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28 January 1844 — Father Claude-André Baty to Father Jean-Claude Colin, Sydney

Translated by Fr Brian Quin SM, May 2007 or see Peter McConnell's translation

To the Very Reverend Father Colin,

Superior General of the Society of Mary

J M J

Sydney

28 January 1844

Very Reverend Father

[1]

I am taking advantage of some spare time which my present tasks leave me, to bring you some detailed information about the New Zealand mission, a mission which is so dear to your fatherly heart. These details, very Reverend and beloved Father, will be nothing more than some facts which I will describe to you as I have written about them in my journal. I do not intend, here, to give you any general ideas about the mission, nor any figures; I am not responsible for them. I think it is right to tell you that I have no intention of writing for the Annales.^[1] Other people can do it better than I, but if however it was judged appropriate to publish some aspects of this letter, it would be necessary to prune from it everything which could do harm in this country where everything is known, where our adversaries are favourites of the government, etc etc.

[2]

So I am beginning following my journal. The first fact that I find there worthy of telling you about is an interview I had in a Bay of Islands tribe with a Maori Protestant catechist, several months ago. I have to tell you at the start that these catechists, trained in their masters’ school, know a lot of things that they are told against the Catholic Church, and they know almost nothing more than that, with the New Testament and the other parts of Sacred Scripture translated into their language. I admit that a great number of these catechists especially know well the letter of the New Testament; would to God that they had also learned its meaning and spirit in their schools; debating with people of this sort is not easy, because their reasoning is (I am speaking in a general way): we have been told this, so it is true. I'll get back to the point: I went to visit a tribe in the Bay of Islands called Waikare. When I arrived in this tribe, I hadn't long been speaking to the Catholic natives, who are the most numerous, when I saw coming towards me a proud native, well-dressed in European style, carrying books (under his arm), (I didn't mention that in my journal, but it's what they almost always do), and taking his place near me on the mats of a house where I was sitting in Maori fashion. (Perhaps it is right as well to tell you that the word Maori is not at all pejorative; it is the name that the natives give themselves to distinguish themselves from the whites.) He attacked me almost immediately, spoke to me about faith, about books, about wakapakoko (idols -- statues), which are always a great battlefield, about Nebuchadnezzar etc. Concerning faith, it seems they have been told that we do not have it, because several times I have heard of myself asked this question -- do you have faith? do you believe in God? etc. As this native flitted, as is usual with them, from one subject to another, I stopped him and began by telling him: the words which forbid making images to adore them are in the Old Testament; Our Lord Jesus Christ and St Paul, when quoting the commandments, in the New Testament, do not speak of this ban on making images. Then this native, amazingly, told me: you are right. In the same way, when our superiors tell us that we should have only one wife, and we tell them that Lamech had two,^[2] they tell us that that was in the Old Testament. I was agreeably surprised to hear him speak like this. As the whole group was attentive and each person was happy to share his knowledge, one of the natives with me -- Charles, godson of Commander Lavaud, mentioned the words from Exodus which forbid making images to adore them^[3] and said that the Catholic Church did not have the custom of making images of things in the sky, nor on the earth nor in the sea to bow down before them. I let it pass without any other response and switched to Nebuchadnezzar. I took a branch of wood and made a chronological chart by placing the creation of the world at the bottom end, then I set out the main epochs of history. Then showing him Nebuchadnezzar well before Jesus Christ and a good deal further from Luther and Henry VIII, I asked him how could he claim that he was the one who threw three Protestants into the furnace since he had died well before Jesus Christ and the Catholics and even longer before the name 'Protestant' had been heard on this earth? He did not persist, and told me that he had believed Nebuchadnezzar to be a Catholic and the three Hebrews Protestants. Then I emphasised that it was necessary to challenge those who instructed him, that they were not telling him the truth etc. I had no need to mention other examples to prove that to him. Karora, that same Charles whom I mentioned above, followed up with the story of the lies poured out by our adversaries before and since Bishop Pompallier's arrival in New Zealand. As the catechist wanted to deny several things and among others that they had said that the Catholic missionaries were coming to take the Maoris' land and that to secure it it was necessary to sell it to them, as this catechist said that it was the Maori themselves who had begged the Protestant missionaries to buy their land (that is a subterfuge which the latter emphasise in the presence of Maoris to exculpate themselves), the paramount chief of the place, although nominally Protestant, spoke out and made a virulent attack on the land grabbing of the above mentioned people; he said that the Catholic religion was the good one because in the three years he had seen Bishop Pompallier in the Bay of Islands, he saw that he had still only a kainga (dwelling) etc. Another chief asked me if I was not one of Marion's nation.^[4] I told him that I was; then he told me that New Zealand belonged to us because Marion had come there first, had been killed there, then his death had been paid for by the massacre of Maori from the Bay where he had been killed, then a Maori had gone to France and had come back from there overwhelmed with kindness and with great ideas of the greatness of the oui oui nation. It seems that this chief had no bitterness against Marion, who, he had just told me, had introduced fleas into New Zealand while bringing a barrel ashore. Finally these chiefs, going from generalities to particulars, naively indicated how little loved was he who was seen as their teacher. The old chief, showing the rags that covered part of his body: There are, he said to me, my karukaru (bits, pieces, were appropriate expressions), he has my lands, and when I go and ask him for clothing he says to me: Kei hea to utu? Where is the payment? This self-styled missionary, in cooperation with one of his confrères, had fixed things so as to have the little good land that this tribe possessed; it now has the mountains and some scattered pieces, and the pa, on its own, is squeezed between the river and the above-mentioned man's hedge.

