“Cultivating the worst form of sectarianism”: conviction and controversy in the establishment of denominational colleges in Australian universities, with particular reference to the University of and to the centenary of St Leo’s College.

A paper further developed to mark the centenary in 2017 of St Leo’s College, , and the continuing place of denominational colleges in Australian universities.

Dr Ian Walker1

My first ‘close encounter’ with the University of Queensland was in 1997 when I was met at airport by the now late Emeritus Professor Lawrence Ernest (Lawrie) Lyons, the first professor of physical chemistry at UQ from 1963 to 1987. A distinguished scientist and Fellow of Academy of Science, he had previously been a senior lecturer at Sydney University during which time he, and his wife Alison, were key figures in the formation of the ‘New University Colleges Council’ (NUCC) that established New College at UNSW, opened in 1969, and Robert Menzies College at Macquarie University, opened in 1973. I had just begun my research on the foundation of denominational colleges in , and Lawrie and Alison generously agreed to be interviewed and to have me stay overnight at their home in Kenmore, along the Moggill Road. Lawrie, then 75, drove as he lived – determined to get where he needed

1 Head, Toad Hall, Australian National University (from 2010) and a Past President, University Colleges Australia. Ian Walker is a former Dean at New College UNSW (1994-2002) and Principal of The Kensington Colleges UNSW (2002-2009). From 2011-2014, he was also Head of Ursula Hall ANU. Ian completed a PhD thesis at UNSW in 2002 on the history of denominational colleges in Australian universities; he is a member of the Board of St Mark’s National Theological Centre, Canberra, and is Chair of Trustees of the (Sir Robert) Lucas-Tooth Scholarship. He is a former Chair of the General Committee of the Bible Society (NSW) and from 2002-2009 was Chair of the Council of St Catherine’s School, Waverley NSW, the oldest Anglican Girls’ School in Australia.

1 to go, his mind racing ahead of wherever it had just been, and in all directions with no-one daring to get in the way; or, if anyone did, he would find the quickest way around! Coronation Drive and into Moggill Road was an initiation into Lawrie’s brilliant and ‘fiery’ mind and a rather breath-holding introduction to Brisbane as we weaved towards eventual safety and wonderful hospitality at their home! Lawrie formed ISCAST – the Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology – an Australian organisation dedicated to exploring the interface between science and the Christian faith; indeed, highly relevant to the topic of religion and the university and to the issues of sectarian interests and their interface with our secular higher education institutions. Of course, Archbishop Duhig, who founded St Leo’s College and was keenly interested in the sciences, set up in its first grounds an observatory; and at a dinner in the College in 1919, the Reverend Father John McCarthy, then of Red Hill, noted that no secular science was without a bearing on religion, and that the role of theology was to check the other sciences and keep them in harmony with God’s revealed truth.2

“A people’s university”: In the debates that took place in 1910 and 1911 within the Senate of the newly established University of Queensland around matriculation requirements for entry to the Faculties of Arts, Science, and Engineering, a strong opponent of proposed language requirements was Andrew Henry Barlow, then a member of the Legislative Council and Minister without Portfolio, and a former Secretary for Public Instruction. The majority of the Senate, including the first Chancellor, Sir William MacGregor, who had also been Governor of Queensland since 1909, believed that the requirements of Latin or Greek for the Faculty of Arts, and French or German for Science and Engineering, were in the best interests of the

2 T. P. Boland University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1986, p.177

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University if it were to acquire a status equal to that of sister universities in other states and in Great Britain.3

Andrew Barlow had been a promoter of wider opportunities of education throughout the State and was concerned that the proposed language requirements would restrict such opportunity and favour pupils of the schools within Brisbane, especially the Grammar Schools which followed the traditional English model with curricular dominated by classical subjects such as Latin and Greek. There had been some provisions made, for example, for extra matriculation classes in technical colleges that had been established by this time, but it was not until 1912 that the Government began to develop a system of free, State secondary high schools throughout Queensland. In November 1911, Barlow wrote to the then Secretary for Public Instruction, Kenneth McDonald Grant, urging him to consider carefully the matriculation requirements so that the University should be “a people’s University, that its benefits should be available to persons in all parts of the State …” He noted that “there is a certain body in the Senate who seem determined to make the University of Queensland a shabby copy of the University of Oxford … The University of Queensland is in my opinion not an Institution for the study of cricket, golf, or other athletic sports, and I have opposed the outcry for further ground in the removal of the University in order that they may get affiliated Colleges and cultivate the worst form of sectarianism.”4

Barlow further wrote to Kenneth Grant that he believed the Chancellor and others in the Senate “are restricting the University of Queensland to a University of ‘Brisbane’, by their exclusive, antiquated ideas founded on ‘precedent’ which

3 E. Clarke Correspondence related to conflict between Governor MacGregor and A. Barlow MLC, concerning matriculation standards at the University of Queensland, 1910-11 http://www.textqueensland.com.au/item/article/ebcb744b3cd234b23e6f6f79df76c95e 4 Ibid.

3 may or may not apply in old and thickly settled countries, but are not applicable here.” He noted that, with the Governor in the Chair (as Chancellor) “it was impossible to have free discussion unless you happen to agree with him.”5

Sir William MacGregor made it clear that “if the requirements of the Queensland University were reduced below reasonable University standards, I should at once cease my connection with it.”6 While the new University’s non-Executive ‘Vice- Chancellor’ and former Headmaster of Brisbane Grammar School, Reginald Roe, held similar views to Barlow and was strongly supported by him, it was clear that the majority of the Senate favoured, along with the Chancellor, the language requirements for matriculation, which came into operation in 1913. MacGregor was determined that the University would take its place and standing alongside those already established in Australia and with those of Britain, especially in its standards of research which he believed could improve the State. No contrary argument concerning matriculation would cause him to waver, as, in the words of biographer R. B. Joyce “MacGregor, with his natural obstinacy and conviction that his arguments must be right, never found compromise easy …” 7

At the time of the University’s foundation, Archbishop , who had succeeded Brisbane’s first Catholic Bishop, (or O’Quinn as he later called himself), in 1882, was in poor health, but he trusted Catholic interests in the foundation and formation of the new University to politicians Frank McDonnell and Andrew Thynne as members of the first Senate. Thynne, who later became Vice-Chancellor and then Chancellor, argued strongly against the views of Andrew Barlow.8 Archbishop Dunne, like his predecessor who in 1867

5 E. Clarke op. cit. 6 Ibid. 7 R. B. Joyce Sir William MacGregor Oxford University Press, 1971 p.90 8 Brian F. Stevenson Thynne, Andrew Joseph (1847 – 1927) Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol 12, (MUP) 1990

4 had proposed a university as an examining body with teaching of a prescribed syllabus in affiliated colleges, also supported the establishment of a university and was keen that land be allocated on the university site for a residential Catholic college.9

