The first year of formal Catholic Action in Australia was the year of Hitler’s Anschluss and of Munich, a year during which the outbreak of another world war came to appear an ever more likely possibility. The Australian Catholic press, which from the Abyssinian war until the Sudetenland crisis had been insistent that Australia should not become involved in another European war, by the closing months of 1938 was beginning to waver in this stance. Appalled by the brutality of Hitler, and alarmed by the bellicosity of the Japanese in China,1 the Advocate in October made its first call for an increased Australian defence preparedness;1 and it urged Catholic young men to join the militia.3 Apprehension at the course of world events had already moved Kevin Kelly and other Campion men during 1938 to enlist in the Melbourne University Rifles or other units of the Citizen Forces.4
As world attention swung away from Spain, where Franco’s forces were advancing steadily, and focussed on Central Europe, the anti-Communist campaign among Catholics began to decline in intensity. Corresponding with this, the Catholic actionist movement steadied down to a less dramatic, more stable rate of growth than during the critical first twelve months of the Spanish War. It was against this more settled emotional background that the Australian National Secretariat of Catholic Action began its operations.
Preceding the actual opening of the Secretariat were four months of planning and organisation by the Episcopal Sub-Committee on Catholic Action. The basis for the Sub-Committee’s policy thinking was provided by the Campion Memorandum which had been presented to the Plenary Council. However, the major recommendations of the Memorandum were not accepted before a serious clash of opinion, with far-reaching consequences, had occurred between the episcopal representatives of Melbourne and Sydney.
The Campion Memorandum had presented the Secretariat’s primary duties as falling into two main categories, corresponding to two ‘crises’ facing ‘the thinking Catholic layman in Australia today’. The first was ‘a crisis within the ranks of unorganised Catholic Action’; the second ‘a crisis among the working classes, fraught with grave danger to Catholics’.
To deal with the second matter first: the document warned that everywhere Trade Unions were ‘steadily coming under the control of the Communists’, and were ‘adopting proposals, platforms, and policies to which a Catholic may be unable in conscience to pay allegiance’. Since resignation from Unions would in many cases result in loss of employment, it was imperative that Catholic workers be educated with a view to their ‘preventing a Communist or pagan capture of unionism in Australia’. The Secretariat would see to this task; it would maintain a surveillance on Communist and Communist-controlled organisations; and it would prepare and distribute reports on Communist activities and tactics.
With regard to the solution of the first ‘crisis’, the Memorandum was optimistic. The Catholic actionist movement was as yet unorganised; but the experience of past years had shown that among the laity there existed ‘an eagerness to participate in the apostolate of Catholic Action’. As the structural basis for Australian Catholic Action the Memorandum recommended the Belgian/French ‘Jocist’ model, in which the overall movement was subdivided according to: ‘1) age, 2) sex, 3) locality of parish, 4) trade or profession, 5) some definite activity’. These divisions, the Memorandum maintained, corresponded to the ‘natural social groupings’ which determined most people’s interests and spheres of influence.5
Conflicts arose, however, when Archbishop Gilroy sought the immediate implementation of an entirely different plan of organisation, based on Italian Catholic Action. His scheme, presumably taken from Goodman’s A Handbook of Catholic Action, envisaged the division of the Catholic Action movement in each parish merely into men’s and women’s, younger and older people’s groups. No provision was made for the factory or occupational ‘cell’, such as was fundamental to Jocist Catholic Action. Furthermore, implementing the Italian structure would have meant placing control tightly in the hands of parish priests, and above them of individual bishops. The Jocist movement, on the other hand, was designed to function semi-autonomously, with minimum dependence on the parish, and with episcopal direction exercised only in matters of broad strategy. Of the two forms of Catholic Action, the Jocist seemingly had the greater potential to respond effectively to the Papal call for the organisation of a mass social movement to Christianise the modem industrial milieu.
