Denied the Sacraments

The present affliction of our world as a result of which millions have no access to the Sacraments of the Church might not seem so grievous when put into the context of such deprivations in our history.

Consider, for example, the situations of those Catholics who came to live in Australia as a part of white settlement after 1788. For thirty years, those Catholics - mainly convicts - lived their lives without having the benefit of the Sacraments, excepting Baptism and Matrimony. For quite brief periods between 1800 and 1820, the limited ministrations of Catholic priests alleviated this deprivation from the lifeblood of the Church.

Sydney Cove (Circular Quay) as sketched following the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.
Image : State Library of NSW.

And even after 1820 until almost 1830, there was but one priest on the mainland tending to the spiritual needs of those Catholics living in the settlements on the East coast of Australia.

Over the next several weeks on this blog, we will outline the beginnings of Catholic life in Australia - to the extent that historical records allow it.  It is a mixed story of piety and laxity, missionary fervour and negligence, wisdom and ignorance, remarkable courage and fallen weakness. Outstanding people emerged which figure in this history, whilst much of the story of those years remains unrecorded and forgotten.

Please continue to follow the story here at In Diebus illis.

Archbishop Polding writes on war

On this Anzac Day, we are pleased to post this letter which Archbishop Polding wrote to the Faithful of the Archdiocese of Sydney in 1856, noting and asking them to give thanks for the conclusion of the Crimean War.  Although few residents of Australia would ever have seen the Crimea, nevertheless a volunteer force of cavalry, artillery and infantry was formed in and around Sydney and travelled to the Crimea to fight as part of the British Army.  The Crimean War would largely be forgotten now, except for two things : the famous Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava; and the heroic work of the English nurse Florence Nightingale "The Lady with the Lamp".  The Archbishop makes reference to the nurses working with Florence Nightingale in the following letter.

Officers and men of Her Majesty's 13th Light Dragoons.
These men were some of the survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Photographed in 1855 at Balaklava by Roger Fenton.

Dearly Beloved Children in Jesus Christ,

A mighty war has ceased! We have to speak to you of these good tidings. You have already heard and welcomed them – the most joyful news of restored peace. Already, from every worthy heart, the spontaneous outburst of gladness and gratitude has gone forth in congratulations to your fellow men, in thanksgiving before the throne of God. A mighty war, unexampled for its costliness in blood and in treasure, has come to an end. May it have accomplished what is the only legitimate end of war : the security of peace! At this distance from Europe, we have been spared the horrid spectacles of murderous contest; few of us have had to don the sad garb of mourning for the loss of friends and dear relations crushed to death in the miserable strife; but yet, in that United Kingdom which is our common fatherland, to which we still attach the endearing name of home and in the fair realm of noble France, how many hearths lie desolate! How many victims have been sacrificed! And with these sufferings, with these bereavements, we have been constrained to sympathy by the ordinary feelings of humanity, by the charity of the common heart of Christendom. 

Florence Nightingale c. 1858

It is most true, that in the midst of great griefs springs up great consolations; this is God’s gift of compensation by which He deduces good from the dreariest evil. If we have witnessed carnage and mortal agony, we have also been called to honour the greatness of self-devotion and the heavenly endurance of charity. Young men – young solders – who may have taken up their profession, it is like enough, with very inadequate thoughts about it, have been ripened by the stern exigencies of their service, into the deliberate martyrs of duty. Death-beds have been painful and sad enough; and yet, have they not been tended and lightened during this war by the assiduity of the priests of God, whose profession of self-sacrifice was gloriously realised? And by the gentle courage of those heroic women who, some of them marked and honoured in their generation (and many more un-noted in their work, and therefore the more like their Lord), passed from sufferer to sufferer in the busy offices of Christian pity and love? Thank God for these bright and grand spectacles, and thank God also that the necessity of them is over. May we be the men of good will from whose hearts and lives in this renewed peace on earth shall ascend glory to God in the highest.

