Fr David Arms SSC - Photo:St Columbans Mission Society
He may not have the gift of tongues, but Fr David Arms does have a gift for languages. His linguistic expertise produced dictionaries and grammatical guides for the mostly undocumented Parkari Kholi language of Pakistan and the lingua franca of the Subanen people of the southern Philippines.
He later turned his attention to Hindustani as spoken in Fiji, spending many a day listening to a farmer with no formal education. The personal attention delighted the man and he would order his wife to prepare a good curry for each meeting.
On one occasion, the farmer left his tobacco tin just beyond easy reach. He shouted for his wife, who even though busy cooking, responded promptly. “Hand me my tobacco,” he barked. Obediently, she stooped and retrieved the tin. “Now carry on with the cooking,” he ordered. Fr Dave, as he liked to be called, later reminisced in amusement, “If I am ever reincarnated, I want to be an Indian man!”
In 1987, he headed a Columban translation service that produced a Fijian language version of the lectionary of biblical readings. The service also translated the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament and had them included in a new edition of the Fijian bible. Next, it tackled the sacramentary, which the Vatican accepted in 2015. Such careful work is time-consuming and exacting, but essential to the life of the Church.
However, Fr Dave was not just an armchair missionary. As parish priest of the Lau and Kadavu islands in the 1970s, he travelled extensively by boat and by foot visiting his far-flung Fijian flock, on one occasion dodging a cyclone, on another floating helplessly with a seized engine, and regularly slipping and sliding up and down boggy hills.
Fr Arms (right) with lowane Gukibau (left) and Setefano, the first two men from Fiji to join the Columban formation programme. - Photo: St Columbans Mission Society
On an overnight ferry trip with the then-prime minister, Ratu Mara, he was mortified when his honourable companion insisted that, as his priest, he take the lower bunk, and further embarrassed to find himself in the front row at the official welcome.
One of his particular concerns was justice in Fiji’s electoral system. As a member of the civic Citizens Constitutional Forum after the 1987 coup d’état, he did extensive research into voting systems at Victoria University in New Zealand. Confidence in his research was bolstered at a conference on the topic, when he realised he knew more than the guest speaker. He then took his proposal for a proportional representative system to a constitutional reform commission, but failed to convince, and a first past the post system won the day.
In 1987, he headed a Columban translation service that produced a Fijian language version of the lectionary of biblical readings. The service also translated the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament and had them included in a new edition of the Fijian bible.
Observer status at three elections between 1999 and 2006, and membership of the Electoral Commission armed him sufficiently to ably demonstrate the unfair nature of the first past the post system, and the substance of his argument for proportional voting was finally adopted in 2013, six years after the country suffered a fourth coup.
The boy from Wellington in New Zealand contributed to mission in highly specialised areas during his almost 50 years in Fiji. He trekked the path of pastoral ministry with tender concern and walked the national stage with humility.
He will mark his 60th anniversary of ordination on June 29 from retirement in New Zealand, as we salute his unique contribution to the lives of people in many lands.
Columban Fr Frank Hoare lives and works in Fiji.
Listen to "A diamond anniversary for an exemplary missionary"
Related links
- Read more from The Far East - June 2022
