By Dr Peter Wilkinson
This is the first of a six-part series of articles by Peter Wilkinson looking at the provincial and plenary councils of the Catholic Church held in Australia between 1844 and 1937. It examines the Third Australian Plenary Council held in Sydney from 3 to 10 September 1905.
In the period 1896 to 1905, just three particular councils were convened in the English-speaking mission territories under the jurisdiction of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide (‘Propaganda’): the 1900 third Plenary Council of Ireland, the 1899 first Provincial Council of Wellington, New Zealand, and the 1905 third Australian Plenary Council.
Cardinal Moran and preparations for the 1905 Plenary Council
At the turn of the century, Cardinal Patrick Moran, Archbishop of Sydney, was at the peak of his power. Made a cardinal by Leo XIII in 1885, he was a member of three Roman congregations (Propaganda, Consistory, and Religious), had presided as Apostolic Delegate over the 1885 and 1895 Plenary Councils, and had been tasked to convene assemblies of all the Australian bishops (in 1888, 1890 and 1897) and annual meetings of the metropolitan bishops (from 1890 to 1894).
During the 1890s, he believed that the political and civil rights of Australian Catholics were under threat, and that a situation where “no office of first, or even second, rate importance is held by a Catholic” was deliberate discrimination. In the 1880s and 1890s, he denounced anti-Chinese legislation as un-Christian, specifically defending Chinese migrants, and even wanting to establish a Chinese College in Sydney. For this, he was pilloried as ‘The Chows’ Patron’. Moran envisaged Australia as the base for the Christianisation of Asia and the Pacific and planned his St Columba’s Seminary at Springwood as a missionary college. He gave the French Sacred Heart missionaries a base and seminary in Sydney for their work in Melanesia and urged Propaganda to provide missionaries for both Melanesia and Polynesia.
By 1897, his influence and authority had become so dominant that he discontinued all meetings of the bishops, even those of the metropolitan bishops. But he suffered a significant setback when Propaganda told him that the Church in New Zealand, which he considered an integral part of the common region over which he presided, was to be separated from the Church in Australia, and that the bishops of New Zealand would hold their first Provincial Council at Wellington in 1899 without his presence.
Moran also played a role in Australian Federation. In 1896, he addressed the People’s Federal Convention framing the new constitution, and in 1897 stood for election to that body. Though he failed to win a position, he continued to advocate for an independent Australian defence and foreign policy. He refused to attend the official inauguration of the Commonwealth in 1901 because precedence was given to the Church of England.
When Pope Leo XIII died in 1903, Moran failed to reach Rome in time for the conclave that elected Pius X, during whose pontificate the 1905 Plenary was convened.
In September 1904, Moran requested the Holy See to approve the convening of another plenary council and permission to invite the New Zealand bishops, who had expressed a desire to strengthen their unity with the Australian bishops. On 30 November 1904, Pius X approved a council to be held within two years, appointed Moran to preside, but made no mention of the New Zealand bishops. When Moran called all the bishops, abbots, superiors of the religious congregations, and others who were to be present by law or custom, to attend the Council commencing on 3 September 1905 at Sydney, they were not included. In the call, he advised the bishops that they could each appoint one personal theologian, and that the parish clergy of each diocese could elect one priest to represent them. He also asked each bishop to set up a ‘diocesan commission’ to consider amendments or additions to the 1895 Plenary decrees and arranged for their reports to be circulated at the Council.
On 2 September 1905, the day before the official Opening, 21 ‘Fathers’ met at St Patrick’s College, Manly: Cardinal Moran, Archbishops Carr (Melbourne), Dunne (Brisbane), O’Reilly (Adelaide), and Kelly (Coadjutor, Sydney); Bishops Murray (Maitland), Reville OSA (Sandhurst), Corbett (Sale), Dunne (Wilcannia), Doyle (Lismore), Higgins (Ballarat), Gallagher (Goulburn), Kelly (Geraldton), Dunne (Bathurst), O’Connor (Armidale), Delaney (Coadjutor, Hobart), Dwyer (Coadjutor, Maitland), and Murray (Cooktown): Abbot Torres OSB (New Norcia); and the priest administrators Walsh (Rockhampton) and Norton (Port Augusta).