[3]

I am too long, Very Reverend Father, however I cannot stop on the way, I am still in conference. The conversation touched on the places in Scripture where poverty is recommended, anger forbidden etc. The catechist admitted to me that his teachers were in contradiction with these texts. Then I came back to the matter of lies, and on this issue I told him that a Protestant missionary had publicly asserted to me that they did not sell their books (which is like telling everyone that the sun does not exist), and that their face to the ground prostrations were not in themselves European but a poka noa^[5] of the Maori or something included wrongfully. As these lies were public, the catechist did not want to deny them to me; I drew from them the conclusion: so they can also tell and effectively to tell lies about prayer. So this catechist, probably ashamed to see himself alone on his side, confessed everything and said that these teachers got angry if, when they called their people to prayers in the morning, they did not get up at the first call, they would get angry with them, and that henceforth he wanted to listen only to his book and had no more need of his teachers. This was, alas, the whole upshot of this conversation because it is grace which converts and grace demands cooperation; anyway this conversation was interrupted by the preacher in the area who came and, without saying anything to me, went off almost straight away and taking away those of his persuasion. This man, a little time before I arrived in this tribe, had given a most severe reprimand and called the anger of the Maori gods down on a Catholic man who had discharged some musket shots on a Sunday for amusement. I was saying that cooperation with grace is needed for conversion; now the goodness of God often uses other means than conversations to make possible this cooperation. I have seen many natives become Catholics from being Protestant before. I have even seen several of their catechists [become Catholics?], but almost always moved by other reasons than conviction. However these conversations are the best way of making the truth known; they favourably dispose people and, when another motive is added in, it is enough.

[4]

To the above mentioned occurrence I am adding something that happened during another discussion that I had like the earlier one; as in this last mentioned one, the subject concerned the books which our adversaries sell so dearly (someone interrupted and said: in the South a New Testament is sold for a pig niho puta (whose teeth are sticking out -- which he demonstrated with his fingers), the clothes which we give out of affection and which he claimed to be a charm to attract [people] to hell etc etc. A chief confessed, saying, "As for me, I have turned to the Bishop: 1) because the priests have no wives; 2) because they buy little land; 3) because they give things out of affection and are not always asking where is the price you will give me. I will make no comment except on the first. This matter of celibacy has a great deal of power, in the eyes of the natives, to attract them to the Catholic priesthood and through that to the faith; it is, besides, customary or rather it was customary that the man who was trained to be a priest abstained from any dealings with the other sex while his training period lasted, which (and I digress) had to be long because he had to learn by heart prayers, litanies of names etc without end. On this matter I must report to you a native's beautiful reflection -- perhaps someone has already written about it, but no matter. One day I heard a chief say to Bishop Pompallier or to another chief, I have forgotten: Among us Maori women are a great treasure; the Protestant missionaries came with wives, so they did not give up their treasures to come and preach to us, but the Catholic missionaries have no wives; they look down on what we see as treasures, so they must love the Maoris and their teaching must be something important. That is the substance of that reflection which I would like to have copied when I heard it. Our opponents are very aware of our advantage and are putting every effort into destroying it; it is rare for a priest to have a discussion or conversation with a Protestant Maori without the latter, early in the conversation, putting the issue of celibacy on the table; they are well aware that God said, "Crescite et multiplicamini"^[6] and "non est bonum esse hominem solum" ^[7] etc. And the ‘how did you come into the world’ is one of those very important expressions I have heard echoed everywhere I have been; along with this: ‘There are three Gods’. I believe that on that basis it is indeed possible to speculate about the basis of the teaching of these self-styled apostles from heaven: I say apostles from heaven because they do not want to say from whom they hold their mission on earth. One day when in a public discussion I asked one of them: in which country were the ancestors (offering Protestant worship); in heaven, he told me. Oh wretched are the people who have fallen into such hands!

