Brian Condon: Letters and Documents in 19th Century Australian Catholic History

[Source: Adelaide Archdiocesan Archives copy. Rough draft]

February 1825

Sir,

Instead of celebrating Divine Service as I had been accustomed to do at Parramatta on every Sunday, I have been lately induced in consequence of a message which I received at Parramatta on my way to Liverpool on Saturday last I received a message requiring me to proceed immediately to Captain Piper's Estate on the South Head Road for the purpose of administering the last solemn rites of Religion to a woman who had been bitten by a snake and in imminent danger of death.

On my return from the latter place, my own horse being greatly fatigued and finding it extremely difficult in consequence of the lateness of the hour to procure another on any terms, I gave up the idea of proceeding to Liverpool on that night.

Mr Moore the Magistrate having been informed of my absence, on the following Sunday morning insisted that all the convicts professing the Catholic Religion should be forced to attend Service in the Protestant Church and stated that he had the Governor's orders to that effect. But as His Excellency has more than once condescended to inform me that he had given no such orders, I am inclined to believe that Mr Moore has mistakenly exercised his authority.

Mr Moore, with whom I have the pleasure of being acquainted, is well aware there are many more humane and constitutional means of preventing irregularities during the Divine Service than that which, in opposition to the known pleasure of His Excellency and in discordance with the general practice of the Magistracy, he has thought it proper for a long time to adopt, and it is probably because it is known that His Excellency is a friend to Religion and civil liberty, inimical to tyranny, oppression, and peculation of every species and independent in practice as in principle that the seeds of dissatisfaction and disunion have been abundantly and industriously sown that a few pious souls professing in an eminent degree every necessary constituent of Religion, Charity alone excepted, not fully satisfied with the fruits which already appear, devoutly sigh and pray for a change of measures and of men.

As for my part I should consider myself highly criminal if I were to compel my Protestant servants to attend either public or private forms of Catholic Worship, as in the former the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered and which are taught by their Religion to be idolatrous, and in the latter the Angelical Salutation is recited, which they believe to be derogatory to the merit of our Saviour. And I conceive it to be not more proper in any person however high may be his dignity or despotic his power to force Roman Catholics to attend a form of service which they cannot conscientiously adopt, and a place of Worship in which their opinions are frequently reviled and their Religion insulted. I have therefore Sir, earnestly to entreat His Excellency to prevent a recurrence of this evil which is calculated more than any other to disturb the existing public peace by inciting to a deep dangerous spirit of discontent.

[Note: The most extensive collection of transcriptions of Fr Therry's correspondence remains Eris O'Brien's The Foundation of Catholicism in Australia; life and letters of Archpriest John Joseph Therry, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1922]