Description: The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania, 1825-1850 is the first detailed and documentary history of the seminal period of Roman Catholic missionary activity. Beginning with the founding of the Prefecture Apostolic of the Sandwich Islands in 1825 there was continued development in Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia for the next quarter century. By 1850 this vast area of the South Seas could boast of one archdiocese, eight dioceses, and eight vicariates apostolic. This lively, dramatic narrative is told largely through the words of the participants drawn from diaries, documents, and letters found in the archives of the Vatican and several religious orders. The comprehensive tale ranges from the politics of the Vatican to sufferings on outpost islands. The focus of attention shifts from Rome to Paris, Valparaiso, Sydney, Honiara, Auckland, and many other places, in a study of men and institutions, faith and emotion, rivalries and confusions, murder and annexation, God and mammon. Originally published in 1979, this important historical study had been out of print and virtually unavailable for many years until this new edition was completed. Endorsements: ""This is a book that many of us have been hoping for since the days when mission history progressed from the level of apologetics and works intended for the edification of adherents to that of objective historiography."" H.E. Maude, Research School of Pacific Studies ""There is great value in this book, primarily because it shows the way in which nineteenth-century Catholic leaders responded to and took part in shaping an intercultural network that extended across the largest geographical area on the planet."" William R. Burrows, Research Professor of Missiology, New York Theological Seminary ""It is the brightest, best printed book of ecclesiastical adventure I have ever seen."" Percy Cochrane Australian Society of Authors ""The author is not satisfied with giving a string of facts one after the other, but instead he searches out the reasons for the development. He shows the motives and the negotiations that took place, often with the words of the original texts. The whole is truly a fascinating mission history."" Nouvelle Revue de Science Missionarriare ""This impressive and profusely illustrated work should find a place in every general and most specialized church-historical libraries."" Religious Studies Review ""This book confirms Wiltgen's reputation of being a master of a narrative style of historical writing. It is based on meticulous examination of the archives....When it comes to information about missionary activities, we undoubtedly have here the definitive book on the subject."" Charles W. Forman Missiology: An International Review ""It will remain a basic tool for all Pacific historians for a very long time to come."" The Journal of the Polynesian Society About the Contributor(s): RALPH M. WILTGEN, SVD, a Divine Word Missionary and Catholic priest for over fifty-seven years, died in 2007 at the age of 86. He devoted his life to research in the field of missiology. He is the author of several books including The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Melanesia and Micronesia 1850 - 1875, the companion to this volume.

Description: The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Melanesia and Micronesia, 1850 to 1875 is the result of Father Ralph Wiltgen's years of archival work in Rome and at the headquarters of religious orders who worked in Micronesia and Melanesia. It follows his first historical book on the subject, The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania: 1825 to 1850, but narrows the focus. The first book dealt with the whole of Oceania and emphasized developments in Polynesia. This book concentrates on Melanesia and Micronesia from 1850 to 1875, the period immediately before the work of large numbers of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Marists, and Divine Word Missionaries assumed great momentum in the period between 1875 and 1914. Micronesia is a huge area of the world, made up of numerous culturally and politically distinct groups of atolls ranging over about 1,400 miles from the northwest to the southeast. Its peoples speak scores of mutually unintelligible though related languages on such island groups as the Marshalls, the Gilberts, Nauru, and Kiribati. Far more heavily populated is Melanesia, another huge area of the Pacific where as many as one thousand distinct languages are spoken in an arc of islands extending from just below the equator in a boomerang shape from today's Indonesian controlled Papua and independent Papua New Guinea on the island of New Guinea in the northwest all the way along the Solomon Island chain to 25 south latitude to the southeast. In this book, Wiltgen shows himself the undisputed master of the archives of the Propaganda Fide, the Vatican's chief mission agency and the religious orders that provided missionaries, all of which is supplemented by his attention to the lives of key people of the period. He shows the Propaganda now prodding missionary orders to take on the difficult work of evangelizing these areas and on other occasions struggling to keep up with and understand fast-moving events and the colorful characters--both ecclesiastical and among colonial administrators, rogue sea captains, and indigenous leaders. Wiltgen lets the contemporary records speak for themselves, though one can imagine his arched brow and mischievous grin as he selects exactly the right quote to describe now an act of missionary heroism and now an act of self-promotion. It is a masterful book, making available the early history of one of Catholicism's greatest missionary successes, helping the reader understand both the idealism of the vision and the way in which concrete events and people affected the outcome. Endorsements: ""Drawing upon years of archival research, Ralph Wiltgen provides a unique resource of previously unpublished and unknown detail on the origins of Catholicism in Micronesia and Melanesia from 1850 to 1875. This fine work fills a gap in the broader history of Christianity in Oceania and is essential reading for everyone interested in that history."" --Roger Schroeder, SVD Professor of Cross-Cultural Ministry Catholic Theological Union at Chicago ""This monumental volume occupies a special place alongside scholarly histories of Pacific missions. Wiltgen presents the story with a level of detail and thoroughness that no other Pacific historian has attempted to match. As year proceeds to year and sometimes month to month, the reader follows the course of mission life in a way that is not possible in the other, more cursory histories. We see how concrete people make an impact on the Catholic missions and how unexpected actors change the course of events. Nowhere else in Pacific mission history can one get this wealth of insight into the people behind the missions as well as into the minds of the missionaries themselves."" --Charles W. Forman Professor Emeritus of Missions Yale University (from the preface) About the Contributor(s): Ralph M. Wiltgen, SVD, was a Divine Word Missionary and Roman Catholic priest for over fifty-seven years. Born in 1921, he died in Dece