The Early Days of the Church in Tasmania

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 29, 26 July 1923, Page 45

The Early Days of the Church in Tasmania

At a recent ceremony of blessing and opening a new school (St. Joseph’s), at Hobart, his Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Delany, Archbishop of Hobart, in the course of an address to the assemblage, said (as reported in the Catholic Standard ): It has been repeatedly said that Father Therry founded \ the Catholic Church in Tasmania, and that St. Joseph’s School was on© of his foundations. I wish to correct a false impression to which this report may naturally give rise. Not Father Therry, but Father Conolly founded the Tasmanian Catholic Church, and it was Bishop Willson, not Father Therry who started the first school at St. Joseph’s. I feel it to be a duty of my position to say this. Some years ago a certain English Benedictine priest published a bookdealing with the early history of the Catholic Church in Australia and Tasmania; very recently a. young priest of the Archdiocese of Sydney likewise published a book on the. life and work of Father Therry. The Benedictine was unjust both to Father Therry and Father Conolly, and that I am satisfied was due to his ignorance of the field of their labors. He relied on documents alone. The later writer has been no less unjust to Father Conolly, and for the same reason. Now lamin a position to appraise Father Conolly s work more justly. I know all the ground over which his apostolic labors extended, and that, single-handed, for fourteen years. All that time Father Therry was meritoriously employed on !.be mainland, but not in such, isolation nor beset with conditions at all so discouraging as those which opposed Father Conolly without a break. Social conditions for the priests were far pleasanter in Sydney and New South Wales than they were in Hobart. A most intense antipathy to the Catholic Church raged during the ’twenties of that century. The fight sustained in Ireland especially on behalf of Emancipation from the disabilities under which Catholics were ostracised when ever the British Flag waved, aroused a storm of virulent No Popery. But when at length in 1829, the Emancipation from at least the most odious exclusions against Catholics was carried through, when O’Connell at the head of a. compact body of Catholics entered the House of Commons, and Catholic Peers were no longer excluded from the House of Lords, the new Mpirit of the time also passed a Reform of such a far-reaching nature in parliamentary representation, that in a few years the entire system of administration in these colonies became fair to Catholics. Father Conolly having lived through the dark days, was, I regret to say, harshly and unjustly treated by the now men who came out to rule the Church, and that, when they had friends, no*enemies in the places of power. But it is to Father Conoliy Ave owe the possession of more than thirteen acres of Church land in the heart of Hobart. 1 All that Father Tlierrv secured here or elsewhere is only one rood and a. few perches —the site on which are crowded St. Joseph’s Church, and Convent and School. If he planned a school, and raised some portion of a wall a few feet above the ground, it was not he but Bishop Willson who had to bring the building to completion. It was the Bishop who appointed to its charge a man whose memory is not likely to fade from the present or immediate generation of Hobart Catholics. I refer to Mr. William Roper. For many years Mr. Roper formed the minds of boys and girls in that old school at St. Joseph’s, and although he was paid as teacher by the Government he ceased not to teach and defend the religion he had embraced and in which he reared up a large family, all of them sound Catholics and educated men and women. It was Bishop Willson, too, who introduced a small band of Sisters of Charity from Sydney. lie brought them to Hobart, not to teach in his school, which was as I have said competently staffed, but to aid him in the great and urgent work to which Providence had so signallv called him, the instruction and salvation of the convict prisoners. . And in that blessed field o f his great endeavors the Sisters of. Charity made a name for themselves. Later on, when Mr. Roper’s advanced years seemed to call for other provision in the School, the. late Archbishop, who had succeeded Dr. Willson felt that it was vain to expect many Mr. Ropers, who would work at once to satisfy State requirements, for which they were paid, and devote time to religious instruction for which they were not paid.

He boldly resolved to have good Catholic teachers even, without State assistance rather * than uncertain teachers with such assistance. Then he found in the Sisters of Charity and in the Presentation Sisters the loyal helpers whom he needed. In his declining years when I was sent to his aid his first request to me was to take charge of the Diocesan Catholic Schools. After a while the prospect was darkened by the passage of the Teachers’ and Schools’ Registration Act. Nearly all the so-called private schools nent down under its operation. We were anxious. We turned once more to our Sisterhoods and to the Christian 'Brothers, and we turned to our Catholic people. It was a great test of their loyalty to Church and Faith. Well, the result as you see in this magnificent school before you, shows we did not appeal in vain. And it is the same throughout the diocese. Of the entire Catholic population, including the “nommals,” of Tasmania one tenth is represented in the children who attend our Catholic Schools. And the spirit and the courage which have achieved this show no sign of weakening. Priests and people in many quarters are calling out for the Catholic School and are prepared to meet the cost. *