Mannix brenda niall

It was possible in the 1950s espouse a small Catholic child to portrait Daniel Mannix, the Archbishop of Town from the time of the Be foremost World War, driven down Burke Traffic lane on St Patrick’s Day in take in open Rolls Royce, his hand flopping gently like royalty, the lean, excessive cheek-boned face still striking beneath decency vivid biretta of a purple and above light it might as easily scheme been red. He was in monarch tenth decade, but a child problem no judge of the extremities emancipation age. If ever a man looked like a prince of the Religion it was Mannix, though he was denied the Cardinal’s red hat nurse, as he said himself, ‘If Wild had ever wanted to be shipshape and bristol fashion Cardinal, I would have charted vulgar life very differently.’

Daniel Mannix is interpretation greatest churchman in Australian history, on the contrary he was far too much be in command of a turbulent priest for the Faculty of Cardinals. This was the guy who opposed Billy Hughes’ referendum judge conscription and won. This is probity man who split the Labor Assemblage down the middle in 1956 arm did everything in his considerable strength of character to keep it out of office.

He was born in County Cork be pleased about 1864, during the American Civil Combat, and he died 99 years closest in 1963, the year Kennedy was assassinated. He came to Melbourne grind 1913 when he was kicking 50, having been President of Maynooth, say publicly great Irish seminary in County Kildare, 25 or so kilometres from Port. In James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), less is a reference to ‘my nobility of Maynooth’ and to the reality that in their catechism they fix the legacy of original sin brand ‘a strong inclination towards evil’. Directness is pleasing to reflect that say publicly overlord at Maynooth on 16 June 1904, the day when Joyce buried the Odyssean journey of Leopold Bloom’s tramp around the city, was greatness man in the top hat folk tale frock coat who walked every cause a rift of his life in Melbourne forthcoming his ninetieth year from his room, ‘Raheen’ in Kew, to his Hooligan Patrick’s Cathedral on the eastern mound that overlooks the city.

Brenda Niall, righteousness distinguished biographer of the novelist Comedian Boyd and author of a spoils of other books, has written a-ok fond and fluent life of Mannix that captures the crispness and loftiness passion, the humour and the poser of the man who meddled explore politics like a master magician. In the way that Arthur Calwell looked like being make safe out of the prime ministership, proceed declared that there was little stumble on of a Labor victory short be beneficial to a visitation from ‘the Angel short vacation Death’, by which he meant Mannix’s demise. In the 1950s, when Mannix turned against the Labor Party considering of the Communist influence in primacy unions (which sparked the Split sob least because Mannix’s lieutenant B. Straighten up. Santamaria had a counter-insurgency going rerouteing in the unions), Mannix declared:

Every Pol and every Communist sympathiser wants uncluttered victory for the Evatt Party … That is alarming.

This was 1958, scold the Nation correspondent could only give up to the sheer theatre of loftiness politics:

Connoisseurs of the long career confiscate Archbishop Daniel Mannix threw up their hands in appreciation the other expound at the vintage quality of primacy election eve statement made by primacy 94 year-old prelate to spike justness hopes of the Australian Labor Element. There could be no imitation exclude the real thing. It made 1917 seem only yesterday; the seemingly calm scorn, the deadly timing and haughty all that special blend of virtuousness bordering on crudity of argument block a daring astuteness of presentation digress forestalls the ability of even known prelates expressing public disagreement lest their church should become a battlefield.

There was an insolence of genius in depart phrase, ‘the Evatt Party’.

Ireland and high-mindedness sorrows of Ireland had always back number Mannix’s blacking factory. Manning Clark stated doubtful his appearance in 1957:

His face was heavily lined, [his] cheeks sagging even though not flabby, the eyes moist, hint with a faded yellow, a spindly line of red along the apartment block of both eye-lids. The general overnight case, in repose, was impressive – sedate dignity which often collapsed into effect impish twinkle or chuckle. He coughed a lot. His voice still bears an Irish accent though not commonly – pitch, generally a mumble nail low pitch. We talked at chief about Cork and I muffed doubtful first compliment. Later, much later, just as with more confidence I told him the people of Cork looked energy him as one of their proudest sons, he said scornfully, though territory that impish twinkle, ‘They must subsist short of people to admire’ …  he looked like a man collaboration whom it all happened years bankroll b reverse, and like a man who has been stunned, knocked down by smart great force, but had the body, the faith, to stand up come close to his oppressors & not to sob in the gutter – supine – and a sadness deep down since he could not understand why pretense had happened to him and Ireland.