Dr. Mannix passed Archbishop Gilroy’s submission on to the Campions and asked them to write a commentary on it. This second Campion memorandum was brief and condemnatory. It asserted that the Italian structure was unsuitable for Australia; and further, that its immediate establishment would be most unwise ‘because few priests (if any) in Austalia are sufficiently familiar with the varieties of Catholic Action abroad to be able to organize official Catholic Action or even a nucleus of Catholic Action in each diocese, and even less in each parish’. The Campions were particularly disturbed at Dr. Gilroy’s proposal that ‘as a general principle all organizing Secretaries should be priests’. They pointed out that this was scarcely in accord ‘with the Holy Father’s expressed views on Catholic Action, and his repeated insistence on lay leadership’.*
As it was, the Campion objections carried the day, and the Episcopal Sub-Committee decided to adhere to the recommendations of the original Memorandum and to base Australian Catholic Action on the Belgian/French model. Sydney thereupon withdrew from the Sub-Committee, and announced that it intended to establish its own archdiocesan Catholic Action network independently of the national movement. The letter of resignation emphasised the possibility of the National Secretariat’s operations infringing on the bishops’ rights to autonomy of jurisdiction within their own dioceses. Sydney was not prepared to court this risk.7
Shortly after this, Dr. Mannix asked the Campions to prepare him a final memorandum, clarifying some of their original proposals, and formally recommending two of their number as Director and Assistant Director of the Secretariat. This was duly done.
This third memorandum sought to define, among other things, the precise relationship of the Secretariat to Catholic organised activity within the Trade Unions. It emphasised that the Secretariat ‘cannot undertake direct political action among unionists or control the policy or tactics of Catholic groups of Unionists’. It could only operate by ‘collecting workers together in small groups and giving them a sound general training in Catholic social principles . . .
Out of these trained workers will soon arise groups in individual unions . . . [but] The Bureau cannot do more than train militants; it must scrupulously avoid politics and can only indirectly direct group tactics.8
The task of finding two permanent officers for the Secretariat proved more difficult than had been expected.
The Directorship of the Secretariat went to Frank Maher, the obvious choice for the position. He was formally recommended to the Episcopal Sub-Committee on the basis of his high academic accomplishments and his distinguished record as founder and long-term President of the Campion Society.’
Since its was clear to all that Kevin Kelly, because of his legal studies and private responsibilities, would be unable to join the Secretariat, the senior Campions were unsure whom to nominate for Assistant Director. Initially they were inclined to propose Ken Mitchell; however, they learned ‘through the grapevine’ that Doctor Mannix wanted Bob Santamaria for the position; and so, deferring to the latter’s obvious talents, and setting aside their misgivings occasioned by the conflicts within the Catholic Worker, they nominated Santamaria.10 His citation to the bishops mentioned that he had completed ‘an exceptionally brilliant honours course in History and Economics’; that he had won the Wyselaskie Scholarship in Constitutional History; and that he had been a member of ‘several Intervarsity Debating Teams’. The foundation of the Catholic Worker had been ‘due mainly to his energy’; and he had ‘appeared with outstanding success at Public Debates against Communism at the University’. Furthermore,
He has been in close touch with Labour leaders in Victoria and has made a close study of Australian working class conditions. An active member of the Campion Society for many years, he speaks and writes Italian and French fluently and is an excellent writer and speaker.
The memorandum recommended annual salaries of £520 for the Director, and £260 fir the Assistant Director.11
These nominations, and the proposed salaries, were accepted by the Episcopal Sub-Committee. An Ecclesiastical Assistant whs appointed in Father William Keane, S.J., Professor of Philosophy at the Jesuit Seminary at Watsonia, and a notable scholar of Catholic social thought.12 A suite of offices, previously Frank Maher’s law apartments, was rented in the Bank of New South Wales Building at 368 Collins Street. All was now in readiness for the Secretariat to begin its operations.
