THE CHURCH IN NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand Tablet, 11 July 1918, Page 39

THE CHURCH IN NEW ZEALAND

HISTORICAL NOTES. The writer of Sketches of New Zealand and Its Inhabitants relates in the course of an interesting little volume published over thirty years ago, his impressions and the results of his observations regarding the effects of missionary influence on the natives of this country. After a close study of the Maori character at firsthand, living among them and questioning them on subjects that would help him to form a judgment, he was forced to the conclusion that "missionary influence" was a negligible quantity, and had little apparent effect other than to induce the unsophisticated aboriginal to part with his lands in great tracts ; and thus was laid the foundation of all the warfare and trouble which beset early colonisation. In conversation with a missionary of the body most identified with land acquisition, the author was given as the reason for this policy having been adopted, that it was done to prevent the peaceful penetration of whalers and other enterprising adventurers into the domain of the Maori by the medium of Jew's-harps, bends, and other like trinkets, with perhaps now and again the ad del luxury of some tobacco or an odd blanket. What was done by these gentry, contended the missionary, could be equally well, or even better, done by the missionary, and the Maori incidentally benefited, his lands being thereby, so to speak, kept in trust for him and his descendants. History has, however, proved how this trust was keptthe descendants of the missionaries, not those of the Maori, being the gainers. Writing of conditions subsequent to the Maori war and later agrarian troubles the author states: "Ministerial visits, whether clerical or lay, are, so far as the Natives are concerned, purely official affairs. . . . The whole concern is, on the part of the Natives, one piece of acting from beginning to end. ... In misunderstanding the needs of the .Maoris we cannot but attribute the vast amount of error that the authorities have fallen into to the mischievous influence that has been exercised upon them by that well-meaning but excessively misguided body known m the colonies as the 'missionary party.' [The Catholic missions are excluded in this condemnation.] "We look with dismay," continues the author, "at the Jesuit missions and the system they adopted, where four or "five thousand Indians were baptised* a small crucifix suspended from their necks, they were thereupon termed Christians, and enrolled among the list of proselytes. . . . When Mrs. Grundy read it in the missionary magazine she was shocked : and when an honest grocer at Peckham, with whom she deals, who is a minister at the Chapel of the Little Bethel, next door to Mrs. G.'s, read it in the number she lent him, and forthwith told it from the pvrlpit, there arose such a groaning among the congregation [They can groan, the Little Bethel folk can] that it was dismal to hear, —yet the question is. Are the Maoris any better than these Indians?" "Is not civilisation turning out Christianity ? An obscure member of the Church (of whom nobody has heard, of course) stated at the commencement of the New Zealand mission that civilisation must be the pioneer of Christianity. Vide Life of Rev. S. Marsden, p. 56. Have subsequent events proved him right? Are the Maoris, who in anything move in fits and starts, relapsing into their old religion?"

An esteemed correspondent sends 'us f the following interesting extracts from some of the very earliest news publications of New Zealand relating to Catholic doings at almost the beginning of colonisation. The Nelson Examiner, of March 15, 1845, quaintly notified that "A meeting of persons interested in the erection of a Roman Catholic chapel and schoolhouse was held on Tuesday last in the house lately occupied by Mr. Beit, in Bridge Street, F. Otterson, Esq., J.P., in the chair. The following resolutions were agreed to: —(1) 'That the building of a Catholic chapel and schoolhouse shall be immediately commenced on the reserve appropriated for the purpose by the Governor,' (2) 'That Messrs. Greaves, Redwood, Otterson, Ward, and Duffey be appointed a Building Committee, and to receive further subscriptions.' The treasurer reported the sum already subscribed amounted to £6O. A similar sum has been promised by Colonel Wakefield out of the Religion Fund of the settlement, but the stoppage of the company has thrown difficulties in the way of obtaining it at the present moment." In the November Tl, 1845, issue of the same paper was contained the following:—"The Catholics of Nelson are respectfully informed that the Rev. D. [ ?J. J- P.] O'Reily will perform Divine Service on Sunday, the 23rd inst., at eleven o'clock a.m., at the house formerly occupied by Mr. Otterson, Bridge Street." Readers of the New Zealand Journal of the. Church Mixxionart/ Society, of March 1, 1845, were enlightened regarding that organisation's methods to the effect that —"so long as the missionaries of the society exist in New Zealand, so long will the persecution of that society exist. Let the missionaries themselves cease, and the persecution will cease, but not till then. It cannot be too much impressed upon the colonists that to rid themselves of Church Missionary influence they must rid themselves of the missionaries themselves."