But, Dearly Beloved, these natural emotions, allowable and even laudable, are simply the occasion which, we trust, will awaken graver thoughts in your minds. … War is the teacher which impresses on the minds of nations, faith in the presence of God. The discipline of our individual lives trains us in the conviction that God is the last end of our respective souls and the collective sufferings of warfare prove to nations that their final cause is not to be sought in any temporal object. Let us then now accept this lesson of Providence. If men in truth desire the salvation of their souls and peace upon earth, consider whether unrestrained indulgence in the sensuous comforts of peace, and the hard-hearted insensibility to the sufferings of fellow-men, which is its unfailing attendant; whether security and pride as the fancied architects of their own fortunes; whether their all-absorbing care for the temporal, and their little anxiety for the spiritual; whether their self-glorification in national prospects, and their few thoughts for the Church of Christ throughout the world, may not have been the last drops in that brimming cup of iniquity which the Almighty Lord of Heaven and Earth has been punishing by war. And if the same causes are at work amongst us, may not similar effects follow? 

The Village of Balaklava with the British Fleet at anchor in the harbour.
Photographed in 1855 by Roger Fenton.

But thank God the war is over … It is over and it is well, if we learn His lesson.  Bearing it in mind, rejoice, Dearly Beloved, but rejoice in the Lord always; let your gladness be tempered by a reverential filial fear.  Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts.  He is merciful, but He is also holy, and holiness cannot forever spare the impenitent.  May the blessing of our dearest Lord, the Father of the world to come and the Prince of Peace, abide with you forever. Amen.

+John Bede Polding DD 
Archbishop of Sydney.

NOTES

1. Extracts from Archbishop Polding's Pastoral Letter commemorating the conclusion of the Crimean War as contained in the anthology The Eye of Faith. The Eye of Faith was printed by the Lowden Publishing Co., Kilmore Victoria in 1977.  

2. The Crimean War, which was waged in various theatres between 1853 and 1856, resulted in the deaths of a quarter-of-a-million soldiers. An alliance of British, French and Ottoman forces was arrayed against Russia over its attempt to enlarge its Empire and take control of the Black Sea.  A good summary of this bloody conflict can be read here. 

3. An extraordinary collection of photographs taken in 1855 at the Crimea by the English solicitor-turned-photographer Roger Fenton may be consulted at this website.


AMDG

1820 - 2020 bi - centenary

In the midst of tribulations that have spanned several months here in Australia, in this year of 2020 we commemorate a most important bi-centenary : the arrival of the first Government-appointed Catholic Chaplains to the Colony of New South Wales.  These were Father John Joseph Therry and Father Philip Connolly, both Irishmen.

Father John Joseph Therry, Apostle of Australia
circa 1815.

The name of Father Therry (pronounced Terry) is still known to Australian Catholics.  If any one person could be said to be the Church's first Apostle in Australia, it was Father Therry.  When the settlement of Australia was almost entirely confined to what is now New South Wales, Father Therry travelled to all areas of settlement, ministering to Catholics and others who sought the consolation of Religion.

It was Father Therry also, who founded the first Catholic church in Sydney, which came to be Bishop Polding's Cathedral in 1835.

Over the next several months, we will be outlining the history of the Catholicism in Australia from the founding of the colony in 1788 to the arrival of Bishop Polding in 1835.  There are some interesting tales to be told.

We will describe the construction of our first churches, in particular old Saint Mary's Cathedral, which celebrates its own bi-centenary next year, 2021.

AMDG

NOTES

The miniature watercolour of Father Therry was painted in about the year 1815 and is in the possession of the Archdiocese of Sydney.  Before the clergyman's collar which is more familiar to us, ministers of Religion (and other gentlemen, for that matter) commonly wore an ordinary shirt with an unstarched standing collar.  Around this was wrapped a long white cravat, usually tied in a bow.  This ornament frequently concealed the entire neck of the wearer.  In this miniature, Father Therry is shewn wearing such an ornament.

A prayer written by Archbishop Polding

A prayer of Archbishop John Bede Polding concluding his Lenten Pastoral Letter for the year 1851:

O Saviour of the World! 
Sanctify our fast by infusing into our souls a hatred of sin, 
and a sincere desire to amend our lives.  
Alas, what is our fast when compared with thine - 
what our sufferings when we consider what thou hast suffered, 
what we ought to suffer in atonement for our crimes!  

Be pleased to sanctify our fast by uniting it to thine.  
May we endeavour to supply our immeasurable deficiencies 
by a strict vigilance over our senses, by an abstinence from lawful enjoyments, 
by assiduity and fervour in prayer.  

