Catholic education in Australia
[6][7][8] La Pérouse was six weeks in Port Jackson, where the French, besides other things, held Catholic Masses.
[9] Some of the Irish convicts had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion in Ireland, so the authorities were suspicious of the minority church for the first three decades of settlement.
[10] Catholic convicts were compelled to attend Church of England services and their children and orphans were raised by the authorities as Anglicans.
The Irish-led Castle Hill convict rebellion of 1804 alarmed the British authorities and the priests permission to celebrate Mass was revoked.
MacKillop administered the Josephites as a national order at a time when Australia was divided among individually governed colonies.
[10] Following the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, the church experienced huge changes but also began to suffer a decline in vocations to the religious life, leading to a priest shortage.
In 1963 the prime minister, Robert Menzies, made state aid for science blocks part of his party's platform.
[23][24] Since the late 1960s, generous funding from state and federal governments has sustained the Catholic education system.
Allegations of sexual abuse by staff associated with Catholic education in Australia have received widespread media and community scrutiny.
In 1996, the Australian Church issued a document, Towards Healing, which it described as seeking to "establish a compassionate and just system for dealing with complaints of abuse".
These public funds subsidise the fees paid by parents for the education of their children at Catholic schools.
[32] Thus, Catholic schools may freely teach and encourage religious studies, values and community engagement; and must adhere to the broader requirements of Australia's secular education system.
In recent years these have included prime ministers Paul Keating,[40] Kevin Rudd,[41] and Tony Abbott,[42] former governor-general Sir William Deane, former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer, the first woman elected to lead an Australian state or territory, Rosemary Follett[43] and serving Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore.
[45] Prominent indigenous Australians include former senator Aden Ridgeway, Pat Dodson (the first Aboriginal person to become a Catholic priest in Australia),[46] and his brother, Mick, and Kurtley Beale.
[47] In the arts a large number of Catholic educated people have been prominent, from the father of Australian rock and roll, Johnny O'Keefe,[48] to contemporary musicians such as Paul Kelly[49] and Ignatius Jones.
[50] In film and television, Catholic educated Australians have included Mel Gibson, David Wenham, Julian Morrow, Antonia Kidman, Anh Do, Santo Cilauro and Tom Gleisner.
Contemporary Australian writers who have attended Catholic schools include Robert Hughes, Morris West, Nick Enright, Justin Fleming and Gerard Windsor.
Princess Michael of Kent, businesswomen Ita Buttrose, Gai Waterhouse and Lucy Turnbull all attended the Society of the Sacred Heart's Kincoppal School.
[51] Former treasurer and now Ambassador of Australia to the United States, Joe Hockey[52] received a Catholic education.