The Australian National Secretariat of Catholic Action officially opened its doors on Monday 24 January 1938.” Occupying the premises were Maher, Santamaria, and female office assistance. Later in the year Gerard McLaughlin, a Campion man and Catholic Worker Committee member, was also taken onto the staff, primarily as a business manager.
The responsibility which the Secretariat (ANSCA) had assumed was a formidable one. It had been established to initiate, and to co-ordinate the development of, a multi-faceted, Australia-wide Catholic Action complex. The vastness of the continent put the detailed work of organisation beyond its resources; and yet initially the Directors could call on the assistance of only a handful of contacts outside Victoria. Furthermore, they were well aware that they possessed no real power other than that to advise and inform. AU authority over Catholic Action within each diocese resided with the incumbent bishop; and the effectiveness of the Secretariat would depend on the good-will, enthusiasm and leadership qualities of a multitude of individual bishops, priests and laymen.
The Secretariat expected eventually to have in operation a network of Catholic Action movements, differentiated according to age and sex, and further divided into class/occupational groupings for: the urban working class; the rural workers; the middle-class; the professions; and the schools.1* Before any ambitions could be achieved, however, a substantial body of leaders had to be found and trained; and as a first step in this direction, ANSCA set about encouraging the extension of the existing undifferentiated study-group movement. From the study-groups would arise the militants who would make up the leadership cadres for the future vocational movements.15
Within Victoria the work of ANSCA was much facilitated by the assistance of the Campion Society. Indeed, for some time the distinction between the two bodies was merely nominal. Early in 1938 Denys Jackson and Kevin Kelly toured New Zealand, sharing twenty-four talks on Catholic Action, and establishing lasting links between the movements in the two countries.16 In June, at the invitation of Brian Harkin, a group of Campions made a lecturing sojourn to Warnambool;” and in September a number of them addressed five meetings, including one which filled the parish hall, during a weekend at Benalla.
The Ballarat Campion Society, meanwhile, had become the centre of a network of Campion groups scattered throughout the South-West.19 It was selling 400 pamphlets and 1,000 Catholic Workers every month;20 was conducting monthly lectures in St. Patrick’s Hall; and was regularly giving talks in surrounding towns.2’ One of its members, John Larkins, was appointed otticial Catholic Action Organiser for the diocese by Bishop Foley.a The Geelong Campion group was similarly flourishing, and had ‘commandeered a page of the parish gazette’ to propagate its views.23
The Clitherow Society also played its part in assisting ANSCA As a consequence of the absence in Victoria of any other young women’s Catholic actiomst movement, it found itself inundated by previously isolated study* groups seeking affiliation.24 At the beginning of 1938, six months after its foundation, the Society accommodated to the dominant interests of its members by altering its study-programmes, giving them a less academic and more life-situation slant than previously.25 Towards the end of the year, with the help of the Secretariat, it launched a bright newsy magazine, Torchlight, which featured film reviews, fashions, recipes, general chatter, and some articles of a more intellectual kind.24
At this stage, however, the Clitherow Society was too inexperienced to serve as the nucleus of a young women’s Catholic Action movement, and so ANSCA turned its attentions to the Sydney-based Grail (see Chapter 11). In August 1938 three ‘Ladies of the Grail’ travelled down to Melbourne at the invitation of the Secretariat, and conducted a week-long women’s leadership training course. Fifty young ladies from a variety of Catholic organisations attended.22 This marked the effective beginning of the women’s Catholic Action movement in Victoria.
