand. That process resulted in his return in 2002.

The welcome was warm and full of Māori customs as Pompallier himself would have found touching, but there were also signs of the decay. “Around 250 firefighters have come from around the North Island and Australia for the Russell Fire Brigade International Gamefish Tournament—the fishermen outnumber the fisher of men,” said one reporter.²² The same journalist, stopping at a bar the day before the ceremony asked the Māori barman about the busy town. The barman had no idea about the arrival of Pompallier’s remains, only the fishing tournament. “Why have the Catholics and northern Māori gone to so much trouble to exhume the bishop’s bones from his French grave and bring them halfway round the world?” he asked. “Why bother his rest if his adopted country isn’t bothered about him?”²³

Fr. Henare Tate explained, “He left, but the mental and spiritual link between the people and him was never severed. Every bishop after him that came to the Hokianga, they were always welcomed with the words, ‘Haere mai i runga i nga tapuwae o Pihopa Pomparie’. Come in the footsteps of Bishop Pompallier.”²⁴ In other words, the connection was to his person, and less to the faith he brought them.

The French Ambassador, Jacky Musnier, who came to Russell for the ceremony, confessed to the reporter that, “until he came to New Zealand he had never heard of Pompallier. In France, he is forgotten, his honours and reputation buried with him,” but as Tate added, “In Puteaux no one knows him. So it’s better to move him out of that oblivion to where he can be respected; not just the spirit, but the remains.”

His remains now sit in an 1899-built wooden church seating about 50 people—St. Mary’s Church in Motuti, Hokianga, a bit more than a mile from where Pompallier said the first Mass in New Zealand.

Turukitanga: Epilogue

Pompallier came ashore and established a thriving mission. Subjected to difficulties, mistakes, personality conflicts, and many other very human problems, the work showed tremendous success initially. It is true, as Taylor claims, that the faith never died out, and the memory of that success and Pompallier was preserved especially among the Māori in the North. Nevertheless, partly because the mission relied on the personality and zeal of one man, partly because it was founded more on active works without a sufficiently supernatural foundation, and partly because the Church in New Zealand filled with settlers and the hierarchy changed strategies, the mission, eventually, failed.

Failure is the father of success, provided prudence intervenes. What can be gained for Traditional Catholics living in the husk of a civilization that represents today’s mission field by looking at the mission to New Zealand and its failure?

Firstly, that while one can lament the failures and decay both in New Zealand and the rest of the world, the mission field lies ahead, not behind. The past can teach us lessons for the future, but it is gone and left to the Mercy of God, with Providence providing men a way forward in His Grace. The focus must be on the present work, with a view to the future, taking lessons from the past successes and failures.

Secondly, the failure of the Church in its mission to the world may have been accelerated by the Second Vatican Council and the liturgical and doctrinal chaos which followed, but as in New Zealand, the decay began well beforehand from a loss of the true apostolic and religious zeal, and the substitution of “a piety of the feelings… made up exclusively of pious practices and habits, and giving them nothing but vague beliefs, a love without strength, and virtues without deep root… powerless to open up the wide horizons of Christian life.”²⁵ It is not enough to simply “undo Vatican II” but the spirit that brought it about must also be torn out.

Thirdly, even zealous and sacrificial missionaries can forget that the spiritual and religious life must be a foundation for any apostolate or life. Contemplation must come before action if a solid foundation will be built. Men, writes St. John of the Cross, “would be much more useful to the Church and more pleasing to the Lord, not to mention the good example they would give to those around them, if they devoted more time to prayer and to the exercises of the interior life.”²⁶ That follows for the apostolate of parents within their own their families, employees in the workplace, or students in school, just as much as it does for an exterior apostolate or for the religious.

Lastly, the Church is not a monoculture. She is Catholic: meant for all people of all times with their varying cultures and norms. The apostle understands that these cultures must be emptied of elements contrary to the Faith and good morals, but people cannot be assimilated or forced into a monoculture artificially. When a missionary tries to impose customs or cultural norms that work in one society upon another society that is vastly different, this will impede the work of the apostle. This is even more so when one thinks his own culture “more Catholic” than the one he is sent to. Such a myopic attempt to bring cultural unity undermines the very goal of bringing souls to the triple bonds of unity that make one a Catholic: unity of worship, doctrine, and authority—not long-established cultural norms.

Endnotes

¹ Roach, Kevin, The Growth of Roman Catholicism in New Zealand, 2013.

² Quoted in “The Bishop’s Bones,” New Zealand Herald, April 17, 2002.

³ Carleton, Hugh, The Life of Henry Williams: “Early Recollections.” 1874, p. 11-12.

⁴ Cf. New Zealand Parliament, Oral Questions (Feb 26, 2003, No. 3) Hansard. 606/3770. The more liberal governments are frequently asked about this “fourth article” and rely on the fact that most extant copies do not contain a written form of the “fourth article” and it merely exists as an oral promise, which only Parliament could recognize as having legal standing.

⁵ Chauard, Jean-Baptist, Soul of the Apostolate, (1946), p. 22.

⁶ Hosie, Stanley W, Anonymous Apostle (1967), p. 173.

⁷ Taylor, Diane. Jean Baptiste François Pompallier: Loved and Lamented through the Generation in New Zealand. (2009) Masters’ Thesis. Massey University: Auckland, New Zealand. p. 11.

⁸ Ibid., p. 59.

⁹ Reid, Nicholas Evan, Churchman: A Study of James Michael Liston, (2004) Doctoral Thesis, University of Auckland, p. i.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 253.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 253.

¹² Letter of March 15, 1934, Liston to van Beek, LIS 84-7, Diocese of Auckland Archives.

¹³ Reid, Nicholas Evan. Churchman: A Study of James Michael Liston. p. 254.

¹⁴ A reference to the four traditional provinces of Ireland, of which the Northeastern most, Ulster, did not join the Irish Free State, and later the Republic of Ireland, due to its Protestant majority. A 1967 folk song of the same name by Tommy Makem is widely known.

¹⁵ Letter of November 25, 1933, O’Callaghan to Biermans, Box NZL (1913-34), Archives of the Mill Hill Fathers.

¹⁶ Interview quoted in Reid (2004).

¹⁷ Interview with Sir Ian Barker quoted in Reid (2004), p. 353.

¹⁸ Interview with Sr. Margaret Browne quoted in Reid (2004), p. 353.

¹⁹ Arbuckle, G. The Church in a Multi-cultural Society, (1976) 51/H.

²⁰ Taylor, Diane. Jean Baptiste François Pompallier: Loved and Lamented through the Generation in New Zealand. (2009), p. 129.

²¹ A Māori transliteration of ‘episcopus’ the Latin word for ‘bishop,’ it was considered a warm and fatherly nickname for Pompallier.

²² “The Bishop’s Bones.” New Zealand Herald. April 17, 2002.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Quoted in “The Bishop’s Bones.” New Zealand Herald. April 17, 2002.

²⁵ Chautard, Jean-Baptist. Soul of the Apostolate. (1946), p.58.

²⁶ St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, xxix.

TITLE IMAGE: The ruins of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Christchurch, built in 1905. Heavily-damaged in a 2011 earthquake, demolition was undertaken in 2021.