Rev Fr William McGinty

McGINTY OF IPSWICH

Feature Article: Father Alan Brown, PP, Rosewood, Queensland

All Hallows College records show that William McGinty hailed from Kiltenock, Stranorlar, in the County of Donegal and the Diocese of Raphoe. The parents were William McGinty and Margaret Callaghan, and the year of birth, 1819. If other students for the Australian Mission had persevered, and if other Ordinati had not gone first to the West Indies or to Madras, they would have preceded McGinty. But as it has turned out William is given the honour of being the first from All Hallows to work on the Australian Mission. He was drawn to volunteer for this field, so ‘tis claimed, by the desire to spend his life on the soil consecrated by the labours of convict priests, James Harold and James Dixon.

The above is the introductory paragraph from a feature article by Fr Alan Brown, former PP, Rosewood Parish. A copy of the article follows. He served the Catholic Church in Sydney, Berrima (NSW), Ipswich and Bowen (Queensland).  Fr McGinty has a connection  as he is mentioned in some of the histories that follow.

McGINTY OF IPSWICH

Feature Article: Father Alan Brown, PP, Rosewood, Queensland

All Hallows College records show that William McGinty hailed from Kiltenock, Stranorlar, in the County of Donegal and the Diocese of Raphoe. The parents were William McGinty and Margaret Callaghan, and the year of birth, 1819. If other students for the Australian Mission had persevered, and if other Ordinati had not gone first to the West Indies or to Madras, they would have preceded McGinty. But as it has turned out William is given the honour of being the first from All Hallows to work on the Australian Mission. He was drawn to volunteer for this field, so ‘tis claimed, by the desire to spend his life on the soil consecrated by the labours of convict priests, James Harold and James Dixon.

The ‘Sea Nymph’ which brought the volunteer sailed out of the Mersey (Liverpool) on Friday, November 9, 1846. It had as its complement: the Captain, Alexander Grange, a Scot; seventeen ship’s crew, nine cabin passengers, including three RC priests; an attorney from Glasgow and an English gentleman who had studied divinity at Cambridge; two steerage passengers. In all twenty-eight of whom eight were Catholics. After an uneventful journey down the North and South Atlantic, round the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean and through Bass Strait, the ‘Sea Nymph’ cast anchor at Port Jackson on March 30, 1847, the Tuesday of Holy Week. He was received by the Vicar General, Very Rev Henry Gregory OSB, and assisted on the Wednesday at Tenebrae in St Mary’s Cathedral. There is an indication from All Hallows records that he was ordained before departure for Sydney; but more likely he was ordained on Easter Saturday in St Mary’s, celebrating his first Mass at St Patrick’s, Charlotte Place, on Easter Sunday at noon. The first Australian sermon was given that night at Vespers in St Mary’s. Gazettal of appointment (and salary subsidy by the Government) is found in the Sydney Chronicle of 3.4.1847.

First few weeks were spent at the episcopal residence. Polding had all the clergy of Sydney Town living with him; seven, including McGinty, doing missionary work, two engaged at the Seminary, one a Benedictine novice; eleven in the household. It was suggested to the newly-ordained that he become a Benedictine. He replied that he preferred the Order of St Peter to which he had the honour of being already united. At this point of time Polding had thirty-six priests under his jurisdiction, of which twenty-nine were Irishmen.

After a few weeks in Sydney, McGinty was appointed to take charge of the new parish of Berrima, severed from the parish of Appin, which in 1843 had been severed from Campbelltown. On arrival at Berrima he found that Mass was celebrated in a building formed from two huts which had, at one time, housed a chain gang. In 1840 these huts had been presented to Fr James A. Goold of Campbelltown by a Protestant gentleman Charles Throsby. He also found a school at Appin that had been opened by the first PP of Appin, Dean John Grant.

In 1849 McGinty brought Archbishop Polding down to Berrima to bless the foundations of a church. Dedicated to St Brigid[1] [sic], it was opened for worship late in 1850. Renovated and restored by Father M. Rosa, PP of Moss Vale, of which Berrima now forms part (Diocese of Wollongong), in 1970, the McGinty church is still in use.