[5]

Here is another trivial thing. I went one day to see a tribe; at that time there existed an extraordinary system among the natives concerning money, when the Protestant bishop had just ordered that each Maori would give [money] when he received communion; this practice, which has never had admirers among the Maoris, aroused a lot of fear among the Catholic natives that our Bishop would do the same; before getting baptised they really wanted to be certain that later on they would not be obliged (as they put it) to buy the sacrament with shillings, sixpences, cabbages, onions, firewood (all things they say go on among the others, without my being able to guarantee it). So they wanted to have an affirmative reply. I told them that among Europeans there were customs that the Bishop would not introduce among them because they were a poor people, that anyway among us, people did not give money when they received the sacrament of the Eucharist etc. As I went on about this matter, two Protestant natives who were listening told me that this custom was in the New Testament. I think that someone had spoken to them about the collections made by St Paul, but finally my good Maori had forgotten it. I told him show me the place in his book where it was said to give money to receive Holy Communion; then he brought me the text where it is said that the chief priests gave 30 pieces of silver to Judas to hand over Our Lord. It was the basis of a little ridicule and a little instruction I gave on the subject. Another claimant, probably better prepared, brought me the text of St James: Religio munda etc;^[8] another subject for instruction etc. I took advantage of the situation as well, to show them very gently and kindly that they did not understand their book and it was the same with all their religion. That was all the fruit; however since that time there has been a great increase in Catholics in that place and naturally it can be believed that for them as well as for many others, Providence has used these incidents to win hearts.

[6]

I am now going to tell you, Very Reverend Father, about a war which has aroused great movements among the natives in the North during a great part of the last year. This war, in which all the natives in the North, including the Bay of Islands and Hokianga, have taken part, arose firstly between two Protestant tribes, over a piece of land which each of them claimed, and the real source (I can speak according to the public opinion of Europeans) was its purchase by the late Governor Hobson, helped in his purchases by a former Protestant missionary. As the natives are all interrelated, during the course of the war Catholics and Protestants were found, mixed pell mell in each camp. As each claimed to be right and it was not easy to decide definitively, the Bishop decided that the Catholic natives could be allowed to fight, and as a result they had to be helped with the sacred ministry. The battlefield was Oruru (Doubtless Bay).

[7]

During the first days of March, someone came to fetch help for a sick person about eight leagues [40 km] away; it is very edifying for natives to come so far to fetch help for a sick person in good health, but you must realise that the native converts do not usually take the difficulty into account but say: it is the custom of our religion; which must lead to the confusion of many people. If they are told: there will be a meeting on such and such a day, that information is enough: leaving the home, work, even being ill, all that is of no account; people have been told to meet, that is enough. I have seen some people travel two leagues [10 km] to take part in church services in weather so bad that I myself hardly dared step outside. I am letting myself get carried away by my wandering thoughts. So having walked all night, Father Chouvet and I, after having crossed several rivers, in the morning we got to our sick person (who was) in good health, but the visit was still good for the tribe: the appearance of a priest in a good tribe is an unspeakable joy. No adult was baptised, it was decided that they would go and get baptised in great number at the Bay of Islands. While I was there, an envoy riding a pony arrived, bringing news that the fighting was going on at Oruru. I sent Father Chouvet back to the Bay of Islands and decided to go with those of the tribe who were leaving for the war, some of whom were Catholics. There were 29 or 30 of us. We spent Sunday morning at the Whangaroa mission station, from which Father Rozet was absent at the Bay of Islands retreat. After midday we set out again and did the exercise which serves instead of full Vespers. Towards evening, after roasting potatoes and fording the two rivers at Mangonui, we said evening prayer and continued to walk. We got near the pa by walking quietly so as not to be seen. Having got close enough to hear the talking, we sat down in the scrub and listened. All that was said was in favour of the battle which was going to start the next day if the tribe which had to go and tread on the piece of land in question (as they put it) and pull up grass, which is an active ownership. In spite of the cold and a heavy dew, in spite of the sweat from the journey, we made our beds in the scrub. The comet which was shining in all its splendour, and which I had seen on the 2nd March for the first time, after sunset was the subject of comment. The most general view was that it was a sign of war. Later I heard other comments e.g. that it was Jesus Christ who was coming to see the two Churches, to say which one was the right one. An old priestess who was among the group and who had become a Catholic saw it as appropriate to feel herself inspired; her voice changed, she began convulsive movements and harangued the others. She insisted a lot on the constancy people should have in worship and then, like a prophetess (I have forgotten the spelling of that word),^[9] she caused some chiefs who had been dead for a long time, more or less, to speak about the war. She was strongly contradicted by some of the Catholics present, but she only became more animated and stopped only well into the night; she was heard with religious respect by those of the natives who still observed their former customs. For my part, I didn't think it fitting to contradict her too much at the time, seeing especially the others were doing it for me and that all those who prayed knew where they stood. I urged them to get baptised, but I couldn't get any result at that time; Father Rozet was more fortunate than I some time later.