Proposals for a university had been made since the 1860s, but the issues of school education, the projected costs and perceived “heavy drag on the taxpayer”10 involved in developing further and higher education, and the view that Queensland needed something different from what was seen as the more traditional institutions established in Sydney and Melbourne, and later in Adelaide, meant a half century of delay. There was a focus on practical needs and purposes, such as for mining and agriculture, and a suspicion of the value of the more theoretical aspects of cultural and scientific study and research. Samuel Walker Griffith, Attorney-General and later Premier, Queensland Chief Justice and first Chief Justice of Australia, played a key and influential role in promoting a university, but noted in 1875 that “no doubt there will someday be a University established here.”11 Another key player, John Douglas Story, later to be honorary full-time Vice-Chancellor12, was a pupil under Reginald Roe’s Headmastership at Brisbane Grammar in the 1880s and was recommended by Roe to work in the Directorate of Education – his application being minuted with the comment: ‘Nice intelligent look – rather small and lean and does not look robust. Brain … stronger than body.’13 He became Under-Secretary for Public Instruction to Andrew Barlow and was appointed as a Government

9 Neil J. Byrne Robert Dunne 1830-1917 Archbishop of Brisbane: A Biography Thesis submitted to the Department of History, University of Queensland, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, September, 1989, p.242 10 Harrison Bryan The University of Queensland 1910 – 1960: An Essay Towards a History Sydney 1966 p.6 11 Ibid. p.5 12 His successor, Fred Schonell, was to be the first salaried full-time Vice-Chancellor. His grandson, John D Story became 13th Chancellor of UQ 2009-2016 13 Georgina Story Story, John Douglas (1869-1966) Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol 12 (MUP) 1990

5 representative on the first Senate, along with Barlow and under the Vice- Chancellorship of his former Headmaster.

Wrangling occurred not only over the matriculation requirements for entry to the University, but also over the location and size of the site for it to commence. With consideration of the need for a larger Government House than the current one at Gardens Point, and to mark the 50th anniversary of the Colony of Queensland and its separation from in 1859, Sir William MacGregor moved out of the Gardens Point residence in 1910, making way for the University to occupy what was then called Old Government House. Part of the considerations for the site was that the University would be co-located with a Central Technical College, much later, of course, forming the Queensland University of Technology.

“A thoroughly unsectarian university” with “no residential colleges”: In the Legislative Council debates on the setting up of the University in 1909, George Wilkie Gray, a convert to Roman Catholicism and who, on being appointed a Minister without Portfolio, was accused by an Opposition member of the Council of being “a mere spat thrown out to catch the Catholic vote”, noted that the University was to be established on very different lines to those established in the Southern States; it was to be a University on ‘modern lines’, and affiliated with a Central Technical College. He noted the Premier’s view of the importance of technical education for the future development of Queensland and that it was desirable to connect the College and the University in such a way that they were practically one institution.14 He also noted that the former Minister for Education, Andrew Barlow, who had been in charge of the passage of the University of Queensland Bill, had “pointed out that there are to

14 Queensland Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) Legislative Council, Tuesday 23 November 1909, p.346 https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/hansard/1909/1909_11_23_C.pdf

6 be no residential colleges, such as are found in connection with the older Universities in the Southern States” and that consequently there was not the need for space “that would be taken up for those colleges”. 15 Barlow had declared that the inclusion of colleges and playing fields would encourage idleness, and that “the evil of sectarianism would creep in to an organisation required by law to give no official recognition to political or religious creeds.”16 If the University required residences, boarding houses could be run in the town under University Senate regulations. “I am entirely opposed to (affiliated denominational colleges) … I do not think they do any good. We want a thoroughly unsectarian University.” 17

The University of Queensland Act allowed for the affiliation of institutions (such as – as named in the Act - The School of Mines at Charters Towers, the Agricultural College at Gatton, the Central Technical College, and the Bacteriological Institute, Brisbane) but non-Government institutions would not be assisted by any Government provision, grant or subsidy. The Act did allow for the licensing and supervision of “boarding houses intended for the reception of students” and, while forbidding any religious test for admission to the University or for the holding of any office in or to graduate from the University, the licensing of such boarding-houses and the affiliation of any educational establishment would not preclude “any religious observance or regulation enforced in them.”18 Unlike the earlier universities of Sydney and Melbourne,

15 Ibid. p.347 Barlow was for a second time Secretary for Public Instruction February 1908 – June 1909 16 M. I. Thomas A Place of Light and Learning: The University of Queensland’s First Seventy-five Years University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia Qld., 1985, p.97 17 Philip Raymont Donaldson’s College: Archbishop St Clair Donaldson and the Foundation of St John’s College, The University of Queensland Unpublished MEd thesis, University of Melbourne 1998, p.56 18 The University of Queensland Act of 1909 (9 Edw.VII. No. 7) http://ozcase.library.qut.edu.au/qhlc/documents/UniversityQueensland1909_8EdwVII7.pdf

7 but more like the University of Adelaide, the site excluded the place and role of denominational colleges.

Unlike, however, the University of Adelaide, there would be no long delay in the churches establishing residences in association with Queensland’s university. Church leaders, such as Archbishop Dunne and Brisbane’s Anglican Archbishop St Clair Donaldson, had strongly advocated for such a tertiary institution, and were disappointed with the University site, hoping, as recorded in the ‘The (Anglican) Church Chronicle’ “that Brisbane will soon follow the sensible example of Sydney and Melbourne, and encourage by grants of land otherwise the building of denominational Colleges where the undergraduates may obtain the advantages of that social life, which contributes at least one half of the benefits of University education.” 19 It would, however, be on their own land, and at their own expense.20

The example of sectarian rivalry in Sydney: Albeit excluded from the University site and with no special support from the Government, there was nevertheless not the same level of sectarian rivalry or church opposition that was such a mark of the foundation of Australia’s first university some sixty years earlier and which so clearly influenced the pattern of establishment of Australia’s secular universities, with religion mainly restricted to affiliated colleges on the side, or outside. The 1830s in the growing settlement of Sydney saw a strengthening of rivalry between particularly three denominational leaders – Anglican Bishop William Grant Broughton, Presbyterian John Dunmore Lang, and Catholic Archbishop John Bede Polding - especially in relation to the development and control of schools, and in their

19 Philip Raymont An Australian Hybrid: Australia’s Universities and Their Colleges History of Education Review Vol. 30, No. 2 2001, p.79 20 Ibid.

8 ambitions for tertiary education and theological training. Opposing moves to develop a system of public elementary schools in the Colony, Broughton, for example, was insistent that “a distinguishing rank must be assigned to the truly Christian scheme of affording general education founded upon the basis of revealed religion. Upon any other system, the population of a country may acquire knowledge but not wisdom.” 21

Sectarian rivalry, including English Benedictine and Irish Catholic rivalry, was at play at a time in the mid-1800s when transportation of convicts to New South Wales had ceased, with a growing population of immigrants and free-settlers beginning to seek more responsibility in the government of the Colony and the determination of their own affairs. It was a struggle, however, in coming to terms with both the familiar established practices and constraints of British society and education, that included in England the religious tests for entry to and/or graduation from at this stage unreformed Oxford, Cambridge and Durham universities, and the still largely unfamiliar challenges but perceived opportunities of this rather alien land half a world away. Historian Manning Clark, in the first James Duhig Memorial Lecture delivered at St Leo’s College in 1979, colourfully noted that the first Europeans “recoiled in horror” at the sight of Australia: “They found a land of flies, and sand, uncommonly large natural monsters … where everything was topsy-turvy, everything was upside down. Swans were black and not white; the land was barren; the animals, such as kangaroos, were incomplete, walking as they did on two legs rather than four. Indeed, in the eyes of men who believed in a divine creator this was the land

21 E. C. Rowland A Century of the English Church in New South Wales Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1948, p.50

