Shortly after arriving at Sydney Cove in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip took the oaths of office to become our first Governor. One of them was the Test Act; its full name is “An act for preventing dangers which may happen from popish recusants.” The oath ran:
“I, Arthur Phillip, do declare that I do believe that there is not any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or in the elements of the bread and wine, at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever.”
The Test Act was required of all officials in the British Empire well into the nineteenth century. It was designed to exclude Catholics from public office, especially those who might hope to fly under the radar until the time was right for them to strike.

The threat from Catholics was thought to be ever-present. 1788 is the same year that the Catholic grandson of King James II died. Bonnie Prince Charlie (known to his supporters as the real King Charles III) led a substantial uprising in Scotland and an unsuccessful invasion of England about 40 years before British settlement here. Forty years might sound like a long time ago, but for Catholics whose Church thinks in centuries it is the blink of an eye.
Thus, the threat of another Catholic uprising by the next Jacobite claimant was thought to be too much for the establishment. And so, the first de facto ruler of the British settlement in Australia had to be anti-Catholic: no sacrament, no pope, no saints’ prayers.
We might look on such an oath as anything from risible to insulting. When Arthur Phillip took it, there was no priest within cooee of Sydney and the arrival of Fr James Dixon as a convict was still more than a decade away. The risk of a Catholic conspiracy and uprising was in fact minimal. But the Test Act on Arthur Phillip’s lips was emblematic: this was to be, at least as far as the first authorities were concerned, a protestant utopia.
The modest suggestion to make today is that this is part of the necessary background to understanding religious tolerance and practice in this country. Imprinted hard on the national psyche is the deep suspicion of anyone who holds up their faith to others. Governments in the line succeeding Arthur Phillip like religions to be familiar, expressed simply, and under their thumb, whether Catholic, other Christian, or non-Christian. Our Catholicism will prove to be elusive of that implied expectation to carry on silently, with its rich symbolic world, well-articulated theology proposed lovingly and patiently to others, and public face justly answerable to civic government in matters which are within its competence.
But we can all rejoice. We are not the same place that Arthur Phillip founded. We are better than that with a way to go. The relative tolerance of religion means the new members of our Church approach without coercion or duress from one side or another. Our own religious practice as Catholics is marked by our fidelity without, we hope, any question of it necessarily standing in contradiction or opposition to another.
On this day, we give thanks to God that we are more than what our history allows. We pray God that we might yet become a nation of those who are one and free, and that by using the gifts of the Holy Spirit who unites nations into one Church. Our history is no longer being written by the fears and prejudices of the wearer of the British crown. We also hope and pray God that, one day perhaps soon, he may give a crown of eternal glory to everyone who lives in this land girt by sea.
Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest