A MASS-KIT IN THE SADDLE BAG
The Gippsland Catholic Church and Community
Patrick Morgan
Paperback, 230 pages, $29.95
ISBN 9781922815552
Catholics, mainly of Irish background, were settling
in Gippsland from 1837 for a half century before the diocese of Sale was
set up in 1887. During this pioneering period, priests sent out from
Melbourne ‘on the Gippsland mission’ built a small number of churches on
the main highways. Using these as their base, priests foraged out into
the bush identifying already established Catholic families whom they
serviced, intermittently at first, on their circuits, gradually forming
these communities into embryonic parishes. The first two bishops, James
Corbet and Patrick Phelan, established a basic but coherent network of
schools, presbyteries, halls and Catholic organizations, giving the
diocese a shape it has retained, much embellished, to this day. After
the disruptions caused by the great split of the 1950, Bishops Eric
D’Arcy and Jeremiah Coffey reestablished the diocese’s equilibrium in
order to successfully cope with new issues such as increasing
secularization and modernist attitudes, which threatened a new round of
disarray.
Patrick Morgan has published more than a dozen books,
including a two-volume history of the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese,
and book length assessments of Gippsland history and literature. His
book before this one was Control Freaks Writ Large, a study of modern
political literature. He has been a member of Federal government bodies,
the Literature Board, the Australia Council, and the Australian
Archives. He and his wife Ann live in the South Gippsland hills near
Boolarra.
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