9 which God did not finish; it was the incomplete land, the land God created on the afternoon of the sixth day when he was very tired and possibly bored.”!22

Things were changing, however, and there was a growing desire to prepare those who would further bring change to this rapidly developing Colony – in government and administration, agriculture and commerce, in trade and transport, and in professional services such as medicine and law. In the newly formed Legislative Council of NSW in the 1840s, William Charles Wentworth, who was the son of a convict mother and a Fleet Surgeon father, and who had developed a distaste for exclusion and unmerited privilege, became the principal advocate for a university to give more equal opportunity and to provide the local means of further education, rather than the then necessity of travel to England, as he had done to qualify in law. In his Australian newspaper he had attacked the growing role in the Colony of the Church of England in the provision of schools, and what he termed the privileges enjoyed by “ruddy-faced chaplains”. 23

A University for “the better advancement of religion and morality”: In proposing a university in 1849, Wentworth spoke of an institution kept entirely free from the teachers of any religion whatever, open to all, though influenced by none.24 He was conscious of the newly established University of London, open to dissenters with no religious tests for entry, examination or graduation; secular education was “absolutely indispensable”25; rather than taught, religion would be instilled.26 The University would be “a fountain of

22 Manning Clark The Quest for an Australian Identity James Duhig Memorial Lecture 1, University of Queensland, UQ Press, St Lucia 1980 pp.4&5 23 Ross Border Church and State in Australia 1788-1872: a Constitutional Study of the Church of England in Australia SPCK London, 1962, p.68 24 Sydney Morning Herald 7th September 1849, p.2 25 C. Turney et al Australia’s First: A History of the University of Sydney, Volume 1, 1850-1939 Hale & Iremonger, Sydney NSW, 1991, p.43 26 Ibid.

10 knowledge at whose springs all may drink, be they Christian, Mohammedan, Jew or Hindu.”27 Wentworth also proposed the exclusion of clergy from the Senate of the University, but later compromised with the addition of representatives of the Church of England, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches. An offer to Bishop Broughton to join the Senate was refused, with Broughton declaring that the University “will be the great emporium of false and anti- church views in this hemisphere.” 28

The Sydney University Act of Incorporation was passed in 1850, with the preamble noting that the purposes of the University were for “the better advancement of religion and morality, and the promotion of useful knowledge …”29 It was made clear that denominational residential colleges could be affiliated where religious instruction could take place, but the teaching of the University would be secular. Despite Bishop Broughton’s and others’ objections to what they saw as an ‘infidel’ institution, a number of clergy and influential Anglican laymen, led by the Chief Justice of NSW, Sir Alfred Stephen, promoted the need for a residential college, noting that it was “the duty of Members of the Church of England promptly to make provision for the moral and religious superintendence of their youth by the establishment of a separate College; independent as to its internal discipline and rules, but in permanent alliance with the University as at present constituted.” 30 Compromise resulted in the Affiliated Colleges Act of 1854. This enabled land to be set aside for, and for Government money to assist the construction of, four denominational Colleges in which religious instruction could take place, but on condition that residents

27 J. J. Auchmuty ‘The Idea of the University in its Australian Setting: an Historical Survey’ in The Australian University Vol.1, No.2, September 1963, p.148 28 G. P. Shaw Patriarch and Patriot: William Grant Broughton 1788-1853, Colonial Statesman and Ecclesiastic Academy Press for Melbourne University Press, Brisbane, 1978 p.246 29 C. Turney et al op. cit. Appendix 1, p.630 30 H. E. Barff A Short Historical Account of the University of Sydney Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1902, p.50

11 were matriculated students of the University, and that they attended the lectures and took the examinations of the professors of University. The foundation stone of St Paul’s College was laid on 25th January 1856 – the ceremony presided over by Bishop Frederic Barker who succeeded Broughton following Broughton’s death in England in 1853. St Paul’s, however, would not be a place of theological training for Anglican students of the University, with Bishop Barker setting up a separate College, Moore’s College in Liverpool, in the same year – later, somewhat ironically, to be co-located with St Paul’s College at Newtown under Bishop Barry.

Sydney and Catholic St. John’s: The Sydney University pattern was not just influenced by the University of London, but also by the setting up of the secular Queen’s Colleges in Ireland, with the central examining Queen’s University of Ireland also incorporated in 1850. The University and its associated colleges were seen as a “grievous peril” to the Catholic faith and would prove a “detriment to religion”.31 Archbishop Polding was, like Broughton, opposed to the whole idea of a secular university where students would return home to their parents “shipwrecked in faith, ruined in morals, professed Deists or Pantheists.” 32 His view was to change, perhaps very much influenced by his Coadjutor, Bishop Charles Henry Davis, who had a background association with the University of London and worked much more closely with the setting up of Sydney University and was a member of the first Senate. He was described by the first Chancellor, Sir Charles Nicholson, as the person to whom “the University was indebted more deeply than to any other individual”, especially as he had promoted “that cordial co-

31 Peter Cunich Archbishop Polding’s Idea of a University Paper presented at an International Colloquium on the Role of Catholic Colleges in the Modern University, St John’s College, University of Sydney, Anchor Books, 2008, p.16 32 Ibid. p.17

12 operation on behalf of the objects of the university amongst all sects and parties on which its beneficial operations so mainly depended.”33 Bishop Davis died in 1854, but Archbishop Polding came to see that support for the University and for a Catholic College would develop a generation of Catholics with increased political influence in the Colony, and that a College would provide a counter- balance to the more worldly studies of the secular University.34 Polding had taken a place on the University Senate in 1856, and, with the foundation of St. Paul’s College, was keen for a Catholic College to open as soon as possible, noting that “if we have not been the first in the field, let us, as befits our name, redeem the delay by an energy and devotion so much the more noble and sustained.” 35 A Bill to incorporate the College of St. John the Evangelist was passed in November 1857, with Archbishop Polding laying the foundation stone of the Wilkinson Wardell ‘Gothic Revival’ building in January 1860. Prior to this, the College was in temporary quarters under the acting Rectorship of the first Australian-born Catholic priest, Daniel Maurus O’Connell, who was followed in 1860 by the Reverend Dr John Forrest, an Irish priest recommended by, among others, Cardinal Cullen of Dublin and the ex-Anglican priest and theologian (and later to be Cardinal), John Henry Newman. Forrest had taught at the St Laurence O’Toole’s University School in Dublin under the Presidency of Dr James Quinn, appointed in 1859 as Brisbane’s first Catholic Bishop. The start of their duties in Australia almost coincided.36

Both St Paul’s and St John’s struggled to get students, with the first Warden of St Paul’s, the Reverend Henry Hose, eventually being dismissed for failing in his obligations to give religious instruction and lectures, and for twice being found

33 Ibid. p.19 34 Ibid. p.22 35 Patrick O’Farrell (Ed) Documents in Australian Catholic History, Volume 1: 1788 – 1884 Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1969, No.53, p. 199 36 Forrest was installed as Rector on 7 September 1860; Quinn arrived in Brisbane on 12 March 1861.