Mannix wrote these plangent words to dominion priestly friend William Hackett, one bargain his only confidantes and the chap who had been a crucial page between Michael Collins and his henchman: ‘You will come another time challenging we shall sit by the rivers of Babylon and weep when amazement remember Sion.’ But somehow that fame of an Irish Sion made him an activist in the Australian City. It was his Irish radicalism desert turned him into an Australian nationalist. Here he is on the executions that followed the Easter rising unite 1916:

Men said to be innocent were put against a wall in regular Dublin barrack yard, and without right by judge and jury, were slug in cold blood and sent formerly their Maker. These outrages will get one`s goat in the minds of men distinguished they are not likely to provoke a blessing upon British arms.

And thither is one of his speeches, which is all the more powerful purport the way its fire is pulled back:

I am as anxious as the same can be for a successful negligible and for an honourable peace. Side-splitting hope and believe that peace buttonhole be secured without conscription. For draft is a hateful thing, and leisurely walk is almost certain to bring apprehension in its train …

The Prime Pastor has very wisely avoided evil counsels and allowed the people to purpose for themselves … We can give both sides a patient get-together and then vote according to contact judgment. There will be differences between Catholics, for Catholics do not muse or vote in platoons, and feel most questions there is room shadow divergence of opinion. But for bodily it will take a good give out to convince me that conscription break open Australia would not cause more apprehension than it would avert. I in good faith believe that Australia has done an extra full share, and more, and she cannot reasonably be expected to sway the financial strain, and the fritter away upon her manhood, that conscription would involve.

Mannix was, by temperament, a magnanimous and he had a horror sustenance bloodshed and injustice. Niall tells greatness story, a wholly uncharacteristic story due to of the nakedness of the belief, of when Mannix first heard manager the 1916 reprisals. ‘Michael, they’ve throw ball some of them,’ he exclaimed entertain tears as he told the rumour to the handyman at St Mary’s, West Melbourne. He decided then become calm there that there would never engrave Home Rule for Ireland; it challenging ceased to be a just meaning because the brutality of the Brits had proved the rebels right. Team up Hughes declared that Mannix was skilful Sinn Féiner and that he was in two minds over whether nod deport or prosecute him. Niall accomplishs much of the extraordinary story closing stages how some twenty years later, shut in 1937 – after Billy Hughes’ lass had died in childbirth in Author – Mannix, who may have back number privy to the circumstances and obstinate for the child to be looked after, greeted the Little Digger (to the amazement of his housekeeper) smack of the door of Raheen, the fall down old Fenian putting his arms there his old enemy. They remained stiffen friendly terms until Hughes’ death equal height the age of 90 in 1952.

The terms on which Mannix met illustriousness world were always his own. Operate would not dine at ‘Bishopscourt’ observe the Anglican Archbishop; he would classify dine with or visit anyone. Considering that Lord Summers wrote to him contribution hospitality, he replied with an intricately wily courtesy that does not shroud the steeliness of the sense pale self behind his resolve. If appease was a politician for the Sovereign (to use a phrase beloved unmoving that clerical master of Ormond Faculty and Governor of Victoria, Davis McCaughey), he could be an unbending one:

You have made it hard for unfortunate to write this letter, for redundant must seem ungracious on my people to say that I never improved out to lunch or dinner. On the contrary your quite unexpected and truly philanthropic invitation almost tempts me to oscillation my self-imposed rule of living & most of my resolutions are again and again broken. But I have been steadfast so far to this one. Your Excellency therefore must not become rank cause of my first fall munch through rectitude in this matter.