In other respects also the general movement in Victoria was progressing to the Secretariat’s satisfaction. With regard to the clergy, by May 1938 some priests’ study-groups already existed in Melbourne, and were ‘functioning excellently’;2* and at Corpus Christi College, Werribee, students’ groups continued to operate.2* At the Franciscan Seminary at Box Hill the students’ journal, The Troubador, reflected a lively interest in Catholic Action, Catholic social thought, and Bellocian/Campion-style medieval romanticism.30 At the Catholic schools the situation was equally encouraging, with ‘very valuable results’ accruing from several conferences held during the year between ANSCA and the schools’ principals.31
An obvious need of ANSCA was for publicity outlets so that it could disseminate information and reading material among the ever-proliferating study-groups. The Advocate was helpful in this regard, featuring a Secretariat page from July onwards; and the Catholic Hour made time available for ANSCA broadcasting.32 The Australian Catholic Truth Society published three ANSCA/Campion-produced pamphlets during 1938: For Social Justice (10 February); What to Read: Booklists for Discussion Groups (30 May); and Frank Maher’s The Catholic Revival (30 July). Furthermore, in order to prepare more advanced material for circulation, Kevin Kelly translated a number of texts which he had received from France and Belgium.33 The most important of these were Pierre Bayart’s L’Action Catholique Specialisee (re-published as Specialised Catholic Action, 1940), and Lelotte’s Pour Realiser L’Action Catholique (re-published as Fundamental Principles of Catholic Action, 1940).34
The task facing ANSCA in respect of the other five Australian States as much more difficult. In many dioceses the Catholic actionist movement had scarcely begun, and so initially there was little the Secretariat could do other than send out information and seek to expand its network of contacts. As a first step towards a more structured situation it asked all bishops to appoint Diocesan Organisers of Catholic Action through whom it could have its official dealings. By the end of 1938 these had been appointed in all the Australian archdioceses (excluding Sydney), and in thirteen of the twenty- four dioceses. Only five Organisers were laymen,15 and none was a full-time appointee. Most appear to have been priests on diocesan administrative staffs, and thus, from AN SC A’s point of view, were well placed to exert a wide influence. Informal links were maintained with the movement in New Zealand.
Once Diocesan Organisers had been appointed, the Secretariat sought through them to stimulate the formation of discussion groups in every parish. As an assistance, it supplied study-programmes and reading lists. Furthermore, in order to build up a reserve of suitably educated clergy, an indispensable requirement of Catholic Action, it encouraged the establishment of study-groups of priests, ‘particularly young priests’.1* Towards the end of 1938 it arranged for parish priests in all States to receive a brochure, together with a cover-letter from their respective bishops, in which were set out a rationale for Catholic Action and guidelines on how to form study-groups.17
As a further means of extending its influence in its vast domain, ANSCA sponsored a series of inter-State visits by its representatives. In February Bob Santamaria took part in a National Eucharistic Congress at Newcastle;* and in July he and Davem Wright travelled around Tasmania.” In September Frank Maher visited several dioceses in New South Wales and Queensland;*® and in December he made a special tour of the Southern New South Wales dioceses of Wagga Wagga and Goulbum.41
The Secretariat also sponsored three tours by internationally-known Catholic publicists. In March the Reverend Dr. Arthur Ryan, of Belfast University, was brought out to give a number of talks on social questions, with these being well supported. In May a leading English Catholic novelist, Father Owen Dudley, made a lecture-tour. His talks packed to overflowing, among other venues, the Melbourne Town Hall,” the Sydney Town Hall,® and the Great Hall at Sydney University.44 Later in the year an extensive tour was undertaken by Paul McGuire, founder of the Catholic Guild for Social Studies. Then aged thirty-five, McGuire was second only to Frank Sheed as Australia’s internationally best-known Catholic layman. He was a regular contributor to English and American Catholic periodicals; and in 1938 and 1939 he made two separate lecture-tours of the United States, one under the auspices of Sheed & Ward, the other sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.45 He was also co-editor with John Fitzsimons, an American priest, of Restoring All Things: A Guide to Catholic Action, which was published in January 1939 by Sheed & Ward, and was the most comprehensive and scholarly English-language study of the development of Catholic Action to have appeared to that date.
