 Despite his many successes as a founding bishop, Polding experienced a degree of resistance from his largely Irish Catholic church in Australia.Even after the English Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, the Irish were resistant to non-Irish bishops.The British anti-clerical laws of the Reformation Parliament and the Act of Supremacy had bred deep resentment among the Irish of the English, and the consequences of the dissolution of monasteries during the English Reformation had left Polding deeply committed to the primary vision of restoring monasticism in English-speaking lands such as Australia.