About the time that Charles Darwin was cruising the world on the Beagle, discovering things that conflicted with the notion of a Creator, Christian missionaries were plying their way around Cape Horn too, spreading the word of God to the uninitiated in the Pacific isles. Among those was Jean Baptiste François Pompallier, a French-born Catholic just a bit over six years older than Darwin. In 1835, at the same time Darwin was making his way across the Pacific, Pope Gregory XVI created the Vicariates of Eastern and Western Oceania. Pompallier was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania and Bishop of Maronea and, on 24 December 1836, less than three months after Darwin’s arrival back in England, he sailed from Le Havre aboard the Delphine for Western Oceania and New Zealand. Read More...Tags:Tonga, Charles Darwin, Bishop Pompalier, Christianity, Pangaimotu
There is an axiom that one should never perform with children or animals because they are bound to upstage you – well, I am going to add another: intelligent articulate 88 year-old gentlemen!
It was a pleasure to spend a little time in the spotlight with well-known theological deep thinker Lloyd Geering at the Otago Festival of the Arts as part of the Readers and Writers programme. If anyone thought that it was going to be a showdown between Darwin and Religion, they would have been bitterly disappointed. To the contrary, however, the sell-out audience seemed to really enjoy it. In fact, it was more than a sell-out: against all the fire regulations, they moved an extra 60 seats in to help cope with the demand. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Lloyd Geering, Lloyd Spencer Davis, Otago Festival of the Arts, Readers and Writers, Bernard Beckett, Religion, Christianity