All these tours were confined to the Eastern States, a fact which indicates the geographic limits of ANSCA’s effective field of operations. Because of distance, the South Australian and Western Australian Catholic Action movements had little contact with Melbourne. In the former State, the Catholic Guild for Social Studies, with its nineteen study-groups, virtually monopolised the movement. By the end of 1938 the local Catholic Action Organiser, Father Dunne (editor of the Southern Cross), had been able to discover only nine groups outside the Guild, four of which were attached to the C.Y.M.S.44
While ANSCA’s preliminary work of stimulating the formation of study- groups was going ahead, the first tentative moves were being made towards the establishment of vocational movements. Early results were particularly encouraging in the rural sphere. During the first half of 1938 Father James Cleary and the Geelong Campions founded a successful Catholic rural group in Cleary’s parish of Drysdale, twelve miles from Geelong.47 Another was founded at the same time in the North-East by Ted Hennessy and the Wangaratta Campions.49 A major source of inspiration for these ventures was a book which had become very popular in Campion circles, Belloc’s rurally-orientated An Essay on the Restoration of Property (1936). In South Australia, the Guild for Social Studies had for years been experimenting with rural groups; and soundings conducted by ANSCA during the second half of 1938 indicated that there was room for the movement to expand into the other States.4’ Indeed, the general response was sufficiently encouraging for ANSCA late in the year to moot the idea of launching a national Catholic rural paper. Ted Hennessy indicated his willingness to edit such a periodical if it were founded.50
Attempts to establish pilot groups for a Catholic workers’ movement did not prove so successful. Bob Santamaria was given charge of this field; and early in 1938 he sought, through Father B. W. Hayden, the Wagga Wagga Diocesan Organiser, to have specialised workers’ groups set up in Wagga, or in the nearby railways’ workshop centre of Junee. Santamaria had ‘plenty of material prepared for such groups’;51 but it seems that nothing came of the endeavour, nor of subsequent attempts to establish workers’ groups elsewhere.52 However, the Secretariat did receive ‘repeated calls for guidance’ from within ‘certain industrial organisations’, and was able to respond effectively ‘thanks to much volunteer assistance from priests and laymen and laywomen’.” Whatever the nature of these limited successes, so little progress was made in forming workers’ study-groups that early in 1939 Santamaria transferred his main attention from the industrial to the more promising rural sphere, and became head of ANSCA’s ‘Rural Department’.54
In some other areas also the Secretariat was unable in its first year to make satisfactory headway towards realising its original ambitions. The Campion Memorandum to the Plenary Council had proposed that the Secretariat investigate and report on Communist activities, yet ANSCA’s time and energies were so occupied in organisational matters that it was unable to do this. Also it had been expected that it would issue a monthly bulletin for study-groups,” but during 1938 no such publication appeared. The Memorandum had further suggested ‘Co-operation with non-Catholic bodies which think correctly about Divorce Reform, Euthanasia or Cremation Agitation etc.’, and shortly after its foundation ANSCA had moved in this direction by requesting Diocesan Organisers to draw up lists ‘of about sixty or seventy of the more prominent non-Catholics in the Diocese including ministers of religion, local politicians and leaders in civic life, to whom C.T.S. pamphlets could be sent’.54 However; this project also was shelved.
Another ANSCA scheme which was begun, then put aside, was that of preparing detailed analyses of Australian social problems; In February 1938 six sub-committees were appointed (doubtlessly from among the Campions) to examine and report on, severally, the Basic Wage; Child Endowment; Housing; Agricultural Problems; the Vocational Control of Industry; and the Money Question.57 Although only one Report, that on Child Endowment, seems to have been completed,” this exercise presaged the ANSCA-prepared Social Justice Statements which from 1940 were issued annually by the Australian Hierarchy.