13 to be in a state of intoxication, once on a Manly ferry37; and St. John’s Irish Rector never receiving a visit to the College from the Benedictine Archbishop Polding, and contending with the low educational standards of country students and low finances, with so much having been spent on the building. When Polding’s coadjutor and successor, Roger Bede Vaughan, arrived in Sydney in 1874 and took up residence at St John’s, he “found it a ruin without a student!” 38 Vaughan took over as Rector of the College in that year, referring to Forrest as “a most objectionable, whisky-drinking, purple-nosed little Irish priest”39, though it is noted that at the time of his death at Balmain, Sydney, in 1883, the press referred to his “liberal and enlightened views” with “sympathies … as broad as his heart was kind.” 40 The College was not officially opened until 1875; Polding’s health was failing, so the College was solemnly blessed by Bishop Quinn of Brisbane, with the Rector delivering the inaugural address.41 Vaughan, who continued to reside at St John’s after he became Archbishop in 1877, saw the College in pious, rather than necessarily prophetic, terms, as a place where “would be produced the really Christian gentleman … a pattern of what is morally and intellectually beautiful in the teachings of the Gospel.”42

“A very difficult experiment”: One of the first three professors of the University and its Principal, Dr John Woolley, referred to the setting up of denominational colleges in association with the secular University as a “very difficult experiment”, but one that he

37 A. E. Cahill Archbishop Vaughan and St John’s College, University of Sydney Australian Catholic Historical Society Journal, 1992, p.38; and C. Turney et al op. cit. pp. 137 & 158 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. p.42 40 Mary Shanahan Forest, John (1820-1883) Australian Dictionary of Biography 1972. Refer also: Robert Lehane Forever Carnival: A story of priests, professors and politics in 19th century Sydney Ginninderra Press, Charnwood ACT, 2004, pp. 7,8 & 299 41 Peter Cunich op. cit. pp. 27-28 42 P. O’Farrell The and Community: An Australian History NSW University Press, Sydney, Revised Ed., 1992, p. 178

14 hoped would succeed. He was, however, to reflect to one of his students just prior to leaving for England in 1864 that he believed there was a ‘denominational conspiracy’ to undermine the University and enshrine the colleges as the principal teaching bodies.43 If that was to transpire, Woolley would not see it as he drowned in a sea disaster in the Bay of Biscay on his return journey. A Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly of NSW, appointed in September 1859 to inquire into the growth of the University, concluded that “a grievous mistake has been made in the establishment of Affiliated Colleges, which are not only not at all necessary as adjuncts to the University, but actually involve in their association with it a violation of the great principle on which it was founded as a strictly secular institution.” 44 This was very much the tenor of Andrew Barlow’s objections some fifty years later in the establishment of the University of Queensland.

Despite the strong concerns expressed in the Report on Sydney University, they were largely ignored. Indeed, there had been a recommendation that those associated with St Paul’s College be paid out and that the buildings be used as accommodation for the University’s professors.45 Nevertheless, there had already been compromise; there were the inter-relationships of decision- makers within church, college and campus, and connections in the wider community; and much was being considered in the provision of residence for students and for their supervision and care. The Report certainly, however, confirmed the central place of the teaching of the secular University, and a pragmatic if not altogether principled view of the relationship between priests

43 Julia Horne Political Machinations and Sectarian Intrigue in the Making of Sydney University Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 36 (2015) p.10 http://www.australiancatholichistoricalsociety.com.au/pdfs/achs%20journal%202016%20altered%20final.pdf

44 Report of the Select Committee on the Sydney University Votes & Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, NSW, Sydney, 1859-1860, p.9 45 Ibid. p.12

15 and professors. With the developments that followed in the foundation of the Presbyterian St Andrew’s College, incorporated by Act of Parliament in December 1867, and, for example, in the setting up of the University of Melbourne, Australia’s second, in 1853 and the foundation of its first residential colleges, the pattern of compromise and co-existence in the relationship of the sacred and the secular - albeit in the context of the past and potential issues of conviction and controversy – became established as Australia’s first six universities emerged by the outbreak of World War I, and some twenty-two residential colleges set up by the outbreak of World War II. The denominational colleges represented some 87% of student accommodation at that time.

As the secular universities and denominational colleges developed, so did the involvement and influence of church leaders, though in no way to the point of particular religious sectarian domination or control. Indicative of the developing sectarian-secular compromise, the universities of Melbourne, Adelaide and Western Australia had Anglican bishops as Chancellors, even though, for example, South Australia had been founded as a ‘paradise of dissent’ and the University as a place where “sectarian or denominational tendencies would be avoided in (its) teaching and management”46; Louisa MacDonald, first Principal of the non-denominational Women’s College, established at Sydney University in 1892, insisted on students attending morning prayers, as “prayers are an excellent means of enforcing punctuality” 47; and the fifth Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, where the secular and anti-sectarian character of Australian universities was set, was the Reverend Canon Robert Allwood, Rector of St James Anglican Church, King Street, Sydney. Canon Allwood was Vice-

46 W. G. K. Duncan & R. A Leonard The University of Adelaide 1874-1974 Rigby, Adelaide, 1973, p.4 47 Jeanette Beaumont & W. Vere Hole Letters from Louisa, A woman’s view of the 1890’s based on the letters of Louisa MacDonald, first principal of the Women’s College, University of Sydney Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1996, p.33

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Chancellor from 1869 to 1883 – a precedent indeed for the later appointment as Vice-Chancellor of Anglican priest, the Reverend Dr Michael Spence.

Archbishop Duhig, St Leo’s and other denominational colleges: The two leading churchmen in Brisbane at the time of the foundation of the University of Queensland were Catholic Archbishop Robert Dunne and Anglican Archbishop St Clair Donaldson. Dunne had long supported the idea of a university for Queensland, and for a Catholic college to be affiliated with it. The lack of a university was believed to have caused problems in the development of secondary education, including Catholic secondary schools. The expense of sending students to Sydney University was too great for many families and there was often no point seen in moving on from elementary to secondary education.48 With the Report of the Queensland University Commission in 1891, Archbishop Dunne, while concerned with the secular proposals including that there could not be a Catholic school of theology within the University, urged continuing support, noting that “it would not do for us to have backed out and said that ‘we would not play’. The University will go on and we must hang on to it and keep it as right, or as little wrong, as we can.” 49 Dunne bequeathed two properties on Wickham Terrace, one of which, ‘Abbotsford’, would be used as a residential College for young male students of the new University.

Dunne’s successor on his death in 1917 was his Coadjutor since 1912 and former Bishop of Rockhampton, James Duhig. Archbishop Duhig had already played a part in the discussions about and the development of the University, and was present at its inauguration in December 1909. The Chancellor and Governor, Sir William MacGregor, thanked him for his support in establishing “a real

48 Neil J. Byrne Building other Towers: Archbishop Robert Dunne in Colonial Queensland Aquinas Memorial Lecture 1991, Australian Catholic University Qld Library, Brisbane QLD, 1992, p. 11 49 Neil J. Byrne op. cit. p.246

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University standard … you and your clergy, inspired by you, were a tower of strength to me, when it was being urged that we should adopt a standard which would not have failed to declass our University” – no doubt a reference to the views expressed, for example, by Andrew Barlow.50 Duhig set about, as a priority, the establishment in 1917 of St. Leo’s College in the bequeathed property of Archbishop Dunne, and it was opened in September of that year with Father Michael McKenna as the first Rector. Archbishop Duhig consulted with the then Rector of St. John’s College, Sydney University, Father Maurice O’Reilly, about a motto for St. Leo’s. O’Reilly was concerned that they could be guilty of plagiarism in choosing the motto of Oxford University ‘Dominus Illuminatio Mea’ – The Lord is my Light – to which Duhig dismissively responded: “We really did not know that the founders of Oxford had the same taste as yourself and ourselves.”