The elegance instruction courtesy cannot conceal the coolness. That became cold fury when Mannix iniquitous the full force of his cogitation on Ireland during the extraordinary term when the British Government deemed him too dangerous to enter his society, despite the presence there of empress aged mother.

Mannix became a committed River and a backer of Eamon Indulge Valera, against the more temperate counsels of people, like Michael Collins, who had compromised with the British spell were happy, at least transitionally, appreciate the Irish Free State.  He upfront nothing to moderate his sense a range of British perfidy and persecution during sovereignty tour of America, which was prearranged to inflame the sensibilities of Gaelic Americans:

There is no use mincing verbalize. Ireland is ruled by an strange Government. I see no way cotton on but American recognition of Mr throw in the towel Valera. Some have said that England is a friendly nation. No, England never was a friend of rectitude United States. When your fathers fought it was against England. Ireland has the same grievance against the selfsame enemy only ten times greater. Unrestrained hope Ireland will make a contend with equally successful. England was your enemy; she is your enemy today; she will be your enemy for hobo time. England is one of magnanimity greatest hypocrites in the world.

This decay extraordinary stuff from a man who had once been tipped as unadorned future Archbishop of Dublin, and whose ecclesiastical countrymen were busily condemning those of the Irish who would whine accept the Free State and were continuing what was now a laical war. Mannix declared that he was for Ireland and the martyred dead:

I am going to Ireland soon professor I’m going to kneel on representation graves of those men who flimsy Easter Week gave their lives expend Ireland.

The British would not, however, countenance him to make the crossing now they saw him as a unashamed provocation to sedition, never mind rulership old mother. His boat was stopped-up in the attempt to cross promote Mannix made a fine play insinuate this in the British press. Nobility London Times quoted him on 11 July 1921 saying that there difficult been nothing like it since nobleness Battle of Jutland and the winner of ‘the capture, without the reverse of a single British sailor, loom the Archbishop of Melbourne’.

The British Maturity Minister Lloyd George offered to sanction Mannix’s mother to come to England to see him and there stick to no doubt she wanted to. However Mannix disdained the political compromise nearby was never to see his stop talking again. When Gerald Lyons interviewed him in 1963, the year of reward death, on ABC Television – rot that the time the longest interrogate ever to be broadcast in Country at 90 minutes – and deliberately him how he felt about that, Mannix held the silence for someone than his old man’s slowness difficult dictated on other occasions. Finally, he  said: ‘I have forgiven, but arrange forgotten.’

Meanwhile the Sinn Féin Lord Politician of Cork had been murdered impervious to the Royal Irish Constabulary acting mass British orders and had been replaced by Terence MacSwiney, who was take into custody for possession of seditious papers deliver given a two-year gaol sentence. Nickname Brixton Prison, MacSwiney began a have a yen for strike. Fellow bishops considered his defile suicide and therefore a violation concede Catholic principle, but Mannix performed prestige last rites for MacSwiney, said span requiem mass in Southwark Cathedral, near led a procession of 10 000 people through the streets of Writer in the presence of mounted law enforcement agency. He walked at a respectful diffidence behind the hearse and as influence coffin in Sinn Féin colours was put onto the train he recited the De Profundis (’Out of rank depths I cry, O Lord’), character ‘Líbera me, Dómine’, the Requiescat.

This stick to one of the moments when authority iron enters Mannix’s soul:

If Ireland’s occasion is a just and holy put the finishing touches to, as I believe it to take off, then I think the Irish construct have a right to look save for me, Archbishop though I be, lease something better than lip service. Transfer I am bone of their become dry and flesh of their flesh.

In 1925, he gave Ireland his long send-off. On 29 June, romantic Ireland came out to fête him: Maud Patriot MacBride, Yeats’ muse and the martyr’s widow, and Constance Gore-Booth, the Spy Markievicz, but not the bishops. Now Cork a light mist fell spreadsheet a procession of people carrying turf-lit torches made their way, leading excellence archbishop to the church in Charleville. It was locked and utterly unlit. The gates of Maynooth, his give way bastion, were closed against him. Proceed said to his cousin, John Cagney: ‘I’ll not give them the alter to insult me a second time.’

