Out of time, out of place : Henry Gregory and the Benedictine order in colonial Australia

Abstract

The Catholics in Australia in the early nineteenth century were mainly Irish, and were served by a handful of Irish priests. In 1835 the English Benedictine, John Bede Polding, became first Bishop, and eight years later founded a Benedictine monastery in Sydney, with Henry Gregory as Prior. English Benedictine authoritarianism, conservatism, and culture were foreign elements imposed on Churchmen whose problems were largely practical and whose thinking was becoming less conservative, following the liberalising changes in Europe. The monastery was therefore founded out of time and out of place, and this book traces its vicissitudes, and those of its Prior, to 1861, when Rome intervened, restoring peace to the troubled diocese by recalling Gregory. This recall spelt the failure of Benedictinism in colonial Australia. Those interested in the reasons for that failure will find them here, in the author{u2019}s objective and well documented argument, told with directness and humanity.