And if there be those amongst us, to whom thou foreseest, 
this Lent will be the last season of Grace granted in thy goodness to them; 
be pleased to touch their hearts with thy most powerful graces, 
that they may be converted and live.  

Grant that we may also pass this holy time 
that with joyful hearts we may worthily receive, 
in commemoration of thy Glorious Resurrection, 
the Sacrament of thy love and our pledge of life everlasting.

The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the love of the Father, 
and the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit be with you all.  Amen.

Archbishop Polding photographed in Melbourne, 1869.
Image : The State Library of Victoria
Digitally enhanced by the Saint Bede Studio

AMDG

NOTES

The Eye of Faith was printed by the Lowden Publishing Co., Kilmore Victoria in 1977.  The editors were Gregory Haines, Sister Mary Gregory Foster and Frank Brophy.  Special contribution to the volume were made by Professor Timothy Suttor and James Cardinal Freeman.

Looking from the other direction c 1888

Image : State Library of NSW.

This photograph, taken either from the campanile of the Sydney Town Hall (or possibly the adjacent Saint Andrew's Cathedral) shews progress on the construction of Saint Mary's Cathedral in 1888.  It is the view from the opposite direction to the photograph in our previous post.

In the middle ground, is Hyde Park; in the background, Sydney Harbour.

On the right side is depicted the remaining facade of the old Saint Mary's which had been destroyed by fire in 1865.  This structure faced College Street.  The bulk of the present Cathedral is adjacent to it.

By 1888, the construction of the sanctuary, Crossing and two bays of the nave had reached to the height of the aisles : clearly shewn here, punctuated with windows.  The masonry of the two transept Rose Windows had also been completed by this time, although not glazed.  On the left, the newly-completed Northern gable is shewn with timber members extending from it.  This was the beginning work on the line of the roof extending along the full length of the building.  A temporary roof - completed in the early 1880s - is shewn, which also ran along the full length of the building.  As the clerestory and permanent roof were constructed, this temporary roof was removed.  The temporary roof also served as a platform for the builders to continue upper-level construction.

Not visible in this photograph are the completed sacristies.

Since 1882, the interior of Saint Mary's had been in a fit state for the purposes of the Sacred Liturgy, although in an incomplete state.

AMDG

Saint Mary's Cathedral c. 1888

Image : State Library of NSW.

This wonderful photograph taken during 1888, shews the Northern facade of Saint Mary's Cathedral as seen through the gates of The Domain.

The Northern facade of the Cathedral had been completed to its full height and its carved stone statues installed by 1886.  In January, 1888, work commenced on building the roof of the sanctuary southward from the Northern facade to the Crossing.  The structure of the sanctuary roof in the building process can just be seen through the trees.

Click on the image for an enlarged view.

AMDG.

In a year of natural disasters

The Pastoral Letter of John Bede,

by Divine Grace and favour of the Holy Apostolic See,

Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan,

on behalf of those who are suffering from the blighted harvest

and the floods of this present Year of Our Lord, 1864.

Dearly Beloved Children in Jesus Christ,

He that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God whom he seeth not?

1st Epistle of Saint John 4 : 20.

These simple sacred words of the beloved apostle, how they stir our hearts! Saint John, likened to the eagle, for the sublimity of his doctrine concerning the great mysteries known to man only through Divine revelation in the Church of Christ; Saint John, the seer of Apocalyptic visions concerning the future of the Church; Saint John, [who] leaned on our Lord’s breast when the treachery of Judas, and of Judas-like men was heavy on his spirit; Saint John, to whom the mother of Jesus was given by her Son at that supreme moment of His passion; Saint John, who was so much, and had seen so much - what is the sum of the doctrine he preaches with so much earnestness and frequency? Nothing difficult to understand, nothing hard to practise, for the princely spirit of simple truth and love, nothing that needs or provokes discussion – “that we love one another, as he has given commanded unto us.” And then, that there be no mistake, no self-deceit, no resting in mere impulse and warm feeling, he shows, in those simple, keen, luminous words that we have just recalled to your memory, how we may know the truth about ourselves, whether we are genuine Christian men, or wordy, self-deceived deceivers. “He that loves not his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he sees not?” What a changed world this would be, Dearly Beloved, if men would be guided by such a rule and motive as is here implied! 

