We learned how lucky Maori were that we brought them Christianity, and that we won the Land Wars, which were called the Maori Wars. Maori seemed to have been unaware of their good fortune, but any simmering resentments were tidied away neatly with memorials erected to Pakeha soldiers who fought, and the "friendly" natives who joined our side. Since then there's been the odd spot of bother, we can't think why.

I'm pleased to see that the Ministry of Education is holding fast to that line, because we should be protected at all costs from the embarrassment of history. Knowledge can only confuse.

Look what happened to New Plymouth's mayor, Andrew Judd, who took the time to read a history book, learn that there was another side to the story, and realise he'd been unconsciously racist, as many of us are, all his life. He's been reviled and spat on by upright citizens who have better things to do than read, and has no intention of standing for election again.

What makes his case especially interesting is that Taranaki saw some of the most vicious encounters and land confiscations in our history, at Parihaka and Waitara in particular.

But the Education Ministry is right: no need for local students to have to bother with all that, especially where there is such a large Maori population in Taranaki. Uppity we do not need. Continue reading

• Rosemary McLeod is a New Zealand writer, journalist, cartoonist and columnist.

Practising Catholic and Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills argues this in his latest book, titled: "The Future of the Church with Pope Francis".

"Since one begins from a certitude that the Church was always what it has become, one simply has to extrapolate backward from what we have," Mr Wills wrote.

The Church has survived because it has been able to change, whatever the ahistorical mind-set of its leadership, he continued.

He detailed changes in the Church's attitude toward Latin, government authority, Judaism, natural law and the sacrament of penance.

Mr Wills believes that Pope Francis, too, understands that history runs from past to present, not the other way.

The author has high hopes for this Pope because Francis himself has changed.

An autocratic Jesuit superior has turned into wildly popular Pope who stresses mercy over judgment.

"Pope Francis, like Chesterton, does not see the Church as changeless, as permanent, as predictable, but as a thing of surprises," Mr Wills wrote.

"And he has, in his pontificate so far, surprised many by things he has said or done."

Francis may not change Church teaching himself, Mr Wills believes, but he can set in motion a chain of events that lead to change.

The historian cited Vatican II's vindication of the ideas of silenced American theologian Fr John Courtney Murray as an example of positive change by the Church.

Vatican II likewise overcame the Church's deplorable history of anti-Semitism with Nostra Aetate, Mr Wills wrote.

A renewed attitude to authority, Mr Wills hopes, will be based on the Word Incarnate, Christ living in the body of the Church, vivified by both Scripture and tradition.

In previous books, Mr Wills challenged the historicity of Church teaching on priests, sacraments and transubstantiation.

His latest book also charges that natural law has failed to produce a credible set of principles to guide modern sexual morality.

Sources

• Philly.com
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In an interview with Macleans.ca, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills said Francis hasn't asserted his power and to do so would be a "weakening" thing for him.

"Instead, he's yielding power constantly," Mr Wills said.

"He's trying to share power, which is really a way to keep it and a way to make change happen."

The historian cited the case of last year's extraordinary synod on the family, which, he said, Francis handled brilliantly.

"The marriage and family synod last fall seemed like a setback to a lot of people, but I think he handled it very well.

"Other synods didn't publish their results, their procedures or anything, and popes could just totally ignore what they said.

"Francis undercut the whole thing by saying, ‘Publish'."

Mr Wills said this sort of openness is reason for hope.

"That's not letting the Curia play its game of secrecy and backhanded action," he said.

"Secrecy was always a terrible aspect of the Church."

Mr Wills sees hope for the Church because he sees this Pope favouring change coming from the "bottom up", from the people.

"He's very similar to John XXIII, who called together the bishops at Vatican II, but issued no marching orders," Mr Wills said.

"He intervened only to prevent some bishops from being frozen out."

Mr Wills, who is Catholic himself, has just written a book called "The future of the Church under Pope Francis".

The book is aimed at Catholics who hold that the Church is immutable.

"It helps, in holding such a position," Mr Wills wrote, "not to know much history."

He cites a former Church ban on usury and attacks on democratic government, which were never formally renounced.

But the Church simply stopped talking about them after it saw the People of God had moved on.

Mr Wills sees the same process underway for contraception and confession.

Other recent books of his include "Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit" and "Why Priests? A Failed Tradition".

Sources

• MacLeans.ca
• Crisis Magazine
• Image: Crisis Magazine

In 1892, he went gum digging in Northland, then tried his hand at gold mining on the West Coast. He settled in Hokitika, where he married and raised a family. His youngest daughter, Gertrude, was my grandmother.

Maori genealogical narratives go back many more generations than this, suggesting, along with radiocarbon dating of the earliest burial sites, that the first Polynesians arrived here some 800 years ago.

But how many were there? And where did they come from?

The pattern of mutations in the DNA of modern humans reveals that if you go back far enough, we all came from Africa - all people alive today have a common ancestor who lived in Africa 160,000 years ago.

About 60,000 years ago, our human ancestors began to migrate out of Africa. Recent discoveries suggest that as they travelled, they occasionally interbred with other hominids, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Work by population geneticist Spencer Wells, director of the National Geographic's Genographic Project, and Lisa Matisoo-Smith, professor of biological anthropology at University of Otago and the Genographic Project's Oceania investigator, is filling in the gaps between family genealogies and the broad narratives about our species' journey from Africa. Continue reading.

More on the Genographic Project in NZ can be found at genographic.com

Source: The Listener

Image: National Geographic

We need things: keepsakes, stuff, tokens, tchotchkes, knickknacks, bits and pieces, junk and treasure.

We carry special objects in our pockets and purses, or place them on shelves and desks in our homes and offices.

As profane and ordinary as the objects may be, they can also be extraordinary. Some things even become objects of transcendence.

Devout people of faith, across religious traditions, often denigrate material goods, suggesting the really real is beyond what can be seen, felt, and heard.

Yet a closer look at religious histories reveals a heart-felt, enduring love for things.

Objects large and small, valuable and worthless are there from the beginning of traditions, creating memories and meanings for the devotees who pray and worship, love and share, make pilgrimage and make music.

To look at religious histories through objects is to follow a new path of historical thinking, with recent studies examining tea, cod, tulips, guns, germs and steel, and how each of these has in its own way "changed the world."

Similar projects can be seen in the British Museum's "A History of the World in 100 Objects," the New York Times' "A History of New York in 50 Objects" or Smithsonian magazine's "101 Objects that Made America."

My interest here is not simply to trail a popular publishing lead, but to say that an understanding of religion is incomplete if it ignores the material things that make it part of what it is.

With that, here is "A History of Religion in 11 Objects"... Continue reading.

Source: HuffingtonPost

Image: The stone of anointing - known as the place where Joseph of Arimathea had Jesus' body prepared for burial Flickr: Guillaume Paumier

Orchestrated under the Israel Antiques Authority (IAA) with support from Google, the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is a free, online archive comprised of thousands of high resolution fragments.

History, now, is literally brought to the homes of people everywhere, accessible by computer and smart phone.

As IAA General Director Shuka Dorfman says on the library's website:

"We have succeeded in recruiting the best minds and technological means to preserve this unrivalled cultural heritage treasure which belongs to all of us, so that the public with a touch of the screen will be able to freely access history in its fullest glamour."

The first of the scrolls was discovered in 1947 in the West Bank, in what is often called one of the most important archaeological finds in history, and certainly in the 20th century. Continue reading.

Source: HuffingtonPost

Image: Fragment from the Tobit scroll, an apocryphal text from Second Temple times. Shai Halevi, IAA