Catholic Church in South Australia after World War II has liberal resistance to Rome's conservative swings
South Australian Catholic archbishop Matthew Beovich with B.A. Santamaria, founder of the National Civic Council and a key figure behind the stronly anti-Communist Democratic Labor Party and the conservative Movement within the church, and later archbishop Leonard Faulkner who extended the liberal approach in South Australian Catholicism.
Images courtesy Catholic Church archives.
The story of the Catholic Church in South Australia after World War II was liberal resistance against swings to conservativism from Rome and within the Australian church structure and political trends.
As early as 1941, Australian political and church circles were concerned by union officials being defeated and replaced by Communist activists. This led to what became The Movement within Catholic church parishes with secret cells being formed. Labor Australian prime minister Ben Chifley shared concern about Communism and sought the Catholic church heirarchy’s help.
In 1949, Chifley was forced to use troops against the Communist-inspired miners strike and he changed union voting laws that tended to favour right-wing unions – even more so when the conservative Robert Menzies became prime minister. The most prominent right-wing Catholic-dominated union in South Australia was the shop assistants. The political divide in the Australian Catholic chauch widened in the early 1950s when The Movement supported forming an anti-Communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) that split from the Labor Party, then led by H.V. “Doc” Evatt.
Significantly, Adelaide archbishop Matthew Beovich and Sydney cardinal Normal Gilroy were the only two of the Australian bishops not to support the Evatt Labor Party. The strategy for Beovich and Gilroy was to keep members of The Movement within the Labor Party. The other bishops and B.A. Santamaria, a leader within The Movement, formed and supported the National Civic Council conservative pressure group that became powerful the eastern states but not in South Australia.
In Adelaide, the Beovich reign over the Adelaide church ended in 1971. James Gleeson took over as archbishop and, many years later. All of these bishops had a singular anti-National Civic Council and Santamaria policy within the diocese.
When Pope Pius XII died in 1959, his successor John XXIII brought major changes through Vatican II with liberation theology taking off in South America. In line with the Vatican II, Gleeson (and his successor Leonard Faulkner) embraced liturgy changes such as the third the rite of reconciliation – a group, rather than, individual confession.
The liberal moves continued under Faulkner, especially when he appointed a chaplain to the gay and lesbian community. Instead of an assistant bishop, he developed a radical model with women on his pastoral team. Faulkner reformist moved included a gathering at Stanley Street, North Adelaide, of women who had endured failed marriages, were divorced and many women who felt lost from the church over the pill issue or may have had an early abortion.
The conservative Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) brought the switch back to tradition and opened Australia up to ultra conservative elements such as Opus Dei that had been banned from South Australia under Gleeson and Faulkner. In South Australia, the change under John Paul II was signalled – despite resistance in Adelaide – in symbols such as the banning the third rite general confession. The drift to more democracy in the church was halted. Faulker, who died in 2018, was New South Wales import Phillip Wilson.
South Australia’s branch of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) was its least successful in Australia. The Labor party negated the DLP effect by having a structure that was tight and consensual. Its four parliamentary leaders were Catholics who remained committed to their party and their faith. The DLP in South Australia reached its peak in the mid 1960s with 800 members but, in the 1970 election, it won only 3.3% of the vote in the 10 seats it contested.
