Irish nuns during English Benedictine rule: The impact of Irish sisters in early Catholic Australia

The desire for a cohesive Australian identity is a ceaseless one that permeates many aspects of society, including religious traditions. However, fashioning a meta-narrative of a distinctively Australian manner of belief is complicated by differences of denomination and ritual, which are often predicated upon ethnicity. The Catholic Church frequently invokes its supposed universality to diminish these divisions in its rhetoric, as exemplified by Archbishop Polding's 1856 pastoral letter: 'Before everything else we are Catholics; and next, by a name swallowing up all distinctions of origin, we are Australians ... we are no longer Irishmen.' Yet this unity is fragile, as Polding proceeds to proclaim 'the man who seeks by word or writing to perpetuate invidious distinctions is an enemy to our peace and prosperity'. However it was not only men who sought to infuse their faith with Irishness: lay women and in particular religious sisters brought Irish notions of Catholicism and applied them to an Australian context. Whilst Polding's phraseology suggested nationality was irrelevant, his vision for a Benedictine abbey-diocese was perceptibly English in origin. Fearing that such a model would alienate the primarily Irish laity, Irish Catholic leaders encouraged orders such as the Irish Sisters of Charity to take a more active role in society. Furthermore, Irish nuns acted on their own volition to remould the Church community in closer emulation of the Irish 'devotional revolution'. Their close connection with the laity and the secular public gave them a substantial influence within Australian Catholic society which continues to resonate through the schools, hospitals and social institutions which Irish nuns enthusiastically founded.