At the Brisbane Anglican Synod in 1900, Bishop William Webber, who had taken part in the earlier University Commission and, like Archbishop Dunne, had hoped that a theological college could be attached to a University but was clearly disturbed that theology would be excluded, protested what he saw “presumably in the interests of secularism” as a “back-hander given to the study and science of Theology … Much as I desire to see a University founded in Queensland, I would rather wait another decade than create difficulties for the future by a narrow, illiberal measure now … in ten years’ time we may know better.” 51

Ten years later, Webber’s successor, Anglican Archbishop St Clair Donaldson, was supportive of the University and of an associated residential college – accepting that the already established St Francis Theological College at Nundah

50 T. P. Boland op. cit. p.176 51 Bruce W. Upham Church and State: A Case-Study of Queensland to 1918 A thesis submitted to the Department of History, University of Queensland, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, May 1993, p.123

18 performed a different role from a more open and diverse denominational residence for students of the University. His eldest brother, Stuart, was Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was Cambridge Vice-Chancellor 1912 – 1913. To the Archbishop, university colleges “represented the indissoluble relationship between religion and education, out of which came the virtue of character”- the secular university could propagate knowledge but not produce character.52 Donaldson took a seat on the University Council and was instrumental in the foundation of St. John’s College, which was affiliated with the University in 1912, initially with a student body of 4 men in rented premises on River Terrace at Kangaroo Point.53

Emmanuel College was established by the Presbyterian Church in 1911 and opened on Wickham Terrace in 1912, and King’s College was established by the Methodist Church in 1912 and opened at Kangaroo Point in 1913. Apart from the non-denominational Women’s College54, opened in 1914, none of the first colleges received Government financial support. Support and affiliation was however given by the Vice-Chancellor, Reginald Roe, and the Senate, noting the need for and importance of residence for students, lectures and personal tuition to supplement the work of the professors, and the development of friendships, loyalty and keen public spirit that, wrote the Vice-Chancellor, flourished in the intimacy of college life.55

Despite the objections of parliamentarians such as Andrew Barlow, the colleges had strong advocates in Parliament as well as among State and professional

52 Philip Raymont Donaldson’s College: Archbishop St Clair Donaldson and the Foundation of St John’s College, The University of Queensland Unpublished MEd thesis, University of Melbourne, 1998, p.47 53 Alexander Philp Kidd The Brisbane Episcopate of St Clair Donaldson 1904-1921 PhD thesis, University of Queensland 1996, p.157 54 Philip Raymont An Australian Hybrid op.cit p.85 – the College was the only residence for women, non- sectarian and “open to all classes and creeds” (ref. to papers of J. D. Story) 55 Ibid. p.80

19 leaders, let alone leaders in the churches. The Reverend Dr Ernest Northcroft Merrington, a graduate of Sydney University, where he lived at St Andrew’s College, and of Edinburgh and Harvard University, from which he was one of, if not the first Australian to receive a PhD, became Minister of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Brisbane in 1910. In line with the influences of the Scottish Enlightenment, he denied any intention of either a university or a university residential college to turn out “well-mannered aristocratic gentlemen of leisure” but advocated for the value of “ancient studies” as an indispensable basis of a liberal education and of sound learning.56 Dr Merrington was the first President of the Emmanuel College Council, a member of the University of Queensland Senate 1916-1923, and then Master of Knox College at the University of Otago, Denedin, New Zealand.

A teacher and lawyer, Dr Edwin Wesley Howard Fowles was a member of the Queensland Legislative Council from 1912 to 1922. He attended Brisbane Grammar School and then the University of Melbourne where he lived at Ormond College. After teaching appointments he returned to Brisbane to practise law and in 1906 became the Organising Secretary of a ‘University Congress’ committee to work for the establishment of a University. A devout and leading Methodist layman, Fowles was also a member of a committee of the Methodist Conference to establish a university residential college and became the first President of the King’s College Council. He was also a member of the University of Queensland’s first Senate.

Both Emmanuel and King’s Colleges were established as theological colleges for their respective denominations as well as residential colleges for students of the

56 John D. Story AO The Spirit of Caledonia in the Formation of The University of Queensland Emmanuel Papers Number 11, Feb 2011 – a speech delivered at the Emmanuel College Convocation Dinner 20 Feb 2011, with reference to Prof Malcolm Thomis’s history of the University of Queensland.

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University. Indeed, the first clear objective of King’s College was “the training of our accepted candidates for the Ministry” – for them to “be instructed in the leading doctrines of the Methodist Church. The bearing of Church history and modern thought on our Christian beliefs and practice will be carefully explained to these men who are to preach the Gospel to us Sunday by Sunday.”57 At the same time, it was noted that “young men away from home, although attending the University, are exposed to great temptation. They feel the loneliness of life in a great city. They pine for congenial companionship … they will find (in an affiliated College) just the extra help they need in their studies, and the intellectual comradeship which means so much at the most critical stage of their development.”58 At the Foundation Ceremony of King’s College, the Governor and Chancellor, Sir William MacGregor, stated that “actually the idea of a College is the most natural thing in the world, for I know of no people in the world who are without a College or its equivalent. The aborigines of this continent, the Papuans and the Fijians all had their colleges, that is places where men were taught and were able to learn … I think such (Church) Colleges are essential … I venture to express the hope that the different denominational Colleges will not develop a sectarian character and outlook.”59

So the pattern of conviction and controversy, but also of compromise and co- existence, which was expressed in the establishment of denominational colleges in Australia’s very first universities, was also at play in the establishment of the first residential colleges within the University of Queensland. Over 50 years since what was seen as a “very difficult experiment”, the issues in the setting up of denominational colleges in Brisbane were perhaps even the more highlighted in

57 The Story of King’s College Within the University of Queensland – Commemorating the First Fifty Years 1913 to 1963 University of Queensland Fryer Memorial Library of Australian Literature (available on-line), p.10 58 Ibid 59 Ibid p.11

21 a context of a State seeking to differentiate its practical and aspirational needs and objectives from those in the south, and to have a University both address educational opportunity in terms of those particular needs as well as standards of scholarship at least equal to those elsewhere within Australia and beyond.

A Royal Commission established in Perth in 1909 to make recommendations for the establishment of a University of Western Australia adopted “the model which is just entering upon its work in Queensland and which in many ways is the most liberal and most in accord with modern requirements.”60 The ‘University of Western Australia Act’ of 1911 drew much from the University of Queensland Act’ of 1909.

As in Queensland and the other Australian States, there were critics of proposals to provide for church residential colleges and a colleges’ precinct at UWA, such as William Somerville, a trade unionist and industrial arbitrator, and a member of its first Senate. He viewed residential colleges as survivals of the bad, old world tradition of the University as an exclusive community and as places that herded young men together “in small coteries under a clergyman”, inconsistent with Australian democracy.61 Nevertheless, the Anglican St. George’s College opened in 1931, though, particularly as a result of financial difficulties as a result of the Great Depression, other denominational colleges were not established until after World War II.