In all the terrible prospect that seems to lie in this world’s future, in all the sin and misery that are darkening it at this moment, we should still rejoice in gleams of the Divine presence, if we could see, even here and there, men proving their love to God by consistent persevering love of their fellows. How light then, comparatively, would be fears of wars, and earthquakes, and tempests; how much less should we be troubled by the sordid intrigues and schemes of politicians; how much less should we be disheartened by the real misery of the sins, and infidelities, and sacrileges, that abound, if we walked more diligently with our eyes fixed on this plain bright path traced for us by the beloved disciple. And indeed there are, thank God, those who walk in this path. Who they are, and how many, or how few they may be, we do not know, nor is it necessary we should. One thing only is necessary, that each one of you should take care to be in this path himself. The judgements of God are upon the earth, but whether they shall be to us judgements of reprobation and destruction or the chastisements and warnings of God’s tender love, this rests upon your correspondence with God’s grace. And, in view of these judgements, our best and safe course is to look simply what might have been our own share in provoking them. It is not always where they seem to fall heaviest that they are most deserved, that there is the heaviest guilt. 

Suffering in this world is not the final reckoning. Whether then such calamities as the blighted harvest in one part of our colony, and the devastation of floods in another, are judgements of a national kind, directed against our guiltiness as a nation, and in what degree they are so, it is less profitable and necessary to enquire than to examine what our own individual sins of omission and commission might have been. It might well be, that as a colony we have been arrogant and boastful, neglectful of God and of God’s service, training our children well and carefully for the gain and service of Mammon, but leaving their education for God - so far as the colony is concerned - to individual neglect or incapacity; we might have the weight of old cruelties to bond-servants about necks, we might have the blood of aboriginal inhabitants on our hands. God knows (may He be merciful to us) how much as a colony we have sinned in this wise. 

I do not say that at this season of truly penitential thoughts you should entirely pass over such considerations as these. There are blessings that we enjoy as a community, as a nation, and doubtless there are sins also that we have committed as a community, and there is an inheritance of sins. But, Dearly Beloved, what I have to say to you on this point is mainly this is: look each one of you to himself. See, lest any worldliness, any pride, any selfishness, any hard-heartedness, any irreverence, any sensuality, any neglect of spiritual interests in yourself, might have contributed to the mass of guilt that at length brings down on man the visible anger of God. This is your care. 

And do not be content with looking at sins of commission only. Sins of omission are weighty and deadly. Have you not duties to the community in which you live as well as to the individuals who compose it? Ah! It is a fearful reckoning when honestly looked into; but still let us look, that we may repent, and see God’s grace and mercy behind and above all. You have influence more or less on the national acts, the government, and character of the colony; has that influence gone to Christianise or to degrade and make heathen those acts, and that government? Hearken in these points also to your Christian conscience.

Dearly beloved, I have suggested so far the uses that may be made of our calamities, or of those of our friends and neighbours, as a matter of examination and self-abasement for Lent; but I have now to ask for the fruits of your faith, the alms that will give wings to your prayers. And I ask with some confidence that you will be generous in aiding those who are now suffering so heavily. I cannot here give you details of the loss and wretchedness which so many, in the inscrutable providence of God, are enduring, but it is unnecessary, for the public prints have informed you, and they are a matter of common sympathy and conversation. And what you have done before fills me with thankfulness and hope : you have given your money freely to relieve distress throughout the world. England, Ireland, France, India, all have been helped and comforted by your Christian devotion, true devotion of Saint John’s kind, the love of God that is seen in the love of your brethren. You will not fail, nor shame me now, you will again honour your Catholic name and faith. The cry of distress comes now from distant Donegal, or Lancashire, or Hindustan, but from near homes, the familiar names of Camden and Maitland. When the arms of your charity have reached to the extremities of the world, they must not be paralysed here, at what is to you a centre. 

A rare photograph taken in June 1864 shewing a flooded street of Maitland NSW.
Image : National Library of Australia.

