The Making of a Diocese And the Moulding of Its People: The Maitland Diocese During the Episcopacy of James Murray, 1866-1909

Abstract

This thesis focuses upon the people, priests and religious men and women of a single diocese, Maitland, and their bishop, James Murray. My investigation while dealing, of necessity, with hierarchical figures, concentrates upon them in relation to the people and to the community at large. All were participants in the making of the diocese. Ordinary men and women lived and worked around that elite group who hitherto have been the substance and focus of our traditional Catholic history. My aim is to give a voice to the largely forgotten majority, to recall their experiences and to involve them in the stories and themes which are their history. The thesis seeks, therefore, to recover the religious experience of people and to place that experience against the institutional perception of religious influence and practice. The view of parish, diocese and church becomes that of ordinary people interacting with each other and with those in authority.