An “invaluable” experiment: The immediate post-World War II decades saw an enormous increase in the demand for university enrolment and for student accommodation, especially the need to provide for students from Asia under the Colombo Plan. Beginning

60 F. Alexander Campus at Crawley: A Narrative and Critical Appreciation of the First Fifty Years of the University of Western Australia F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1963, pp.24-29 61 Ibid pp.514-515

22 with the Australian National University in 1946, a new wave of university development began that would see an increase from six to nineteen universities in Australia by 1975. The Menzies Government engaged Sir Keith Murray, then Chairman of the British University Grants Committee, to chair a Committee on Australian Universities to look at ways of providing for the long-term needs and development of universities in Australia. Its Report in 1958 recommended a funding body, the Australian Universities Commission, which would provide on a triennium basis funding for capital works for universities and for residential colleges and halls. The college system was commended by the Commission, noting the foresight of those who saw the importance of residence if university life is to attain full richness, and that “the College experiment in the universities has been an invaluable one” – one hundred years after Professor John Woolley had described it as a “very difficult one”.62 This was the period of the beginning of Commonwealth aid to State schools, with Prime Minister Menzies noting that “a religious background was of the greatest educational significance in the building of character”, somewhat as Archbishop Donaldson had declared about the role of denominational colleges.63 Menzies believed that secularism, in its exclusion of religion, was just as divisive and damaging as sectarianism. At the Cardinal’s Dinner in Sydney in 1964 he commented “I have always been a tremendous believer in schools and in colleges at universities which have a background in religion”64, with the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ reporting that “it is doubtful whether a gathering of Roman Catholic dignitaries has ever looked

62 Report of the Committee on Australian Universities The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1958, p.55 63 R. G. Menzies The Measure of the Years Cassell Australia Ltd, North Melbourne, Victoria, 1970, p.93 64 Bob Bessant Robert Gordon Menzies and Education in Australia in ‘Melbourne Studies in Education’ Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1977, p.87

23 upon a Presbyterian with such benevolence as Cardinal Gilroy and his bishops did upon Sir Robert Menzies on Thursday evening.”65

The new wave of universities, with the attendant Commonwealth funding, again raised a number of issues of conviction and controversy in the foundation of new denominational colleges at a time when universities themselves, to meet the rapidly increasing demand, were establishing their own secular colleges and halls, albeit much along traditional lines. Concerns were expressed by university staffs and students that the funding of secular residences should not be hampered by any provision for or priority given to denominational bodies, such as expressed by both the Australian National University Students’ Association and the ANU School of Pacific Studies, with a letter from the Registrar in 1964 to the Prime Minister’s Department stating that “within the University, a feeling has been vigorously expressed … that colleges established by religious institutions are educationally less satisfactory than University controlled halls in that they tend to encourage segregation on the basis of religious belief.”66

The Vice-Chancellors of Monash and New England universities were facing similar issues and seeking some advice from the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of New South Wales, Sir Philip Baxter, who had initiated the development of the University’s own ‘Kensington Colleges’ but was also dealing with requests to establish affiliated denominational colleges on or close to campus. Robert Madgwick, Vice-Chancellor of UNE, wrote to Baxter that “there is a good deal of opposition here to affiliated colleges … I am not particularly animated about (them) myself but there seems little point in opposing the

65 A. W. Martin Robert Menzies: A Life, Volume 2 1944-1978 Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Vic., 1999, p.507 66 Hohnen to Mr P. J. Lawler, Acting Secretary, PM Department, 6 April 1964, Noel Butlin Archives ANU A8144, 2.2.1.28, part 1

24 inevitable.”67 The inevitability no doubt related very much to the determination of the Commonwealth Government, as expressed by the then Minister for Education, John Gorton, that denominational colleges would be funded on an equal basis with halls of residence.68 This very much reflected Menzies’ view and also that of future Prime Minister Gorton, a graduate of Oxford who, while opposing any narrow sectarianism, believed that religion as well as literature and history played a significant part in raising “man above the savage”.69 University of Queensland’s Sir Fred Schonell thanked the Government for its generous subsidy policy and noted that “collegiate institutions will take advantage (of it) … and … provide for the further extension of residential accommodation at St. Lucia.”70

The “fight between secularism and religion”: In July 1961, the former Professor of Philosophy at Sydney University, John Anderson, declared “In any university the fight between secularism and religion is intense.”71 He was responding to a sermon delivered earlier in that month at Sydney’s Anglican St. Andrew’s Cathedral by the Archbishop of Sydney and Anglican Primate of Australia, Dr , who attacked what he called “those who are shamelessly teaching in our universities the same soul-destroying philosophies (as those taught in Marxist Communism) … breaking down the restraints of conscience … decrying the institution of marriage, urging our students to premarital sexual experience, advocating free love and the right of

67 Madgwick to Baxter, 3 November 1965 Affiliated Residential Colleges UNSW Archives FN: 59/U106Y/757/10, 63/U136/16727 68 J. G. Gorton, 25 September 1964 Australian Archives AA 1969/212 (16) 69 Alan Trengrove John Grey Gorton: an informal biography Cassell Australia, North Melbourne Vic., 1969, pp. 163-164 70 J. G. Gorton op.cit. Fred J. Schonell, 9 October 1964. Following the University’s move from the city to the St Lucia campus, with the re-establishment of Emmanuel, King’s, St. John’s, and Women’s Colleges, more colleges were set up – Union (non-denominational 1949), Cromwell (Congregationalist 1950), Duchesne (Catholic women 1959), and Grace (Presbyterian women 1970). 71 Sydney Morning Herald ‘Column 8’ 14 July 1961

25 self-expression.”72 Here was re-visited Bishop Broughton’s view that Sydney University “will be the great emporium of false and anti-church views in this hemisphere”! There followed a storm of protest about church interference in university affairs and what was seen as an attack on academic freedom. Apart from academics, the Archbishop’s views were regarded, for example, by the Warden of St. Paul’s College and later Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Dr Felix Arnott, as “grossly uninformed”73 and by the Dean of Melbourne and later Master of New College UNSW, Dr Stuart Barton-Babbage, as misinformed and reflective of ‘McCarthyism’.74 The then President of the Sydney University Students’ Representative Council, Peter Wilenski, who later became Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, declared that he was tired of the University being labelled a hotbed of free love75, and Miss Doreen Langley, Principal of The Women’s College, commented that “none of my girls has ever talked about any such lectures.”76 Archbishop Gough attended that month the silver jubilee dinner of the Australian-American Association in Sydney, at which the Guest of Honour was Prime Minister Menzies, who at that time was facing a very difficult ‘credit squeeze’ election – one that he nearly lost. Menzies greeted the Archbishop with a bow, commenting “I am pleased to see His Grace here. Nothing brings so much balm to the spirit as to see a man who, like oneself, is in trouble.”77

72 Ibid. 7 July 1961; Daily 7 July 1961 73 Ibid. 26 July 1961 74 Stuart Babbage: unpublished portion of draft autobiography, May 1997; later published as Diary of a Loose Canon (launched at New College by former Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam). Babbage had also been Dean of Sydney and later had roles in the USA where he worked in Atlanta alongside Martin Luther King Jr. I was honoured to be asked by Stuart to deliver the eulogy at his funeral held at St Jude’s Randwick, Sydney, in November 2012. 75 Sydney Morning Herald 7 July 1961 76 Daily Telegraph 8 July 1961 77 Sydney Morning Herald ‘Column 8’ 14 July 1961