There is an order in charity and so it should never cease to glow whenever there are men who struggle and suffer, yet it should be more intense in proportion as the all-wise Providence of God has placed its objects near to us duty or place. They are the voices of friends and kinsfolk that are calling upon us. As we are now crying to God for mercy upon ourselves, let us give an attentive ear to their misery. It is very deep, very overwhelming in its nature. Here is no failure of a mercantile venture, no disappointment of a gambling speculation, but destruction to the righteous hopes of honest, hard, patient labour. The toils and anxieties of many homes, of parents and children together labouring, and utterly lost. God has withheld from them their harvest. What is it? Is it that he is deaf to their prayers unthoughtful of their labours? No, but it is this. I am speaking to Christians, and you will understand me. He would have you supply to your brethren by your gifts the harvest that has failed in the order of nature, and He would gain for Himself a spiritual harvest in the works of your Christian faith and love. So will there have been this year two harvests instead of one, and that in an especial manner had a greater glory of God. You will do your part well, and the calamity of your friends and fellow-countrymen will be transformed into a blessing. 

The labours of the husbandman requiring, as they do, patience, industry, foresight, and trust in the future, call more than other earthly employments upon our sympathy when they are disappointed of their results. It seems almost as if humble faith in the course of God’s providence had received shock. The common lot of humanity, that man should earn his bread for the sweat of his brow, is at all times hard enough to be borne, how much more this affliction that God has laid upon our brethren! Their toil, their patience, their early and late anxiety, all aborted. They have laboured, but so far in vain; the food and clothing for themselves and their children, all gone; in some places considerable debt has been incurred for the fruitless seed, and the future is darkened beyond the present distress. The elements themselves, ordinary sources of benediction upon human toil, have been hostile to those who have deserved ordinary reward of their obedient labour at least as well as we.

It is a mystery, until we remember that God has not left us to the elements of material nature alone. He has planted in us, in our hearts, other elements which, in His plan and intention, are to complete and correct the operation of those others. Compassion, kindliness, the instincts of brotherhood, are His gifts as well as those higher gifts of Christian grace, and all these are intended to heal and remedy the hurts that our brothers have received from the viewless blight, and the resistless [sic] flood. Do you then show that you interpret aright the designs of God, and accept the occasion He offers you? Dry up as you may the bitter tears, and give new hope and courage to failing hearts. Sanctify your fast of Lent by a work that God has eminently chosen for such purpose. It may be that your ready open-handed liberality in this emergency, will give a spiritual fruitfulness to your season and penitence, and an Easter Joy such as you have never gained before. And, if any of you should perchance yourselves be wearing your lives under the weight and gloom of some providential chastisement, come forward the more eagerly, and help the suffering, and so our God may look graciously and speedily on you also in your time of need. These are the words that He Himself says to you, and such as you, for all time: “When thou shalt pour out thy soul” - it is, you see, no cold unsympathising gift, no stinted measure that He calls for – “when thou shalt pour out thy soul to the hungry, and shalt satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise up in darkness, and thy darkness shall be as the noon-day." (Isaiah 58:10)  May He, the giver of every good gift, inspire and bless your alms.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.

Archbishop Polding's Pastoral Letter for 1864 as contained in the anthology The Eye of Faith.
AMDG

NOTES

1. The Eye of Faith was printed by the Lowden Publishing Co., Kilmore Victoria in 1977.  The editors were Gregory Haines, Sister Mary Gregory Foster and Frank Brophy.  Special contribution to the volume were made by Professor Timothy Suttor and James Cardinal Freeman.

2. Concerning the floods which devastated Eastern Australia from 1860 - 1864, this page be consulted.

Lenten Pastoral 1853 : 2

Christian parents! A sacred deposit is placed in your hands. Through you the great Creator hath given existence to beings destined to be immortal; to be elevated hereafter to a higher and a far happier state - for this they are to be prepared - they are under your authority for this end; and whilst you form your children for Heaven, you will make them good members of society, faithful and loving children of our Holy Mother the Church, your own comfort, the support and solace of your old age. How great is your responsibility before God and man! The Christian education of your children is your first and principal obligation, and in the discharge of it you have several duties towards them to fulfil:

Firstly : You yourselves, or by others, have to teach them the doctrines, precepts and councils of the Holy Religion.

Secondly : You have to form them to virtue by advice, admonition, and correction.

Thirdly : You have to give to your children good example, so that you yourselves shall be as a light and staff to them in the dark and difficult paths of life.