Absent were Archbishop Murphy of Hobart (aged 91 years), and Bishops Gibney (Perth) and Maher (Port August), who were both ill. At the meeting, Torres, Walsh and Norton were granted a deliberative vote. Bishop Gibney appointed Fr Laurence Smyth his proxy (who participated from 7 September), while Archbishop Murphy appointed Monsignor Daniel Beechinor as his proxy (later overturned).
In addition to the priests already mentioned, a further 12 priest superiors of male religious congregations with communities in Australia and 37 priest theologians were participants, with 19 having attended the 1895 Council. No lay persons, male or female, were invited to participate in the Council.
The Council’s primary committee consisted of Moran (Chair), and Dwyer (Secretary), with four elected bishops – Higgins, Reville, Murray (Maitland) and Gallagher – and Fr James O’Brien (Assistant Secretary) and Mgr Denis O’Haran (Chancellor). This committee decided to have three working committees dealing with Faith and Sacraments, Discipline, and Education , three public sessions in St Mary’s Cathedral – Opening, Closing and Thursday 7 September – three general meetings of the Fathers and all the priests, and private meetings of the Fathers only (eight were held). The Council was to be a re-working of the 1885 and 1895 Councils with the same basic format.
Developments and demographic data for 1905
Pope Leo XIII had officially approved the 272 decrees of the 1895 Plenary Council on 22 January 1898, and a week later had erected the Diocese of Geraldton (WA) and appointed the Australian-born William Bernard Kelly as its first bishop. Leo also attached the Vicariate Apostolic of Kimberley to Geraldton on a temporary basis, pending a decision of the French Trappist monks at Beagle Bay, and changed the name of the Grafton diocese to Lismore.
By 1900, various popes had appointed 31 Irish bishops to Australian dioceses, heavily influenced by the Irish bishops in both Ireland and Australia and the senior Irish priests in Australia, but without any direct lay input from Australia. Although Propaganda’s standing policy favoured locally-born candidates for Episcopal appointment, prior to 1905 only two – both of Irish background – had been appointed: Patrick Dwyer to Maitland, and William Kelly to Geraldton.
In 1905, Australia had 824,363 Catholics. They constituted 20.4 per cent of the total population of 4,032,977. In the four ecclesiastical provinces, the sole new diocese was Geraldton. There were 421 ‘districts’ (akin to ‘parishes’), 921 priests (701 diocesan and 220 religious), 4645 religious sisters, 429 religious brothers, and 1052 Catholic schools (733 primary and 319 secondary) educating a total of 105,824 students (Table 1).
St Patrick’s College at Manly, the sole seminary in Australia and operating for 16 years, was educating 54 seminarians from all dioceses, with 71 – mostly Australian-born – already ordained as priests.
In the 36 years since the 2nd Australian Provincial Council in 1869, the Catholic population had increased by over half a million, districts had almost tripled (+279), priest numbers had more than quintupled (+761), and the number of religious sisters and brothers had increased exponentially, as had Catholic schools and their students (Table 2).
The Irish-born (184,035 in 1901) still constituted around a quarter of the total Catholic population, but their numbers had peaked in 1891 at 228,000 and were now diminishing.
1901 Federation and Australia’s First Peoples
The Australian Constitution, which took effect on 1 January 1901 establishing the Commonwealth of Australia, included two references to Aboriginal peoples: Section 51 (xxvi) giving the Commonwealth power to make laws with respect to “people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any state, for whom it was deemed necessary to make special laws”; and Section 127 providing that “in reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth, or of a State of other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted”.
The Commonwealth Census and Statistics Act 1905, establishing the Bureau of Census and Statistics, made no reference to Aborigines, but as a definition of ‘aboriginal natives’ was required for census taking, the Federal Attorney-General ruled that “half-castes are not aboriginal within the meaning of s. 127 of the Constitution and should not therefore be included.” At the first Commonwealth Census in 1911 the Bureau excluded ‘Full-blooded Aboriginals’ from its published count of the Australian population but published a separate count of the “Number of Aboriginal Persons recorded in each State and Territory of the Commonwealth”. In the ‘Religion’ classification of the 1911 Census (Table 57), 516 full-blooded Aboriginals were counted as ‘Roman Catholics’ and 67 as ‘Catholic (undefined)’.
