Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society Volume 41 2020 Era of Growth: the Late 19th Century Saint Mary’s Church, Mudgee, built 1873–6 Australian Catholic Historical Society Contacts General Correspondence, including membership applications and renewals, and Journal submissions should be addressed to The Secretary ACHS PO Box A621 Sydney South, NSW, 1235 Enquiries may also be directed to: [email protected] http://australiancatholichistoricalsociety.com.au/ Executive members of the Society President: Dr John Carmody Vice Presidents: Prof James Franklin Mr Howard Murray Secretary: Ms Helen Scanlon Treasurer: Dr Lesley Hughes ACHS Chaplain: Sr Helen Simpson OLSH Cover image: Saint Mary’s Church, Mudgee, NSW, Photo, G Lupp 2011 See article starting on page 45 Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society JACHS ISSN: 0084-7259 Editor: James Franklin Published by ATF Press Publishing Group under its ATF Theology imprint PO Box 234 Brompton SA 5007 www.atfpress.com Editorial control and subscriptions remain with the Australian Catholic Historical Society www.atfpress.com Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society vol 41 2020 Contents Edmund Campion, Bicentenary of our first official priests: Fr Philip Conolly and Fr John Joseph Therry. 1 Colin Fowler, ‘Firebrand Friar’– Patrick Fidelis Kavanagh OSF (1838–1918) . 6 Tess Ransom, Fr Julian, Southport, and the Kennedy/Ransom Family– their story. 19 James McDonald, Breadalbane, Ben Hall, and the spurious case against Thomas Lodge . 23 Graham Lupp, Edward Gell, the Catholic architect . 45 Paul Collins, The First Vatican Council (1869–1870). 68 Robert Gascoigne, On the 150th Anniversary of the First Vatican . Council and the document Pastor Aeternus . 81 Tim O’Sullivan, Father George Tuckwell: Missionary priest in the Australasian Colonies . 92 Bernard Doherty, Fanaticism, frisson, and fin de siècle France: Catholics, Conspiracy Theory, and Léo Taxil’s ‘Mystification’ – Part 1 . 105 Margaret Carmody & Anne Marks, “Spontaneous to help where a need called.” The life of Mrs J. J. Clark. .119 Ann-Maree Whitaker, John Sheehy: ‘an Irishman and a sterling Catholic’. .133 Ben Wilkie, A higher loyalty? A Case Study of Anti-Catholicism and Section 44 of the Australian Constitution . .150 Stephen McInerney, Les Murray’s sacramental poetics. .158 Paul Crittenden, David Coffey: theologian of Spirit . .173 Ron Perry, Bryan Gray and Alison Turner, Celebrating a quiet revolution: A practical response to Vatican 2: Celebrating the life and achievements of the Institute of Counselling – Archdiocese of Sydney. .186 Book reviews Vivienne Keely, Michael Hayes: Life of a 1798 Wexford Rebel in Sydney, and Dixon of Botany Bay: The Convict Priest of Wexford reviewed by Michael Sternbeck. 199 Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society Anne Benjamin et al, Australian Catholic Educators 1820–2020, reviewed by Michael Bezzina. 202 Katharine Massam, A Bridge Between: Spanish Benedictine Missionary Women in Australia, reviewed by Kym Harris. 204 Chris Hanlon, The Catholic Church in Colonial Queensland, 1859–1918, reviewed by John Carmody. 207 Stephen Jackson, Religious Education and the Anglo-World: The Impact of Empire, Britishness, and Decolonisation in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, reviewed by Jeff Kildea. 209 Colin Barr, The Irish Ecclesiastical Empire, reviewed by Jeff Kildea . 212 Elisabeth Edwards, Wearing the Green: The Daltons and the Irish Cause, reviewed by Jeff Kildea . .216 Richard Reid, Jeff Kildea and Perry McIntyre, To Foster an Irish Spirit: The Irish National Association of Australasia 1915–2005, reviewed by Chris Geraghty. 219 Anne Henderson, Federation’s Man of Letters, reviewed by Tony Abbott . 222 Justin Darlow, Consider the Crows, reviewed by Anthony Robbie . 229 Peter Malone, Screen Priests, reviewed by Richard Leonard . 231 Peter Malone, Dear Movies, reviewed by Richard Leonard. 234 Wanda Skowronksa, Paul Stenhouse MSC: A Life of Rare Wisdom, Compassion and Inspiration and Peter Malone, ed, Paul Stenhouse: A Distinctive and Distinguished Missionary of the Sacred Heart reviewed by Irene Franklin. 236 Nick Dyrenfurth and Misha Zelinsky, eds, The Write Stuff: Voices of Unity on Labor’s Future, reviewed by David Cragg . 238 Bryan Turner and Damien Freeman, eds, Faith’s Place: Democracy in a Religious World, reviewed by Michael Easson. 241 Keith Windschuttle, The Persecution of George Pell, reviewed by Damian Grace . 248 George Pell, Prison Journal vol 1, reviewed by Edmund Campion. 