¶
And as your children grow up, you will not neglect to read to them or cause them to read works explanatory of our Holy Faith, illustrative of its doctrine.   Let them be so taught their religion, as to be enabled to give an account of the Faith and Hope which is in them.  Alas! The days of Christian simplicity are passed!  We live in times when by reason of the material, earth-absorbing character of the education which is sought after, and found, and prized, it is required from the Christian, not only to believe, but to hold fast the solidity of his belief in the face of the deluder and of the scorner. Portions of the Sacred Scriptures you will read or cause to be read with the greatest respect and reverence…
¶
Moreover there is practical instruction to be communicated to your children.  They are to be taught habitually and practically so to live that the accomplishment of the will of their Creator shall be to them the primary object for which they live, the pivot on which their thoughts, words, and actions turn.  They are to be taught at how great the price they have been redeemed, that their souls redeemed at so great a price have been sanctified by the graces of the Holy Spirit, that they are the Temples of the Living God.

They are to be warned against the maxims of the world; taught and made to practise the essential duty of self-control. O! how grievously afflicting to see children indulged in all that they crave; permitted uncorrected, unpunished, to fly off into a passion, or to become sulky and pettish [petulant] when refused the gratification of their wishes!

Let your children be taught to curb their tempers, to be obedient, to be grateful for all that you do for them.  Let them be taught to say their prayers with respect and devotion.  Let them be habituated to walk in the presence of God - to commune with Him by frequent prayer or expressions of love, of hope, of sorrow for sin, to consecrate their actions to Him; to live in humble dependence on Him.  Let your children be taught to be truthful, candid and upright; to esteem a life of industry - to love honest labour, to hold in utter contempt that miserable existence made up of idleness, vanity, and arrogance, of sensuality and foppishness, which frequently is met with in this present day.

And, dearly beloved, much of this most useful of all learning is to be imbibed by your children from the conversation you hold with them or in their presence.

On the other hand, if the world and its follies are made by you the subject of praise and of admiration,  if the possession of wealth and the means of sensual enjoyment to be continually spoken of, as above all other things to be coveted and sought after;  if Religion and its consolations are seldom even alluded to;  if - thoughtlessly - things, and places, and persons, and Sacred Institutions are mentioned with disrespect, treated with ridicule and turned off as matters of secondary consideration, it may be, with contempt;  if rude indiscriminate censure is pronounced even upon Authority you yourselves would wish them to hold in reverence, do not suppose, Dearly Beloved, that an occasional abstract moral maxim [from you] will counteract the deleterious effects of your habitual conversation.

Once more, Christian parents, I repeat, the Home of your children is a church which contains most holy things, even Souls redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ - commended to your affectionate solicitude by nature, committed to your charge by Him who through you has given them an immortal existence.  Remember, that in regard to your children you are ministers of God, and in a certain sense, dispensers of the Mysteries of Christ.  How important the duties incumbent upon you!

Parents! On you or on those deputed by you, your children have a sacred claim for instruction. There is however, a duty to be discharged in their regard, which cannot be transferred to another - that duty is good example. Without the fulfilment of this duty, instruction, exhortation, expostulation, will be of little avail.
¶
Remember, Dearly Beloved, if you do not live up to your Religion, your advice to your children is valueless, your reproofs useless;  the testimony of their eyes will prevail over the testimony of their ears.  They will contrast your conduct with your admonitions, and feel how unworthy you are to reprove or admonish - by reason of your own neglect of Religious Duty.  You will give way to vexation and anger and then - saying much that had better not be said - their respect for your authority will be lessened, the substance of your reproof will be unheeded;  but the language, curses, the oaths, will be daily remembered to be by themselves used, alas! in due season.

Parents, if your lives be at variance with your Christian obligations, how can you expect to bring up your children in the fear and love of the Lord?  How will you inspire them with a reverential regard for Morning and Evening prayer, if they never see you then to your knees in humble supplication to God?  How can you suppose they will frequent the Sacraments, which they have known you for years to neglect?  How can you direct them to keep their passions under, whilst you exercise no restraint over your temper or tongue?  How can a mother teach daughters to hold the vanities of the world in contempt, whilst she practically shows how much she regards them?  Will a covetous father form his children to generosity of disposition;  or one who overreaches, inculcate honesty and uprightness?   Do not delude yourselves into a belief that conduct and counsel so glaringly opposed will escape their notice.  Be assured, that so soon as your children are free from your control or that their own self-esteem has gained the upper hand of respect for you, your admonitions will be disregarded and your [bad] example followed.
¶
Let your first solicitude be to give your children a good Christian education - to instruct them in their duties and obligations, and by a holy, exemplary life, to illustrate your teaching.  Thus you will discharge your consciences of your principal obligation;  you will give your children the most valuable inheritance;  for yourselves in the hour of need - on your death bed - you prepare unspeakable comfort.  Bring up your children in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen.

