In September 2025 I had the honour of giving the keynote address at the annual Law Night dinner hosted by the Catenian Association and the St Thomas More Society at the Occidental Hotel, Sydney. The subject of my address was “Sectarianism and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Australia” in which I examined a series of high-profile legal proceedings in the early 1900s that had the potential to intensify chronic ethno-religious animosity and splinter a community already divided between Catholics and Protestants.… Read the rest
Category Archives: Sectarianism
Sectarian Rioting in Australia
In 2024 I began researching sectarian rioting in Australia, building on work that I had previously done on sectarianism generally. During the year I gave a lecture, presented a conference paper, and wrote two articles on the topic that were published in historical journals.
The lecture was the 13th annual Plunkett Lecture given under the auspices of the Francis Forbes Society on 10 September 2024 in the Supreme Court of New South Wales in the presence of the Chief Justice and chaired by the Attorney General.… Read the rest
Road to nowhere: faith-based political parties
In an article published in Pearls and Irritations, I look at the question of faith-based political parties. This is a subject that has been discussed in the media following the defection of Senator Fatima Payman from the Labor Party. The senator, who is a Muslim, left the party after crossing the floor to vote in favour of a Greens’ motion regarding the recognition of Palestinian statehood.… Read the rest
Sister Liguori: The Nun Who Divided a Nation
In June 2024 Connor Court Publishing published my latest book, Sister Liguori: The Nun Who Divided a Nation (ISBN: 9781923224063, Paperback 254 pages, RRP $34.95).
It is the true but amazing story of an Irish Catholic nun who in July 1920 fled her Wagga Wagga convent on a frosty winter’s night dressed only in her nightdress fearful she was about to be murdered by her mother superior.… Read the rest
‘The Missing Magdalens’: Phony Story Retold
Earlier this year, ABC Radio National broadcast in its ‘The History Listen’ series a program called ‘The Missing Magdalens’ about Australia’s Magdalen laundries. The program focussed on St Magdalen’s Retreat, Tempe, which the Sisters of the Good Samaritan ran from 1888 to 1980. In describing life at St Magdalen’s in the early twentieth century, the program relied on an article in the Watchman newspaper.… Read the rest
Sectarianism Revisited: SMH on Sister Liguori
Recently a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald claimed to have solved the mystery of why Sr Liguori fled her convent in Wagga Wagga one frosty evening in July 1920. In its day the Liguori affair was one of the most sensational episodes in Australia’s sectarian history. In the Herald’s print edition of 3 April 2023, the article carried the salacious headline: ‘Pregnant to a priest, nun on run defied church over child’.… Read the rest