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St Patrick's History: Both the Davis and Dempsey Homes
Continued...
Moreover, the Davis and Dempsey traditions can hardly be regarded as contradictory in their main element. The Davis tradition is that the sacrament was at the home of William Davis, where people gathered to pray. It gives no basis for denying Fitzpatrick's report that the sacrament was at the home of James Dempsey and people gathered to pray in its presence there also. And vice versa.
No leap of the imagination is needed to suggest that both traditions are correct. The simplest explanation accounting for all the important facts is to suggest that the sacrament was at both houses at different times, and was carried from one to the other - by a lay person, of course. Anyone who would argue against this explanation must disprove one of the two strongly-based traditions. No one has yet done so.
Why would the Sydney Catholics have moved the sacrament? A likely reason for the action would have been to divert government attention possibly being paid to the regular gatherings of Catholics for prayer in the same home. Irish Catholics had experienced such unwelcome attention from English authorities in their homeland. Moreover, their only priest had just been arrested and deported: they would have felt sure they had sufficient reason to be untrusting of Macquarie.
The pyx itself and other O'Flynn items remained in the possession of the Davis family. This fact seems to indicate that the Davis home was the last to which the pyx was moved. If it is assumed that the sacrament was moved only once, it seems reasonable to suppose that O'Flynn left the pyx in the home of James Dempsey, and that it was later moved to the home of William Davis, where it remained.
Through a member of the Davis family who became a Sister of Charity,
Mother Gertrude Davis, O'Flynn's pyx and some of his other liturgical
possessions came into the possession of the Sisters of Charity. They can
be seen at the archival-museum of the sisters at St Vincent's, Potts Point.
In the light of the above, it seems reasonable to hope that the Davis/Dempsey
controversy can be laid to rest.