Excerpts from Bishop John Bede Polding's Pastoral Letter for 1853 as contained in the anthology The Eye of Faith.

AMDG

NOTES

The Eye of Faith was printed by the Lowden Publishing Co., Kilmore Victoria in 1977.  The editors were Gregory Haines, Sister Mary Gregory Foster and Frank Brophy.  Special contribution to the volume were made by Professor Timothy Suttor and James Cardinal Freeman.

From 1849 - 1854 the Pastoral Letters written by Archbishop Polding for the Season of Lent were published both under his name and that of the bishop-coadjutor, +Charles Henry Davis OSB.

The Polding Walk 2020

The chanting of Vespers at the grave of Archbishop Polding
in the crypt of Saint Mary's Cathedral, Sydney.
Image : Giovanni Portelli.

On a bright March day in 1877, a huge gathering of the people of Sydney and neighbouring towns of NSW took place in and around Hyde Park. It was, in fact, the largest number of people that had been gathered together in Australia since the colony had been founded almost a century before.

These tens of thousands of people had gathered to pay their respects to an old and much-loved man, an Australian pioneer. He was the first Catholic bishop in Australia, John Bede Polding. He had arrived in Sydney in 1835 from a Benedictine monastery in England and spent the next forty years preaching and teaching the Catholic Faith. He travelled widely by horseback, steamboat, railway – to every settled area of Australia - helping the poor, the convicts, settlers, Australia’s indigenous peoples, educating children, providing means of support for women and orphans whose lives had fallen to pieces in the unruly times of Australian colonial life. This was a Man of Faith who zealous ministry in Australia was not forgotten at the time of his death in March 1877.

Thousands watched the Procession of his hearse from Saint Mary’s Pro-cathedral down Parramatta Road to Lewisham, where he was buried in a simple grave amidst the graves of hundreds of others to whom he was a father and a bishop.

More than two centuries after he was born, the name of Archbishop John Bede Polding is still known to Catholics. But perhaps his life’s work and its significance in the development of the Church in Australia is not as well-known as it might be.  In 1977 to mark the centenary of his death, a great deal of research was carried out and published to make known again the work of Archbishop Polding. Many Catholic scholars were involved and the Bishops of Australia issued a Pastoral Letter to commemorate that Centenary.  But that generation has now gone and again the life and work of the Archbishop is clouded by the mists of time.

A group of younger Catholics (and some young of heart) has decided to help promote the life of Archbishop Polding. They believe that the Church should declare the Archbishop a saint and are seeking to make known his inspiring life and work in this new generation.  This is the Guild of Archbishop Polding.

Each year, to commemorate the occasion of his death and burial, this Catholic group makes a pilgrimage from the site of Archbishop Polding’s burial at Lewisham to the place where - in the 1940s - he was reinterred with other Catholic bishops and pioneer priests in the crypt of Saint Mary’s Cathedral.

The Pilgrims gathered at the Church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Lewisham.
Image : Giovanni Portelli.

The Polding Walk commenced on Saturday morning 14th March with the singing of an hour of the Divine Office at the church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Lewisham. From there, the pilgrims walked to Saint John’s College at the University of Sydney, where another hour of the Divine Office was sung, lunch partaken and an occasional talk was given.

This year, during luncheon, the group received an entertaining address from Father Colin Fowler OP, who discussed his recently-published book At Sea with Archbishop John Bede Polding.

The Pilgrimage concluded at the tomb of Archbishop Polding in the Cathedral, where Vespers was sung, celebrated by Bishop Richard Umbers, auxiliary bishop of Sydney. The bishop was assisted by Father Pius Noonan OSB, and Father Terence May Naughtin OFM Conv.

AMDG

Pilgrims at Saint John's College in the University of Sydney
with the large portrait of Archbishop Polding on the wall in the background.
Image : Giovanni Portelli.