McGinty was a combination of a man of action as well as a student. For a time he took classes in his Berrima school. He travelled from home to home among the settlers through the Mittagong ranges and as far as Marulan. Dean Richard Walsh of Goulburn invited him to inspect the schools of his district which meant, each time he did so, a horseback ride of a hundred miles. At the same time he kept himself polished up in all departments of learning, especially the classics of which he was a master.

IPSWICH MINISTRY

In August 1852 Polding transferred his servant to Ipswich (twenty-four miles west of Brisbane) to take the place of Fr Robert Simon Downing OSA who, in 1850, had succeeded Fr Eugene Luckie, founder of the Ipswich Mission in January 1849. When he left Berrima the whole of the congregation, and many who did not belong to it, saw him down the road and at the parting knelt for his blessing.

At the time of arrival he found that Ipswich had a population of about 6500, of which 2000 were Catholics. Huge in its expense the parish embraced such districts as Lismore, Armidale, Tamworth, Warwick, Toowoomba, Windorah and even lnnisfail then known as Geraldton. £252 had been left in the parish coffers by Father Downing.

On December 1852, the Warwick correspondent of the ‘Freeman’s journal’ wrote: Our worthy pastor, Rev. Wm. McGinty, lately appointed to the Catholic Mission of Ipswich, Maryland (Warwick), the Darling Downs, and a part of New England, has been engaged going through his parish. During the last few weeks he has visited all the townships and many of the stations in his district. On the second Sunday of Advent he offered Mass at Warwick. He commenced to take up funds for the erection of a church stating that if we gave generously we would get a priest of our own.

In a short time McGinty had increased his parish legacy of £252 to £2000, and on October 25, 1858, Dr. Polding made the long trip from Sydney to Ipswich to lay the foundation stone of the stone church — a replacement of the small slab dwelling which had served as the first St Mary’s. The stone structure was ready for use in 1859 and, at the time, it was the finest church north of Sydney. A cruciform gothic building, it was seventy feet in length and could accommodate six hundred. It was demolished in Fr Andrew Horan‘s time in 1900 to make way for the third and magnificent St Mary’s. At the opening for worship McGinty had increased his original £232 [sic] to £7000, to which the Sydney Government added £1000 under the Church Act. After paying for the building and incidentals there was a balance in hand of £1483.

In 1860 the Pastor acquired as the result of a special bequest, a residence or, as it was called, a chapel house. It was also during his pastorate that Ipswich acquired its first Catholic school. The previous year marked the setting up of the suffragan diocese of Brisbane; James Quinn, the first bishop, taking possession of his See on May 10, 1861. McGinty had the choice, with the new Bishop’s permission,of remaining where he was or of returning to his original diocese. He elected to remain with .........

DISASTROUS RESULTS

Quinn, after taking possession of his See, lost no time in visiting his important country parish. When he arrived there was no laudatory address or formal welcome. The new Bishop began to have second thoughts about the Ipswich incumbent and decided to send him back to Sydney. During the Lent of 1862 he went to Sydney himself to confer with Dr Polding; then wrote to McGinty ordering him to hand over all monies and church property through the Sydney Vicar General, Father Scully; and then to return to Sydney by Passion Sunday.

McGinty in reply complained of the brevity of the notice, and asked to be allowed to remain until June 6. His supporters (and they were many) heard of the abrupt transfer order and memorialised Bishop Quinn that “neither the spiritual nor the temporal interests of the Church could escape serious injury, should the parish be deprived of a clergyman, who, during his residence of ten years, had so ably conscientiously administered to us in both...”

Quinn received this in a kindly enough manner, and then read the memorialists a former circular of Dr Polding, discouraging the practice of petitioning the Ordinary against routine ecclesiastical shifts. A few weeks later, acting on the advice of a French priest, who, Quinn said, ”had sufficient knowledge to lead people astray, but not sufficient to make him understand, his own duty, McGinty declared that he belonged to Brisbane and not to Sydney and so refused to leave. This was followed by a further refusal to have the Bishop’s name substituted for his own in the parish account, to vacate the chapel house, and to reside in Brisbane. McGinty was then declared to have incurred severe ecclesiastical censures.

