View from the Pew
It’s a time of setting forth on a path into the future of the Catholic Church in Hawaii, and of looking back 200 years to its first footprint in the islands.
The church history lesson that will unfold will be upbeat, marking the 1827 arrival of the first missionaries of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary from France. But anti-Catholic prejudice and persecution of the first Hawaii converts was a blemish on that era, chronicled as “The Dark Decade” in a 2004 history by the late Emmett Cahill.
The twists of Christian history were on my mind as I read the last couple of editions as Hawaii Catholic Herald journalists covered every aspect of ceremonial farewell to Honolulu Bishop Emeritus Larry Silva and welcome to Bishop Michael Castori, SJ.
We took the comfortable way of avoiding the traffic jam and crowded pews and watched the ordination streaming live at home. No matter how good the camera and sound, it just couldn’t capture the depth of spirituality and emotion present in the church.
And it could definitely have used a narrator, especially to identify the mixture of ethnic music and the procession of gifts brought forward by different ethnic groups of the Honolulu diocese and from the new bishop’s past missions in Tonga and other Pacific nations.
A self-identified “liturgist” from the mainland chimed in some information as the sidebar of commentary and questions were posted during the three-hour event.
It brought back my memory of scurrying around Blaisdell Arena covering the installation of Bishop Silva on July 21, 2005. As religion beat reporter, I wrote a story which the former Honolulu Star-Bulletin used at length with photos, as did the competing Honolulu Advertiser. Alas, the papers merged and were sold and the current owners and editors shun religion.
However, the newspaper that week carried three photos of a Protestant minister who has an ongoing gig of blessing housing construction, community cleanup projects, etc., with a combination of Hawaiian language and Christian prayers.
I wrote a letter-to-the-editor waxing indignant about that in the week they ignored an event affecting more than 200,000 Hawaii Catholics. Picture an editor hitting the delete button.
Interfaith unity
Bishop Silva’s legacy of interaction with an ecumenical network of faiths was reflected at Bishop Castori’s ordination, which was attended by retiring Bishop Robert Fitzpatrick of the Episcopal Church in Hawaii, and his successor the Rev. Elizabeth Berman, who will be installed in November.
The daily paper did not make space for that story, although local television stations did.
She was selected in a vote by Episcopal clergy and church members, as are leaders of other Protestant denominations. That’s a thread of Christian history going back five centuries and this column has limited space! Start by searching for English King Henry VIII versus the pope back in his day.
The ecumenical attendees also included Rev. Anke Flohr, executive director of Pacific Health Ministry which trains hospital chaplains; Rev. J.P. Sabbithi, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hawaii; Rev. Samuel Domingo, pastor emeritus of Wahiawa United Methodist Church; and Rev. Dan Chun, retired Presbyterian pastor and founder of Hawaiian Islands Ministries.
Those folks are part of a tradition of interfaith unity on community and social issues. They and others join with Catholics in the annual January Prayer for Christian Unity service.
Different denominations used to take turns hosting the service, but they chose the Catholic Church to be annual hosts after attending a candlelit service at Newman Center/Holy Spirit Church at the University of Hawaii at Manoa that uses a chanting and meditations format of the Taize ecumenical monastery in France.
Back to the bicentennial. On July 7, 1827, three Sacred Hearts priests and three lay brothers disembarked from a French ship in Honolulu. The “La Comete” captain and his passengers were unaware of a decree by the Queen Regent Kaahumanu that all arrivals were subject to her approval, according to Cahill in “The Dark Decade.”
Fathers Alexis Bachelot, Abraham Armand and Patrick Short (of Ireland, bless him) were welcomed by the small French community. Chief Boki, the governor of Oahu, gave them a parcel of land, 40 yards square, where they lived and worshipped in grass huts and which is now the site of the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace.
Cahill told of how the priests tried to duck encounters with the domineering queen regent, who was very much under the influence of New England Protestant missionaries who first arrived in Hawaii in 1820. She ruled on behalf of King Kamehameha II, who was a child when he succeeded to the throne.
A second company of New England Calvinist missionaries arrived in 1828, and they undertook a “study” of their Catholic counterparts, such as their “idolatrous” use of statues and crucifix. “The long and short of their work was to declare that these Papist interlopers would have to go because their teachings were immoral and dangerous,” Cahill wrote, quoting from Father Reginald Yzendoorn’s “History of the Catholic Mission in the Hawaiian Islands.”
After months of exchanges and declarations, the priests left Hawaii two years after their arrival, taken aboard a French ship. Catholic converts left behind, many of whom were Hawaiian, were imprisoned, put into forced labor building walls and had their homes and possessions taken away.
Some groups of Hawaiian Catholics fled the Honolulu presence of the monarchy, settling in Windward and Waianae coast locations.
Fitting motto
On July 9, 1839, the French warship “L’Artemise” arrived in Honolulu and the captain presented a “manifesto” from French King Louis Philippe, demanding civil treatment of the French and that “Catholic worship be declared free throughout the Sandwich Islands.”
The young king approved a treaty which had already been signed by the governor of Oahu. On the following Sunday, 180 armed French seamen and marines attended Mass celebrated by Father Robert Walsh at one of the king’s houses, according to an account by historian Ralph Kuykendall.
Sacred Hearts priests, brothers and sisters have come to Hawaii ever since, as well as other religious orders.
Less than a year after the French manifesto, the Hawaiian monarchy announced its first constitution, based on a declaration of rights written by the council of chiefs. Much of its content referred to land ownership and water rights, but it notably guaranteed free exercise of religion.
King Kamehameha III, the longest serving monarch, also succeeded in using diplomatic discussion with British rulers to derail a ship’s captain effort to annex the islands. After rising above those challenges and uncertainties, he declared a sentiment about government — “Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono.”
“The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness” was made the motto of the state of Hawaii.
Amen to that.