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New Zealand Tablet, 23 March 1922, Page 26

NOTES

“The Life of Father Therry” Here is a book that brings the reader back in spirit to the beginnings of the Catholic Church in Australia, conjuring up before the imagination the terrible conditions, the almost incredible hardships, the bigotry and the persecutions of those bygone years during which Father John Joseph Therry preached the Gospel and ministered to the faithful whom God in His Providence had placed along the shores of the Tasman Sea, between Parramatta and Wollongong, Hither, among criminals sent out of England, thousands of Irish •Catholics were transported because they loved their land and because they loved'their religion. Far away though they were, their voices called across the seas, even as in the long distant centuries those other voices called to Patrick. And as Patrick answered, so, too, answered his spiritual children who came to minister to the Catholics of Australia. If we except the brave “convict” priests Fathers Dixon, Harold, and O’Neill, who did not come of their own free-will—the first to offer himself for the work of the new vineyard of the South was a young Cork priest, Father Therry, who planted the tree of the faith and cared for it singlehanded for ten years. He was ordained by Archbishop Troy of Dublin, in the year 1815. For a short time he found parish work in the Irish capital, and then became secretary to Dr. Murphy, Bishop of Cork. “In the midst of this happy and useful life in his native city, his mind still retained its early bent; he awaited only the call to a more extended and arduous field of missionary labor. A circumstance occurred at this time that directed his attention to Australia. Walking one day in the streets of Cork, a waggon passed him containing a number of his fellow-countrymen, handcuffed and guarded by a military escort. On inquiry he found that they were convicts being conveyed to Botany Bay. He at once went into an adjoining bookseller’s shop, bought some twenty or thirty prayerbooks, threw them among the convicts, and, then and there, made up his mind to follow them to the other side of the earth to save their souls from destruction.” That incident, narrated by Dr. Comerford, reads like the call given to the Apostles of old by Him who passed so swiftly by the shores of Galilee. Like another Peter, John Joseph Therry responded, leaving home and friends and native land in his hunger for the souls for whom Christ had died. And, indeed, it is the story of a truly apostolic priest that Father O’Brien tells us in this important and well-documented work. The Convict Ship Father Therry sailed for Australia on the Janus. Hitherto he had walked with God among the green hills of Holy Ireland; but from the day he went on board the British ship he knew the scene was changed

for ever, and that he would need all his native courage, and all his confidence in God, to enable him to endure ' % and to win through what lay before him. The Janus ' was a hell upon earth. One passage from the priest’s sworn evidence is enough to prove that: “On account of the state of my health, I confined myself to my cabin, and therefore had not an opportunity of observing what took place on board the ship. I did nevertheless form an opinion as to what was going on in the ship. The utmost prevalence of vice, in respect to illicit intercourse, prevailed.” A judicial examination found that this was correct, and that even the officers were as bad as the criminals and the sailors. Such was the young Irish priest’s first introduction to the sort of people among whom he was henceforth to labor. There was but one bright beam in the dark prospect: one-third of the convicts were Catholics, and these, he says, were free from the filth which stained the rest of the creatures on that floating hell. And after all, it was to the Catholics he was going. That thought must have stayed him when struck with horror by that disgusting first experience of the sinfulness of debased humanity. The convicts on the Janus were sent out for reform, but few of them were not more wicked for their contact with the men sent in charge of them. In the Sydney Gazette of May 6, 1820, this item appeared: “On Tuesday (3rd May) arrived from England and Ireland the ship Janus, Captain Mowatt, having on board 105 female prisoners and 25 children. She sailed from the Cove of Cork on the sth December; entered the harbor of Rio the 7th of February, and delayed a fortnight. Passengers, Rev. Philip Conolly and Rev. John Joseph Therry.” Father Therry’s Work Father Conolly soon went to Tasmania, leaving Father Therry to carry on the work alone in Australia. How he labored, how he toiled and prayed, what arduous * journeys he undertook for the salvation of souls, what r* risks he ran, what difficulties he overcame, you will learn in the eloquent pages of Father O’Brien’s book. It is an intensely interesting study of a great life, and it is a mine of information concerning the early days of the Church which was founded, under God, by the young Irish priest who built above Fort Macquarie the first St. Mary’s. There was bigotry and plenty of it in those years. Father Therry had to fight for his rights against high officials who had despotic control in the new colony and who as a rule exercised it ruthlessly where Catholics were concerned. In the valuable letters collected and published— of them for the first timein this work, you will read the whole story, and it will give yon a right conception of the greatness and the fearlessness of the young priest who won through to the end. He was not a learned man ; he was not a patient man ; but St. Peter himself was like him in these things. But he was a holy, zealous, self-sacrificing Irish priest, with an abounding spirit of devotion and a trust in God that bore him over many difficulties. He was impetuous, determined, a man of large views and of keen foresight and vast interests. He had a childlike simplicity and a winning manner which secured for him lasting friends, even outside his own fold. It is remarkable how non-Catholics rallied to him and how they helped him financially at times when, owing to the coldness of the Government, the expenses of building church and schools weighed heavy upon his shoulders. A few words from the pen of Dr. Ullathorne will throw a flood of light on his life and work: “What vicissitudes he had seen, and what changes he had passed through. A life of him would embrace the entire religious and most of the civilised period of the existence of New South Wales. And when we look back to that long and harassing time r when he stood alone, and without even the support r and consolation of the sacrament of penance, and in those protracted years had never even once the opportunity of exchanging a word or sign with a brother priest; it is marvellous how he kept up his piety even ' to tenderness, and never omitted his Mass daily, and

his Rosary daily, under whatever circumstances or in whatever out of the way place he might find himself at the moment.” Father Therry died at Balmain on the morning of May 25, 1864. He was seventy-three years old when God called him to his eternal reward, after forty-four years of apostolic labors in Australia. “Time,” says Father O’Brien, “has brought us, and will yet bring, priests more able, more cultured, more gifted. But it will not bring us a better priest. Standing at the beginning of the Australian priesthood, his virtues, his deeds will ever point the way. The name of Archpriest John Joseph Therry, cut indelibly into the foundation stone of the mighty edifice of the Catholic Church in Australia, is an inspiration and an augury of success to the £ kingdom of God ’ beneath the Southern Cross.” On this note ends Father O’Brien’s Life of Father Therri/. The author has done his work well. He has given Australia a biography worthy of her apostolic pioneer, a scholarly and well-written book which no student of the Catolic Church beneath the Southern Cross can henceforth ignore. The letter-press and illustrations are in keeping with the importance of the work, and we can congratulate Father O’Brien on his publishers.