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

[Source: Adelaide Archdiocesan Archives. Ms. copy]

The Roman Catholic Chaplain has publicly to express his grateful acknowledgements to Mr James Bourke of Airds a native of the Colony for his offer of five acres of cleared and valuable land contiguous to Campbelltown as a burial ground and site for Chapel and School house, and for his still more liberal promise to give double that number of acres if so many should be required for these purposes. It may be necessary here to state that the Roman Catholics who form the greater number of at least free inhabitants of that and some of the adjoining districts having no place to assemble in on the Lord's day for the purpose of divine worship but the open air (in which prisoners of that persuasion are obliged to continue for hours together, on every Sunday, exposed to all the vicissitudes of the weather in order to be exempted from a necessity of attending at ceremonies of which they cannot conscientiously approve); and having already liberally subscribed to the erection of the Sydney Chapel, the funds of which are indeed nearly if not completely exhausted, decline contributing any further to that edifice until they shall have first erected a temporary Chapel in their immediate neighbourhood; and as from a document (the Visitation Charge of the very Reverend Archdeacon, as reported in the Express of yesterday) which has been recently published it may be inferred that public provision is to be made for Protestant parochial schools exclusively and that the children of the Catholic poor are to be either excluded from the salutary benefits of education, or compelled or enticed to abandon the truly venerable religion of their ancestors according to the past and present system of the Orphan School establishment in the Colony, and as the lesser of these evils is to be deprecated as a most serious one, The Roman Catholic Chaplain, with the fond hope of obviating both, is determined, Deo adjuvante [with God's help] , immediately to form a Roman Catholic education Society, into which, however, persons of any persuasion may be admitted on subscribing to its funds 15/ a year or 1s.3d per month. But he has seriously to regret this design has not been anticipated, or that its execution has not been reserved for less humble and more efficient instrumentality than his.

The intention of the Roman Catholic Chaplain to procure places of burial separate from those of the Establishment will not be ascribed, by any person who happens to know him, to a spirit of illiberality. The idea was first suggested by a personage of high rank and distinguished liberality and benevolence, of another persuasion, who had known by experience such a measure to be in strict accordance with the discipline of the Catholic Church and calculated to prevent the clashing or inconvenient interference of the respective duties of Clergymen of different societies, and the recurrence of an instance which had more than once taken place, in which burial or surplice dues were required from the surviving friends of deceased Catholics by a minister who had not officiated at the interments and, on payment of them being refused, were enforced by him in his capacity of Magistrate. This precedent, however, he feels it his duty also to state, has neither been nor is likely to be adopted by the other Reverend gentlemen of the Establishment who (with the Rev. gentleman alluded to who, he sincerely believes, on these occasions merely indicated what he considered to be his just rights) are in every way entitled to and possess his unqualified respect.

Written communications intended for the R.C. Chaplain may be left at the residence of Mr W. Davies, Charlotte Place; with Mr Thomas Byrne (Master of the Chapel School, Hyde Park), or at his lodging, Campbell Street, Brickfields.