252 Bicentenary of our First Official Priests: Fr Philip Conolly and Fr John Joseph Therry Edmund Campion* For Tony Baine On the third of May 1820, the ship Janus sailed into Sydney Harbour with two Irish priests as passengers, Fr Philip Conolly, aged 34, a Maynooth College man, and Fr John Joseph Therry, aged 30. They were our first official priests. Fr Therry’s story is well-known: he said he would stay here for four years and in fact he remained for 44 years, dying in 1864 as pastor of Balmain in Sydney. By then, Balmain was a settled parish such as we knew until just the other day: daily Mass, weekly confessions and Sunday night devotions. Fr Conolly’s story is somewhat different. When he died, 19 years after arriving here, he had been suspended a divinis, i.e. barred by the Bishop from saying Mass, preaching, celebrating the sacraments and struck off the government’s list of chaplains and so without a settled income. Therry was by his bedside to give him the last rites and then to bury him, putting on his gravestone the psalmists’s doleful lament, ‘My days have declined like a shadow and I am withered like grass.’ (Ps.101.12) The two priests began together in Sydney and after ten months Conolly sailed to Hobart, where his initial Mass drew nine worshippers. He stayed with Edward Curr, a Catholic storekeeper who would become a nabob, accorded a long entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The Lieutenant-Governor gave Conolly five acres on the edge of town to build a church and presbytery. Within six months he had raised nearly 100 pounds, so he built a house with a lean-to chapel attached to it. In Ireland, Fr Conolly had circulated an appeal for prayerbooks, catechisms, vestments, altar requisites and books ‘for the use of the poor convicts’. His biographer, the late Fr Terry Southerwood,1 claims that Conolly baptized 1 W T Southerwood: Lonely Shepherd in Van Diemen’s Isle (George Town, Tasmania: Stella Maris Books, 1988). This book, in minuscule type, is best read with a magnifying glass. Fr Southerwood’s chapter on Conolly’s landholdings is a masterpiece of historical research. See also his articles in Australasian Catholic Record 1977, 1983, 1984, 1985. He corrects earlier writers on Conolly, such as Cardinal Moran, Archbishop Ullathorne and H N Birt OSB. Fr Southerwood was parish priest of Launceston in Hobart diocese. One of his ancestors had been a marine on the First Fleet. * Edmund Campion is a Sydney priest who taught church history at the Catholic Institute of Sydney. He is the author of Australian Catholics and other books. Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 41 2020, 1–5 1 Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society more than 650 persons in Van Diemen’s Land (VDL); however a visitor in 1833 found the ramshackle lean-to chapel a mess, its altar cloths filthy, the sacred vessels black and three of Edward Curr’s children unbaptized. The chapel seemed a symbol of pastoral failure. And the promised church remained unbuilt. On the other hand, Fr Southerwood says that Conolly’s main work was counselling the convicts: in two years he stood on the scaffold praying with 34 men sentenced to execution, an unnerving experience. One of these was Alexander Pearce. With another convict, Pearce had escaped from Macquarie Harbour; then, feeling hungry, he had attacked his companion with an axe, striking him four times, and afterwards sliced a fillet from his thigh, which he roasted for dinner.2 Conolly also acted as a pastor to captured members of the Brady gang of bushrangers who maintained a reign of terror in the colony for two years. When Matthew Brady was captured, he was found to have a multitude of admirers, who sent him flowers, fruit and sweets in gaol. They petitioned the government for a reprieve and applauded Brady on the scaffold. Patrick Dunn was a friend of Brady’s and a notorious drunkard. The police may have fitted him up on a criminal charge because he wouldn’t pay them bribes, so he became a folk hero to many Catholics. Dunn went to his death wearing a white alb made by Mrs Curr, with a black cross on its front, and he mounted the scaffold with a crucifix in his hands saying the rosary. Catholics took up a collection to buy an expensive coffin for him and packed out his funeral in Conolly’s chapel. Fr Conolly did not approve: he thought executions should be deterrents against crime, not gateways to glory. His sympathies lay with the lonely settlers who were targeted by the Brady gang. Ninety per cent of Irish convicts had been sent to New South Wales but the ten per cent who went to VDL kept Conolly busy. Some of the women had committed crimes in Ireland in order to join their husbands in the antipodes. Once here, they often re-offended, prostitution, vagrancy and drunkenness being common crimes. Half the women in the House of Correction were Catholics who did the washing for government institutions and spun wool and horsehair. 2 Asked what was said from the scaffold, Conolly wrote his report in Gaelic, a mystery language to government men, who thought it might be Hebrew. 2 Bicentenary of our First Official Priests: Fr Philip Conolly and Fr John Therry With a parish the size of Ireland, Conolly soon realized that he needed priests to help him.