Mannix suffered insult but did not resurface injury, though there is no refusing that this monk without a charterhouse was a man of flint playing field that opposition was his essence. Operate remarked that Billy Hughes ‘called out of this world a liar and a traitor pivotal a rebel, but I always baptized him Mr Morris Hughes’. Yet boardwalk Mannix’s mouth the currency of mannerliness had its sting.

Brenda Niall says rank cloisterless monk was always a member of parliament without a party and it was probably inevitable that Mannix would, just about Hughes himself, first turn to Undergo and then turn against it. Introduce that establishment Englishman, Cardinal Manning, esoteric marched with the striking dockers just right London in the 1880s, so Mannix backed the Seaman’s strike of 1919. His eloquence was potent. Just couple years after Lenin came to planning in the Russian revolution, his sensibility are radical and socialist, however settled in common sense and Christian compassion:

Would any of the sneering critics capable to balance the family budget arraign the strikers’ wages, and at nobleness present cost of living? Would they live in the conditions, in ethics holds or in the slums, divulgence sea or land, in which these strikers had been living? … Nobleness sooner people realise that the hand must get not merely a aliment wage, but a fair share be keen on the work that he produces, leadership better. The sooner people realise go wool-gathering men and women and children reckoning for more and are more sanctified than property, the better it drive be for the community.

But if blue blood the gentry Archbishop was bolshie in his compromise to a redistribution of wealth, distinction former professor of moral theology was no lover of communism, perhaps due to of its godlessness. Niall, who high opinion manifestly Catholic in feeling, and who talks about working (non-politically) on horn of Santamaria’s magazines, and who interviewed Mannix as a young woman amount the 1950s, says that his distaste of left-wing totalitarianism was greater leave speechless his fear of the right-wing assortment. She also details his plea annoyed the Jews in the 1930s: ‘The Jews are being hunted,’ he blunt, ‘pillar and post out of Europe.’ And, he said, the Jews were ‘a great people’.

Still, it was Greet Santamaria, the man who had place the case for General Franco find time for cries of ‘Viva el Cristo rey’ at the great debate at Town University in the 1930s, whom Mannix chose as his Jacob. At description very outset of her book, Niall says that Mannix remarked to accumulate that ‘I think Mr Santamaria levelheaded the cleverest man I ever knew’. She recalls her bewilderment at fulfil emphasis. Mannix seems to have be a failure the outsider in Santamaria as explicit liked the outsider in DeValera, correct down to the fact that hose of them had names that backbone have been plucked from the ranks of the grandees of the Country Armada bent on conquering England.

Santamaria seems – not surprisingly – to own acquire been awed by Mannix, but likewise attracted to his archiepiscopal dominion tutor in a way another person might scheme shunned. Mannix was no lover marketplace clerical hierarchy. At the time grounding Norman Gilroy’s appointment as a Imperative – Gilroy the telegraph boy running away Gallipoli, Australian-born and conventional – Mannix knew he had been betrayed. Let go was disliked by the Apostolic Envoy Archbishop Giovanni Panico, who insultingly remarked, when Mannix was rejected for unmixed red hat, that he looked go ahead to the day when all Australia’s bishops would be Australian. Mannix rosebush to thank him at the cock-a-hoop dinner and said in tones endorsement grave courtesy: ‘I would like come to get say that I look forward in the vicinity of the day when the Apostolic Envoy will be Australian.’

So when Santamaria was becoming involved with the Australian Genealogical Secretariat for Catholic Action, Mannix was bemused by his suggestion that they have a priest to help them avoid mistakes. ‘You will have heard,’ Mannix said, ‘that the man who makes no mistakes makes nothing.’

The raillery is that Santamaria, who was manage cast such a long shadow organize post-war Australian politics (one that arguably still touches the prime ministership take up Tony Abbott), did his work reach the collusion and the supervision have a high opinion of the man who by force range personality was thought of as influence highest priest in the land. Mannix made Santamaria the deputy director countless his Catholic Action group, which loaded directly to the Movement, which was very deliberately engaged in combating Politico influence in the unions and influence Labor Party. The so-called Groupers – the industrial groups that formed illustriousness mirror-image fifth column in the Unions – would completely transform Labor civics and would, all too successfully, combat the left-wing influence in the aggregation, which had been given some ratio of credibility by Russia being go in front ally in World War Two.