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This episode undoubtedly contributed, in this intense period of growth, challenge and change in university and wider community life in the 1960s and 1970s, to a heightened sense of the relationship between religion and the university and, indeed, the place of denominational residential colleges. Such tension was demonstrated, for example, in the establishment of the ‘Opus Dei’ Warrane College at UNSW and in the ‘Jeremy Fisher’ case that occurred at Robert Menzies College soon after its opening in 1973 at Macquarie University.78 Warrane and ‘Opus Dei’ became a cause célèbre for those who believed that the presence of ‘Opus Dei’ on campus was anathema to the secular nature of the University and to academic freedom in particular. Student protest rallies were organised in the Roundhouse; the slogan ‘God’s Mafia’ was painted on the College walls; students were arrested as the College was surrounded and an effigy of the Master was flung from an upper floor window, then placed in a coffin and set on fire; and students occupied the Council Room of the Chancellery demanding the immediate termination of the lease granted to ‘Opus Dei’! Sir Rupert Myers, who succeeded Philip Baxter as Vice-Chancellor in 1969, attended one of the early Roundhouse protests and was called to speak; he reflected “I learned what it took to have the guts to be a Vice-Chancellor on the day of that turmoil in the Roundhouse.”79 A Committee of Enquiry set up by the University Council in 1974 found no evidence that the College breached any requirements related to academic freedom or the imposition of religious tests. It nevertheless emphasised the importance of mutual respect in a secular and pluralist academic environment, including the expression of disparate views both within the College and within the University as a whole.

78 I give a chapter to each in my PhD thesis, also available on the UCA website: http://universitycollegesaustralia.edu.au/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/2001_ian_walker_full_text_PhD_thesis_Final.pdf 79 Interview with Emeritus Professor Sir Rupert Myers, New College, May 1997

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The year before, in 1973, a Committee established by the Macquarie University Council to investigate matters relating to the newly opened Anglican Robert Menzies College, reported that, while not able “to reach a firm conclusion” it had not been established that the University’s By-Law related to religious tests had been breached.80 This followed an incident where a first year resident, Jeremy Fisher, attempted suicide, with the Master, the Reverend Dr Alan Cole, discovering from documents in Jeremy’s room, that he was Secretary of the Gay Liberation Association at Macquarie. After initial treatment and discharge from hospital, Alan Cole made it clear to Jeremy that he could not accept him back in College as an “active practising homosexual … because this was our Christian standard, and that was that.” The Master noted that this would also apply to active practising heterosexuals in the College.81 There was to be no grog, and no sex. Dr Cole regarded homosexuality as a sickness that required treatment, and he required this for Jeremy Fisher if he was to move back into a Christian college. This was regarded by Jeremy Fisher and a whole host of supporters within and without the University as the imposition of a religious test, triggering outrage across the campus and beyond. The Builders Labourers’ Federation (BLF) led by Jack Mundey82, who had imposed ‘Green Bans’ on the demolition of buildings in the city, imposed what came to be known as ‘Pink Bans’ on completion of the College buildings and on other building works on the campus – an action supported by political activist and lecturer, and later President of the NSW Legislative Council, Meredith Burgmann. The matter hit the Press; was featured on the ABC ‘This Day Tonight’ program; and was subject of a question to the Commonwealth Attorney-General in the Senate. Macquarie academics sought

80 Matters Relating to Robert Menzies College: Report of Committee Appointed by Council September 1973, Macquarie University Archives (MUA); & ‘Statement on College Incident’ University News October 1973, p.2 MUA 81 Interview with the Reverend Dr Alan Cole, Mosman NSW, 26 May 1997 82 Jack Mundey passed away on 10 May 2020, aged 90.

28 the College’s disaffiliation, while Alan Cole, who firmly believed he had been misrepresented in what he saw as his care and responsibility for the wellbeing of residents, continued publicly to defend his actions and to assert the independence of the College. The founding Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alex Mitchell, much later commented: “I liked Alan and I had a lot to do with him, but … I wished he would just shut up. I think that would have helped things.” 83 Alan Cole was firmly supported by his Council, and the University took the view that if a student resident was not forced to subscribe to a particular set of beliefs, the College could take actions that it believed were for the good government and preservation of the College community; that the Colleges were autonomous bodies … responsible for their own administration.84 Dr Jeremy Fisher is now a Senior Lecturer in Writing in the School of Arts at the University of New England.85

Commercial and college developments: Since the 1980s there has been enormous growth and change in the provision of higher education in Australia. The ‘golden age’ of Commonwealth funding has long gone; few new denominational residential colleges have been established; an essentially aids based program of international student involvement has been replaced by a hugely competitive process that has international education as Australia’s largest service export industry; our universities are corporate rather than collegial, driven by cost imperatives with all the development and marketing ‘speak’ of striving for excellence as well as for efficiencies; the constant push to do more with less; and the growth of partnerships and out- sourcing in the provision of student accommodation, with such accommodation increasingly seen as “a global asset class for commercial

83 Interview with Emeritus Professor A. G. Mitchell, Longueville NSW, 5 May 1997 84 ‘Statement on College Incident’ op. cit. 85 I met with Jeremy Fisher at UNSW during my time at The Kensington Colleges.

29 interest”. In the juggernaut of buildings and beds, denominational colleges and halls which once represented eighty-seven per cent of university residence, now represent some thirteen per cent.86

Nevertheless, the sectarian-secular divide is now much more blurred, with Professor John Anderson’s “fight between secularism and religion” much less intense as our universities, and indeed our chaplaincies, reflect a more diverse, international, multi-cultural and multi-faith society, with acknowledgement and recognition of a range of beliefs, customs and traditions, and their relevance and value within a scholarly community. We are arguably a much less sectarian society – certainly of the Catholic, and especially Irish Catholic-Protestant divide that prevailed well into the mid-1900s. We are a much more pluralist society, in which the study of religion, rather than the dogmatic teaching of it and the danger, as Wentworth and no doubt Andrew Barlow saw it, of sectarian dominance and influence, has become much more a part of tertiary offerings in or associated with Australia’s secular universities. Charles Sturt University, for example, has a School of Theology within the Faculty of Arts; Newcastle has had a Bachelor of Theology program and now offers a major in Philosophy and Religion within its Arts Faculty. Indeed, the University of Queensland introduced a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1953, which was discontinued around 1983, with now a ‘Studies in Religion’ major available within courses of the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. Programs of engagement of religion with the university and wider community have been established within colleges such as the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education (CASE) at New College UNSW, and the Centre for the Study of Science, Religion and Society at

86 National Census of University Student Accommodation Providers 2014, p.12 http://universitycollegesaustralia.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-06- 02_uca_census_2014_report_final_midres_sec.compressed.pdf

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Emmanuel College. As part of the recent redevelopment of The Kensington Colleges precinct at UNSW, Fig Tree Hall has been designed to cater for the needs of students who require, especially for religious reasons, particular bathroom facilities, and who prefer to live on segregated floors and in a community that does not permit alcohol.