Prior to 1901, the States were responsible for the welfare of Aboriginal peoples and from 1869 three had enacted special laws and protection policies: the Aborigines Protection Act 1869 in Victoria, the Aborigines Protection Act 1886 in WA, and the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 in QLD. All were shaped by the prevailing attitudes of racial superiority and paternalism, with the Aboriginal peoples constrained to live under different state laws and regulations severely controlling every aspect of their lives: moving them from their homelands to live on reserves managed by protection boards protection officers or native welfare officers; having their children forcibly removed from their families; having their movements and associations controlled; and being classified according to descent. Across Australia, Aboriginal people suffered poor living conditions and poor health, and on many reserves and missions had sub-standard shelter or housing, meagre rations, and poor education. Their employment was controlled, and often with rations for payment or wages withheld. They were also prohibited from speaking their own languages and practising their own culture.
The Council Opening
The Council opened on Sunday 3 September 1905 with a public Solemn Mass and the singing of the Te Deum in thanksgiving for the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The consecration of the newly completed St Mary’s Cathedral was also celebrated.
Agenda
The main work of the Council focussed on Catholic education, mixed marriage, irremovable rectors, priestly discipline, Catholic publications, and missionary activity.
At the first general meeting of the Fathers and priests on 4 September only preliminaries were dealt with. At the first private meeting of the bishops, letters to Pope Pius and the bishops of Ireland and France were approved, as well as the drafting of a pastoral letter on socialism. At their second private meeting, the bishops accepted the 1895 Council decrees as the basic legislation and appointed a committee to draft additional decrees.
Education
The 1869 Council had made the first clear statement of policy and principles on Catholic education. The 1885 Plenary produced 14 decrees on primary education based on the 1869 principles. The 1895 Plenary enacted more decrees dealing primarily with parents refusing to send their children to Catholic schools and the right to government funding. The 1905 Plenary legislated for a revised Catechism to be used in each and every diocese, and a bishops’ committee to set new standards for religious education for all Catholic schools to adhere to, though they should follow the standards of state schools in secular subjects. The Council also called for each ecclesiastical province to establish a Catholic teachers’ training college for religious sisters and brothers, and that all buildings be insured against fire.
Mixed marriage
Decrees on mixed marriage between Catholics and Protestants were first legislated at the 1869 Provincial Council, slightly augmented at the 1885 and 1895 Plenary Councils. The 1905 Plenary left the decrees virtually unchanged, only calling for outward penitential exercises to deter such marriages and to repair scandal. Mixed marriages remained strongly condemned, with all priests having to explain their evil and read the 1869 decrees annually.
Irremovable rectorates and priestly discipline
Though the matter of irremovable rectors had been dealt with thoroughly at the 1885 Plenary, and left untouched in 1895, the 1905 Plenary amended the legislation to allow a bishop, after consulting his senior priests, to reduce an irremovable rectorate (equivalent to ‘parish’) should the local population decrease or for other reasons. Propaganda agreed but insisted that the irremovable rector in office had to consent to the change.
The 1895 Plenary Council had considered attendance at the theatre and opera as unbecoming for clerics, and contravention could make a cleric liable to suspension. When priests at the 1905 Plenary asked for uniform legislation on theatres and horseracing, the Fathers added an additional decree (n. 215) renewing the ban, but in stronger terms.
Other issues
At two sessions on 9 September, the Fathers voted in favour of Sydney becoming a primatial see, of establishing institutions for mentally-ill and deaf males (already established from females), of promoting the publications of the Australian Catholic Truth Society, of taking more care in the selection of books for libraries and school prizes, of seeking additional faculties from the Holy See (e.g. sending holy oils by post, some relaxation of fast and abstinence, etc.) and clarification on hearing confessions on sea voyages, and of promoting the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.
They voted against the publication of prayer and piety books without ecclesiastical permission, of archbishops becoming a tribunal of appeal for questions of discipline and for implementing the decrees of plenary councils, a uniform tax for matrimonial dispensations, and having a summary and explanation of difficult words at the start of the catechism.
They also discussed the prohibition of sending Catholic children to state schools, the concursus (test of fitness for parochial office), the funding and care of sick, alcoholic and mentally ill priests, and Holy Communion for nuns.
This article was originally published in The Swag, quarterly magazine of the National Council of Priests of Australia Inc – Spring 2019. Reprinted with permission.