By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
A commendable new book about the Catholic Church in Hawaii comes from an unlikely source — two writers and an illustrator who all live in the Baltimore area.
“Catholic Churches of Hawaii — A Shoal of Faith” by Evan A. Ponton and Philip H. Scharper Jr., illustrated by Tara J. Hannon, published October 2018 by Mutual Publishing, is a collection of historical and descriptive profiles of all 94 Catholic churches in Hawaii, from the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace to tiny hidden away missions, including a few no longer in use.
Every parish in the diocese should have a copy — or two.
The 165-page book gives each church one or two pages of text, enlivened by color photos, drawings and watercolor illustrations.
Taken as a whole, the book offers the broad picture of a faith taking root primarily among indigenous people and immigrants, planted by missionaries who learned Hawaiian rather than made Hawaiians learn a European language.
In its introduction, the book offers a revealing quote by Bishop Hermann Koeckemann, Hawaii’s third missionary bishop: “It is for the natives that we came here, and not for the white people.”
According to the authors, Hawaii’s first Masses were celebrated in pili grass huts, the faithful seated on lauhala mats. Later, churches of wood, brick, lava rock and coral were built in fishing villages and plantation towns more than urban centers. They were erected as havens for the faithful during a brief period of government persecution and for new communities of immigrants, like the Portuguese and the Filipinos.
The stories are simple and similar, of early churches sprouting from the resolute efforts of selfless missionaries, the Sacred Hearts priests in particular, to later modern suburban churches accommodating the expanding 50th State.
These dozens of churches give evidence of the success of the Catholic faith in Hawaii, planted in fertile Hawaiian soil, becoming the largest religious denomination in the state.
The book is chaptered by island with each section introduced with a water-color island map marked with the location of each church. Each church is depicted in a drawing or painting by artist Hannon. Additional photos and artwork accompany many of the entries.
The art is clean and detailed, adding a warmth and a familiar touch photos can’t always achieve.
The text is easy to read and the divisions by church allow you to skip around, church to church, island to island.
Readers will learn interesting trivia such as those churches that took the saint’s name of a notable donor or benefactor, like St. William, St. Rita, St. George, St. Sophia.
The authors also include architects’ names and show a fondness for church art, picturing and describing the paintings, stained glass windows and sculpture that adorn Hawaii churches.
“We wanted the book to speak to everyone,” Ponton said last week by email, “so it is intentionally not preachy and hopefully can be appreciated for its history, art, architecture by anyone.”
The writers
Scharper is an ophthalmologist who lived in Hawaii for a number of years. He met his wife, Lois Endo of Kailua, here. As a personal project, Scharper visited and photographed every Catholic church in the diocese. All the book’s current photographs are his.
Ponton is a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Baltimore scheduled to be ordained a deacon in May. He met Scharper, with whom he had similar interests in writing, church history, and surfing, through a couple of seminary professors.
Ponton had read about St. Damien de Veuster, St. Marianne Cope and Brother Joseph Dutton.
“I wanted to know more about the land and people that shaped them into the extraordinary saints they are,” he said.
The overlapping interests of the two men sparked the book.
“I would say Phil’s primary motivation was to share his experiences and gratitude for his years in Hawaii,” Ponton said, “and I was fascinated and inspired by the courage and spirit of adventure that infuses the way Catholicism is and has been lived in Hawaii.”
“The research and writing became a little adventure in itself,” he said.
Ponton said the book took about three years to put together, “working on it part-time, little by little, of course.” In the books’ acknowledgments, the authors thanked in particular diocesan archivist Deacon Keith Cabiles and Stuart Ching, archivist for the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, and those “unsung heroes of the church” — the parish secretaries.
One of the 94 Hawaii church profiles in the new book, “Catholic Churches of Hawaii: A Shoal of Faith.”
Ponton described collaborator Hannon as a “wonderful artist/illustrator who has worked with Phil in the past.”
The book’s two-page bibliography lists 38 sources including the most referenced books on Hawaii Catholic Church history, “Pioneers of the Faith” by Sacred Hearts Father Robert Schoofs, and “History of the Catholic Church in the Hawaiian Islands,” by Sacred Hearts Father Reginald Yzendoorn, plus well-known books on Hawaiian history, biographies of St. Damien and St. Marianne, and publications by parishes themselves.
Ponton said the subtitle of the book is a nod to Gavan Dawes, author of the well-known history of Hawaii, “Shoal of Time.”
“I often thought of Catholicism in Hawaii through the suggestive metaphor of ‘a shoal of faith,’ so it became a subtitle,” he said.
The book also includes a foreword by Bishop Larry Silva. The 20-page “Introduction” tells the history of the Catholic Church in Hawaii from its earliest years to 2018.
A book filled with so many dates, names and places is bound to have some misspellings and a factual error or two (like locating Ahuimanu College in Aiea instead of Heeia and getting St. Damien’s ordination date wrong by one year) but these are minor. St. Damien Church in Kaunakakai, Molokai, still has a picture of the old St. Sophia Church which burned down nine years ago and was replaced in 2011, but the text describing these developments is up-to-date.
“Catholic Churches of Hawaii: A Shoal of Faith” is available for $19.95 at Mutual Publishing’s website, mutualpublishing.com, or via Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