Denominational colleges, such as Queensland’s St Leo’s, are not much fewer in number than they were some decades ago; some have added buildings and places with, for example, an increasing recognition of the needs of postgraduate students and the contribution they can make to residential life – such as at St Hilda’s College and International House, Melbourne, New College at UNSW, and Sancta Sophia and St Paul’s College at Sydney University. They are, however, not growing in number and nor are likely to do so; and, because of demand, especially in the international ‘market’, they are being increasingly outnumbered by a commercially driven student accommodation ‘industry’. Multi-storey off-campus developments, accommodating, albeit in new and good facilities, many hundreds of students, could well become ‘commercial repositories of crowded loneliness’.

While a number of commercial partners and providers are now focusing in some greater measure on the nature of community, support and care within their housing, there is every reason for concern that much of this development reflects something of Andrew Barlow’s view of over a century ago that, if there is need for residence, boarding houses run in town under University Senate regulations could be provided. They could, indeed, be massive boarding-houses with little university regulation but with significant implications for university reputation. These same imperatives are driving a great deal of the management and arrangements for university-owned colleges and halls of residence,

31 including those established in the post-World War II decades along more traditional lines – a number of these now coming under a more centralised and bureaucratic administration with managers replacing academic leaders, MBAs replacing MAs! In their book The Enterprise University: Power, Governance and Reinvention in Australia published in 2000, Simon Marginson and Mark Considine write: “We live in the age of business and it is plain to everyone that the money-changers have long since mortgaged the temple.”87

St Leo’s, the ‘Light’ and Learning: In all this, rather than with any sense of irrelevance or despair, collegiate residential communities, and denominational colleges in particular, have an even greater significance and opportunity in the part they can play in demonstrating what the late Dr Davis McCaughey, former Master of Ormond College and Governor of Victoria, stated in a conference address to Heads of Colleges and Halls at the University of Queensland in 1979, as the role and value of residential colleges and halls being “part of the academic enterprise … part of the business of learning”.88 In not just a religious and personal sense, but also with a broader intellectual dimension, there was providence rather than plagiarism involved in Archbishop Duhig’s choice of Oxford’s motto for St. Leo’s – the first verse of Psalm 27: ‘The Lord is my Light’. Used by Oxford University since the middle of the 16th Century, the motto suggests a perspective and relationship between wisdom and knowledge at a time when there was some drift from theology to the sciences. I suspect that Duhig’s concern was rather like Bishop Broughton’s concern for students at the ‘infidel’ University of Sydney who might “acquire knowledge but not wisdom”; or that of Archbishop Dunne

87 Simon Marginson & Mark Considine The Enterprise University: Power, Governance and Reinvention in Australia Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 2000, p.2 88 J. Davis McCaughey The Place of the University Collegiate Residence and its Role in Society 1980-2000 Association of Heads of Australian University Colleges & Halls, University of Queensland, August 1979

32 who urged support for and engagement with the new University so as to “keep it as right, or as little wrong, as we can”; or, indeed, of Anglican Archbishop St. Clair Donaldson, who saw the “indissoluble relationship between religion and education, out of which came the virtue of character”.

A former Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, the late , recalled that in 1966 the then Principal of the Baptist Theological College in Sydney, G. H. Morling, commented that “institutions tend to strangle the ideas that gave them birth.”89 James T. Burtchaell’s book ‘The Dying of the Light’ discusses how countless colleges and universities in the United States that were founded under some sort of Christian patronage no longer claim any relationship with a church or denomination, some “severed by the hand of ecclesiastics and academics who saw themselves as uniting both identities within themselves, but not within their institutions.”90

Like St. Leo’s, the motto of Emmanuel College also includes reference to light: “Fiat Lux” – Let there be Light; as does the motto of Duchesne College: “Robur in Luce Veritatis” – Strength in the Light of Truth”. At an important level, it is the light of intellectual engagement and enrichment that comes from a scholarly residential collegiate community, denominational or otherwise, as a result of what Cardinal Newman termed “the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge”. 91 There have been realities and acknowledged failures in meeting this ‘high’ task, but perhaps there is too broad a brush of perceived failure in the encouragement of serious intellectual life in the colleges, such as expressed by Professor James Franklin when he notes that “this is especially true in Sydney, where St John’s College of Sydney University stands as a symbol. The

89 Interview with Bishop D. W. B. Robinson, Turramurra NSW, 21 April 1997 90 James Tunstead Burtchaell The Dying of the Light: the disengagement of colleges and universities from their Christian churches William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan USA 1998, p.ix 91 John Henry Cardinal Newman Historical Sketches Vol. III Longmans, Green & Co., London 1887, p.16

33 uneducated Catholics of Sydney gave generously to build it, and got a nice building full of beer and football.”92

In recent years, collegiate residences in Australian universities have faced the challenges of for-profit commercial residential developments and of the calling- out of behaviour that has disguised hazing, abuse and harassment in the name of tradition, orientation and bonding. Communities committed to both renewal and a reassertion of their foundational missions have further been challenged by the 2020 crisis of pandemic, with all institutions belonging to or affiliated with their university having to reassess their place in the provision of the most appropriate support, nurture and care for students preparing for their future life in the twenty-first century and beyond – a century now shaken, as was last century, by global disruption in ways that promote a longing for personal connection and friendship, for genuine belonging, for real meaning and purpose, and for an abiding sense of worth and hope.

Reflecting on the future role of universities and how they have become much more corporate institutions, with increasingly casualised staff and with students seen as customers, journalist Dr Elizabeth Farrelly has, while critical of what they have in many ways become, noted that “never have we needed universities more … To think, as our governments clearly do, that education is about individual career trajectories is reductivist nonsense. Educating the educable, especially in the history of ideas, is about the culture we make. It is our best defence against world collapse. Education is survival.”93

92 James Franklin Catholic Values and Australian Realities Ch.5 ‘Campion’s Australian Catholics’ Connor Court Publishing, Bacchus Marsh VIC 2006, p.61. James Franklin is a Professor in the School of Mathematics & Statistics UNSW, and a philosopher of mathematics, and a researcher in Catholic History and Philosophy. He was a resident of St John’s College in the 1970s. 93 Elizabeth Farrelly The decline of universities, where students are customers and academics itinerant workers ‘Sydney Morning Herald’, 30 May 2020

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So it could also be said that never have we needed faith-based residential colleges more. For all colleges, and especially a college such as St. Leo’s, Newman’s dictum is an even greater imperative of the integration of religion and the university that gives scope for personal spiritual commitment, reflection and growth; for the fellowship of collegial discussion, discovery and even conversion; and for the deepening of a distinct rather than diluted identity and purpose within and beyond the bounds of college and campus. Intentional scholarly communities of purpose and hope. As Newman further described the University, which he of course understood in collegiate terms, so might he describe a College such as St. Leo’s as “a seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation. It is this and a great deal more ...”94

Former Chancellor of the University of Queensland, John Story, clearly affirmed the place of denominational colleges in a dinner address at Emmanuel College: “The strictly secular character of the University is preserved, but there is, within the St Lucia campus, a strong presence of the churches represented through their colleges.”95 Rather than “cultivating the worst form of sectarianism”, yet in a context of challenge, commercialism and change, St Leo’s College in its second century must, as with all denominational colleges within their respective universities, continue to be a “seat of wisdom” and character - a strong light in the University whose seventy-five years history was titled ‘A Place of Light and Learning’.96

94 John Henry Cardinal Newman Ibid. 95 John D. Story AO Op.cit. 96 Malcolm I. Thomas A Place of Light & Learning: The University of Queensland’s First Seventy-five Years University of Queensland Press, 1985.

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