[8]

The next day we entered the pa in great style; those in the pa came out to meet us and a simulated battle was acted out, then people leapt up and down etc. In the morning, everyone went out to perform the act of ownership in the field in dispute, but the enemy was not seen. There were about 160 to 180 warriors in the pa, all well armed. During the night they captured three enemy spies but let them go without doing them any harm. The next day the enemy appeared; they came in front of an allied tribe who was coming to its help. Those in the pa came out to meet them, all annoyed. I went to the enemy camp -- they were all Protestant. The chief said that I should not be harmed in any way but that was all, he did not want to hear any talk of steps [towards peace]. The two forces opposed each other, they made great demonstrations of strength, there were a lot of war dances, but with neither party wanting to take the initiative, so as not to be blamed by the other tribes, that was all. They separated in the same way as they had come together, and the tribe which people had come to oppose went, with its canoes, along the river into the enemy camp, both sides exchanging gifts in friendship, which will not be the only peculiar feature you will come across in the course of this war. After a few days, as there was no sign of an attack, I returned to the Bay of Islands to inform the Bishop of the situation.

[9]

Very Reverend Father, I had begun his letter while coming to Sydney on the ship; Father Tripe’s departure does not allow me to continue it.^[10] I am thinking of doing that later on and sending you what follows. I have been very edified here in Sydney by the zeal and other virtues of Monsignor Archbishop Polding and his clergy and the piety of the Catholics in this great city and the flourishing state of the Catholic religion. The orphanage is on a good footing -- those poor children have gained much by losing their parents! They read, write, embroider, sing very well, they are pious. The eight bells, the biggest of which exceeds 3000 [francs, in value] reminded me of the city of Lyons. Since 1838 I hadn't seen so much outward pomp and ceremony concerning religion. May God bless his work. Probably I am going to buy a bell costing between 4 and 500 [francs] for the chapel which has just been erected at Kororareka. I hope that it will make some impression on the natives; I came across it by chance and I am told I will get it cheaply, which is something I haven't been able to verify yet. That is all I can tell you at the moment and I commend myself urgently to your prayers and those of the whole Society. Please accept my deepest esteem and most sincere gratitude, with which I have the honour to be, in union with the divine hearts of Jesus and Mary,

Very Reverend and dear Father,

your very humble and very obedient servant

Baty

priest apostolic.

Notes

1. ↑ The Annales de la Société pour la Propaganda de la Foi was a periodical containing extracts from the missionaries' letters, with the aim of arousing interest in and help for the Catholic missions overseas -- translator’s note
2. ↑ cf Genesis 4:19
3. ↑ cf Exodus 20:4
4. ↑ Marion du Fresne, a French navigator, in 1772 was killed with a number of his crew in the Bay of Islands, possibly for a breach of tapu by some of his men -- translator’s note.
5. ↑ action without reason, illegal -- translator’s note
6. ↑ increase and multiply -- Genesis 1:28, 9:1, 9:7
7. ↑ it is not good for man to be alone -- Genesis 2:18
8. ↑ pure, unspoilt religion... James 1:27
9. ↑ une Pythonisse -- he was correct, according to the dictionary -- translator’s note
10. ↑ Father Tripe was to take the letter with him back to France -- translator’s note