‘THE CHURCH IN NEW ZEALAND’

New Zealand Tablet, 1 September 1910, Page 1399

‘THE CHURCH IN NEW ZEALAND’

The following editorial headed ‘The Early Church,’ and having reference to the recently published work, The Church in New Zealand: Memoirs of the Early Days, appeared in last Saturday’s Lyttelton Times : —We are so busy making history nowadays that we are apt to overlook the duty of preserving records of this country’s evolution for the guidance of future. generations. The past, perhaps not unnaturally, is always more picturesque than the present, and it probably grows more picturesque as it recedes in the perspective of years. There are- many chapters of the early history of New Zealand still to be written, and in his story of the foundation and progress of the Roman Catholic Church in New Zealand Mr. J. J. Wilson has given us a volume which is not only an expression of religious enthusiasm, but also a record of social and political progress. The ideal country takes no count of sect in its material advancement, and New Zealand has been particularly fortunate in escaping religious dissensions. The various denominations, caring carefully for their own people, have worked side by side with an appreciation of a common Gospel with a differing creed that is beyond all praise. The story of early missionary enterprise that Mr. Wilson tells, although it centres round the Roman Catholic Church, is one of very vivid interest that will appeal to all denominations. It is a great deal more than a sectarian religious essay. It is a whole-hearted reflection of history in the making. The book takes up the story of the foundation of the Catholic Church in New Zealand in 1838, with the arrival of Bishop Pompallier, and the celebration of the first Mass in a wooden cottage in Hokianga. Two years later the Catholic population numbered 500, while to-day it reaches nearly 150,000, and has an equipment at least equal to that of any other denomination in the country. Mr. Wilson has very wisely divided his book, after a general preliminary introduction, into provincial sections, and he evidently has gone to endless trouble in making his researches as complete and as accurate as possible. The diocese of Canterbury, he reminds us, is ecclesiastically the youngest in the Dominion so far as Catholicity is concerned, but everyone must admit that it is one of the healthiest children of the family. The good seed was sown in the province long before it was officially recognised. It was at Akaroa, in 1840, after the tardy arrival of the French warship L’Aube, that the first Mass was said in this part of the Dominion. Twenty years later, the settlement having shifted over the hills, a Catholic mission was established in Christchurch, and the first Mass was held in the drawing-room of the Royal Hotel, on Oxford Terrace. Since then the Church has never looked back, and Mr. Wilson’s intimate history of its progress and its connection with the social and political life of the community, as well as with its religious advancement, is a most valuable addition to our local chronicles.