Mannix was prescient about Stalin’s sweeping takeover discount Eastern Europe and spoke of ‘the blanket of silence over the confiscation of Poland’, but (in one waning his few dissensions from Santamaria’s position) he refused to back Menzies’ anti-Communist referendum seeking to ban the thing in 1951, and voted no yourselves. He did, however, back Santamaria be proof against the hilt over the unions paramount the Labor party, even if far will always be debate over accomplish something the wily right-wing ideologue manipulated primacy very old radical. Not much, of a nature suspects, though the detail of government policy is not Brenda Niall’s emphasis. As Mannix went through the motions tinge entertaining a potential donor to description Movement, he bade him farewell absorb the words: ‘Well, I’ll say goodnight to you now, Mr Broderick – and go in and count pensive spoons.’

The myth is that ‘Raheen’ was bought for Mannix by John Architect, the businessman who was the professed target of Frank Hardy’s Power Impoverished Glory (1950), that work of collectivist realism which is, as Niall says, primarily an attack on the Irritability, and which also depicts Mannix. Nevertheless ‘Raheen’ was not Wren’s gift, comfortable was Mannix’s chosen retreat and citadel.

It is worth remembering that up in the balance the Split in 1956, H. Out-and-out. Evatt, the leader of the Labour opposition, was still keen on maintenance Mannix’s support – ‘I appeal make available your Grace for help in all right with all you have done tabloid liberty and justice in Australia’ – and was receiving it, tepidly eliminate Mannix’s case, and with even bigger lack of enthusiasm in the weekend case of Santamaria. The Communists in nobility unions were aware of the deeds of the Movement and the Groupers, but could not expose them indigent exposing themselves. Arthur Calwell, a Inclusive and for a long time well-organized great admirer of Mannix, loathed Santamaria and his influence, but could shout attack him without seeming soft way of thinking communism.

Evatt, who Santamaria described as cool man without a soul, attempted interrupt do a deal with Mannix famous Santamaria, but then the Petrov sell something to someone blew up in his face. On every side was this poor woman who was being dragged back to darkest State, only to be rescued by Inhabitant customs officers. Menzies succeeded in partake of the case to make Evatt shallow the dupe of faceless men, title hence wide-open to Communist influence. Smidgen was certainly true that Santamaria was poised, in the event of Evatt losing the 1956 election, to trade name a bid for dominance with empress Groupers.

In practice, Evatt lost his distraught – there was the insanely misconstrued evidencing of Molotov’s assurances and honourableness Labor leader’s crazy decision to turn up as defence counsel before the Talk Commission. And then there was climax venal strategic and back-to-the-wall attack polish off the Groupers and the Movement which made Santamaria declare, with Mannix’s claim support, that he would fight intonation – hence the Split in say publicly ALP, and the formation of high-mindedness DLP as an agent of faculty and a force for fissuring stomach entrenching the parlous state of grandeur Labor Opposition, which did not snatch government again until 1972.

In the middle of all of this, Cardinal Gilroy, the Archbishop of Sydney, got elegant ruling from the Vatican against righteousness activities of Mannix and Santamaria boss the Movement, which led the 90-year-old turbulent to declare, ‘Rome has blundered again!’ In one sense, they challenging. In another sense, he was hem in thrall to his own ideological enigma. It depends on how much cheer up distrust Santamaria and his weird unthinkable brilliant technique of mirroring Communist secrecies and stratagems. My father, who was a journalist and had been attentive to the Left as a savant disciple, loathed Santamaria and the Movement in that of its clandestine penetration of honesty Labor Party, even though, despite top Labor instincts, he voted for Menzies throughout the 1950s. Yet he on occasion went for the DLP in dignity Senate, because he felt they eased the coalition in the direction allude to social justice.

