The Price of Freedom: Edmund Rice Educational Leader, Denis McLaughlin, Melbourne: David Lovell Publishing, 2007, 450 pp, HB, RRP $45.00, ISBN 978-1-86355-120-7
The institutions of Australian Catholicism reflect its largely Irish origins. The stories, too, that Australian Catholics have told about their relations to Rome, to government, to other churches and to the ideas that underpin modernity, have been shaped by similar stories of Ireland.
But stories are always open to new interpretations. As Irish history is re-interpreted, new light falls on the story of the Australian Catholic Church. So a revisionist history of the origins of the Irish Christian Brothers by the Australian historian, Denis McLaughlin, stimulates questions about the Australian Catholic Church.
Few institutions represent better the character of Australian Catholicism and of its links to an Irish tradition than the Christian Brothers. Memoirs, novels and plays have explored the distinctive quality of their education. They have generally rooted it in the patrimony of the Irish Christian Brothers. They have identified this inheritance as a passionate Irish nationalism based on a tribal loyalty to the Catholic Church. The Church was combative to secular governments and Protestant Churches.
Denis McLaughlin shows that Edmund Ignatius Rice, the founder of the Christian brothers, was of a different temper.
Edmund Rice himself was a canny businessman who became passionately committed to educate the children of destitute families. Neither church nor state then provided education for them; indeed contemporary social philosophies saw no point in doing so. McLaughlin describes the keystones of Rice's educational philosophy as fatherly affection, personal liberation and a deep faith.
Rice was pragmatic. If the schools were to gather the poorest children, they had to provide free education for them. But the schools soon attracted also children of working families. He was open to charging those who could pay in order to subsidise the education of those who could not.
More significantly, Rice was happy to cooperate with the Irish authorities and with representatives of other Churches. He took for granted the Ireland that he knew from his business dealings. In particular, he was happy to work under the National Schools Board that had been introduced after Catholic Emancipation. It inspected schools and produced texts. The Board had Catholic representatives to ensure that its texts were non-denominational but were able to be adapted to the purposes of different churches. Rice saw that putting his