The tough assignment of dislodging the Ipswich Pastor was given to the Vicar General, Father Scully. He came to Ipswich on a July Sunday, 1862, and after saying the midday Mass, laid aside his vestments, came to the front of the altar, addressed himself to the congregation and proceeded to describe in great detail, and without much tact, the precise nature and the implications of the censures incurred by their “late Pastor” and the members of his committee, in short, that the “Rev W. McGinty was keeping unlawful  possession of the house adjoining t he church, and that he, with Mr O’Sullivan and Mr Gorry, were keeping unlawful possession of the monies belonging to the church, and that these persons were making themselves liable to be excommunicated by the Bishop, as they were committing an act of spoliation”.

An understandable loyalty to the priest who had been their friend for so long, and with whom they were now forbidden to have any intercourse, led to an angry scene in the church, which included an invasion of the sanctuary by O’Sullivan, and near fisticuffs between himself and the Vicar General. But tempers gradually subsided, and the meeting closed with the appointment of a deputation, including O’Sullivan and Gorry, to wait on the late Pastor.

Some attempt at settlement was made by the deputation (Gorry made a full sub mission, and O’Sullivan one not so gracious), but the situation was still tense when, on the next Sunday, Quinn himself appeared and presided at a general meeting. This meeting succeeded in restoring a measure of goodwill and harmony, largely due to an eloquent appeal by Dr Kevin O’Doherty whose reputation as a “Forty-eight man” won for him respect from all classes. His knowledge of Tasmanian history, to where he had been transported after the “48 affair”, enabled him to describe a similar and lamentable occurrence with the coming of the first bishop to that colony, and which had greatly impeded the progress of religion there for many years. (He was referring, of course, to the Willson-Therry dispute which lasted for fourteen years).

The parish accounts were made over to the Bishop, but the clergy house remained a matter of contention. It had been a bequest which McGinty interpreted as a personal one. Quinn solved the matter by building another clergy house; and the £1483, which McGinty and his trustees had earmarked for the building of a boys’ school, was spent by Quinn in buying the block of land which ran from the boundary of the two acre Government Grant to the present boundary of the Convent property. The land on which the disputed clergy house stood finally came into church possession, when it was purchased from the McGinty Estate by Fr Andrew Horan, third parish priest of Ipswich.

THE WINDORAH REPUBLIC    (?)

Evidently there was some sort of reconciliation effected between the Bishop and Fr McGinty, for on December 26, 1863, he was one of the clergy assisting the Bishop when he laid the foundation stone of St Stephen’s Cathedral. On April 16, 1864, he officiated for the first time as Pastor of the new parish of Bowen (737 miles north of Ipswich).

At some time between the Ipswich debacle and his taking up residence at Bowen, McGinty happened to be in Windorah (in the central west of Queensland) when a Carnival was being organised. All arrangements had fallen nicely into place when it was realised that there would be no police in the town to keep law and order. When McGinty heard of this he set up a “law and order” office, swore in six special constables, and administered the “law” for a week. Everyone was satisfied, fines were fanciful and heavy, all offenders paid up and at the end of the festivities McGinty presented the chairman of the celebrations the amount of the week’s fines, some £300.

In 1866 McGinty gave Bowen its first church, a small wooden structure poor in comparison with the churches he had erected at Berrima and Ipswich, nevertheless a remarkable achievement in his far northern outpost. Barely at the half century mark he retired from active duties to spend the last three years of life semi-retirement at Port Denison (the port of Bowen), dividing his time between the study of his favourite author, Horace, and the cultivation of a small garden which, aptly he called his Sabine Farm. He died on November 27, 1871, at the age of 52, far from his homeland and the halls of All Hallows. He is buried in Bowen, a tombstone being erected by his brother, Charles, inheritor of the life savings of £3000. The savings of the intestate eventually passed to the Archdiocese of Brisbane, for when Charles died in 1887 he left his estate of £12,000 to various institutions “in memory of my brother, the late Pastor of Ipswich”. Such is the story of the first All Hallows student to work on the Australian Mission field.

REFERENCES

“Dean Grant”. “In Diebus Illis” series by Mgr P Hartigan, Australasian Catholic Record, January 1945.

“Kevin Izod O’Doherty”. Rev R. Wynne in ACR (above) January.1950.

“Beginnings of the Catholic Church in Queensland”. Mgr C. Roberts, ACR (above) October 1959.

“An Ancient Mariner” in All Hallows Annual 1950-1951.

Baptismal Register at St Mary’s Ipswich from 25.8.1852 to 1.6.1862.

[1] St Scholastica according to the Berrima Historical and Family History Society Inc's November 2015 newsletter.