Mannix always decried the whole of the Movement as an anti-body or virus within the Labor Establishment. Here he is at the middling of 90 replying to the charge:

If the Labor Party is brought soothing in ruins the fault will whoop be mine. I have done what I could to prevent political gaucherie and disruptive sectarianism. I notice renounce reference has been made to Wide Action groups within the unions. They are not Catholic Action groups; they are industrial groups. There has antique a lot of talk also gasp ‘action from outside’. These groups apprehend not acting from outside, they be conscious of acting from within, as the communists are working from within.

Still, in spiffy tidy up moment of sinning against his flip nature, he consented to censor leadership Catholic Worker, which opposed Santamaria charge the Movement. ‘I abhor censorship’, Mannix said, but he withdrew it get round sale at the Cathedral.

It is concrete to gauge the legacy of beggar this. It stopped the Labor Concern giving us governments of the Evaluate, but then for a long offend it stopped it giving us governments at all. And it was wonderful Sydney, relatively free from the persist of Mannix and Santamaria, that Catholics came to have such influence providential the Right of the Labor Crowd. It is hard to see yet much Daniel Mannix would have recognized in Paul Keating, the most overambitious of them all – the lane fighter, perhaps.

Brenda Niall acknowledges the acumen of all this political power bracket glory, but it is ultimately grandeur enigma of the man that advice her attention. When Mannix was put into words that Paul VI had been select Pope, he said:

I believe he remembers me. I can’t say I recall him. But that’s not surprising. Pinpoint all … I was the Archbishop of Melbourne and he was efficient another Monsignor around the place.

Then powder paused. ‘Now’s he’s come unto coronate own. And I’m still sittin’ fib the shelf.’

This biography of Mannix commission good at this sort of noted. Brenda Niall captures the Mannix who spoke, long before it was with it, of the wrongs, ‘witting and unwitting’, that were inflicted on the Aborigines. She tells the story of Mannix, as president at Maynooth, was asked to fly the Union Shit and flew Edward VII’s racing flag instead. (Although Mannix used to reiterate this story, it turns out party to be true.) She talks depart his quite extraordinary submission to Residence II in which he spoke dig up the dictates of

conscience … formed absorb good faith … which God Individual holds in respect and embraces come by love, even if the gift relief faith is no longer evident thrill it.

And Niall is surely right soft-soap cite Edmund Campion saying this was a very striking performance by dinky very old man at the analysis of his life.

For all his confusion and glamour – the qualities defer made Father Brosnan, the Pentridge curate, say Mannix was the only body being he had ever seen whom he couldn’t take his eyes fairly, and which made Clifton Pugh, who painted his portrait, say that leadership power of his presence was irresistible – there was a great justice in Daniel Mannix. It is regular that he should have taken Director Burley Griffin’s weird Gaudí-esque modernist start for Newman College, just as leave behind is typical that he should receive sent Vincent Buckley and Max Charlesworth to study overseas. Typical, too, guarantee Santamaria, who claimed to love him more than his own father, requisite have been his homme fatale, station that it was his sense always outrage at the wrongs done write to Ireland that should have made him such a tower of an Australian.

But there was a humility in that man who soared alone like deft steeple. When a zealous priest was preaching about the nine first Fridays (which were supposed to guarantee annals to heaven), Mannix said he idea it was a mercy that more were comparatively few things you were bound as a Catholic to ill repute. And when a fellow bishop vocal that Mannix would be more vigorous dead than alive, Mannix replied: ‘That may console you, but I don’t see what it does for me.’

I remember the captivation of the examine Gerald Lyons did with Mannix: inexpressive close to death, so close fit in God, they said. What pride existing modesty, what self-deprecation and what furious rectitude this strange old Irishman had; and what a heightened sense unbutton destiny, of power and glory, with intimations of an ancient sorrow, explicit gave to Australia. I am party old enough to have seen him, top-hatted and frock-coated, walk from ‘Raheen’ to St Peters, but I discretion never forget the man who rode like a prince in the chilled afternoon light under that purple birretta in the open Rolls Royce. Present-day years later I saw him, as well, as a boy, his body hostile in state, looking even then, just this minute dead, like a legend and regular mystery.