In addition to matters directly pertaining to Catholic Action, the Secretariat during its first twelve months undertook a number of less specific activities. In mid-year the passage of the Federal National Insurance Bill seemed to necessitate the amalgamation of all the existing Catholic benefit societies, and the bishops ordered ANSCA to arrange this. Its efforts, although time-consuming, came to nothing, as the Act was allowed to lapse because of its Constitutional invalidity.” The Secretariat also helped organise Catholic support for tighter anti-pomography laws;” and, at episcopal request, it assisted the Commonwealth Government in immigration schemes designed to bring out British orphans in one instance, and German and Austrian political refugees in another.*’ Furthermore. Bob Santamaria took a personal interest in the welfare of Italian migrants already settled in Australia, and actively promoted measures designed to strengthen their sense of communal and religious identity.**
At the end of 1938 the National Secretariat could look back on a year of solid, if unspectacular, progress. It had developed a national network of important episcopal, clerical, and lay contacts; it had succeeded in having Catholic Action Organisers appointed in most dioceses; and it had begun to build up its nuclei of leaders for the future vocationally-based movements. Its plans having thus far unfolded smoothly, it could proceed with confidence towards its ultimate goal of mobilising the Australian Catholic laity in a sustained campaign to transform Australian Society.
NOTES
1 See Adv. 29 September 1938, ‘Sulla’; 8 December, editorial.
2 Ibid,, 20 October 1938, editorial.
3 Ibid, 12 January 1939, P- 12,
4 Memorandum, K. T. Kelly to author, September 1967.
5 Draft of Campion Memorandum I, September 1937, in possession of Mr. Justice McInerney.
6 Draft of Campion Memorandum II, in possession of Mr. Justice McInerney.
7 Interview with Mr. B. A. Santamaria, 14 September 1971.
8 Draft of Campion Memorandum III, in possession of Mr. Justice McInerney
9 Ibid.
10 It is probable that the Archbishop’s preference was indicated by Father Murtagh— certainly the source of the information was regarded by the Campions, according to Kevin Kelly as authoritative. The dominant personalities among the senior Campions were Kevin Kelly and Murray McInerney; and, if subsequent opinions are any indication, it is likely that reservations concerning Santamaria’s suitability for the Assistant Directorship were greater with Kelly, McInerney and Heffey; and less with Jackson and Maher. Kelly recalls that he and McInerney were still debating the issue as they paced Studley Park Road, Kew, prior to entering ‘Raheen’ to convey the Campion recommendation to Dr. Mannix. Kelly recalls saying to McInerney that since it was certain that Santamaria would make an impact on Australia, it was best that he should do so under the guidance of the bishops. Testimony of Mr. Kevin Kelly to author, 14 November 1981.
11 Campion Memorandum III. Father William Keane in an address in June 1938 (Adv. 16 June 1938, p. 7) implied that the Assistant Directorship was a part-time position. This, according to Mr. Santamaria and all other sources, was not the case.
12 See, for instance, W. Keane, ‘Catholics and Reconstruction’, Australasian Catholic Record, January 1932. See also papers on social questions in Keane’s papers, Jesuit Archives.
13 Mr. Santamaria recalls this as the official opening date. The Secretariat had begun operating informally prior to this: see Archbishop Simmonds’ statement in the Advocate, 20 January 1938, p. 9.
14 These were the standard Jocist divisions. For a diagrammatic representation of ANSCA’s scheme, see the Report of the Australian National Secretariat of Catholic Action to December 31st, 1940, of which there is a copy in Box 11, Father Jeremiah Murphy papers, Jesuit Archives.
15 See ‘Catholic Action Formation in the C.Y.M.S.*, Adv. 24 March 1938, p. 7; W. Keane, S.J., ‘Address to the Clergy of the Melbourne Archdiocese’, 7 June 1938, Keane papers, Jesuit Archives (printed, slightly abbreviated, in Adv. 16 June 1938, p. 7).
16 Orders of the Day, April 1938, H/B.
17 Ibid., July 1938, H/B.
18 Ibid., October 1938, H/B; cf. Adv. 29 September 1938, p. 5.
19 There were Campion groups at Ararat, Hamilton, Horsham, and Stawell (C.W. 2 July 1938).
20 Ibid.
21 Adv. 10 November 1938, p. 28; 25 August p. 27.
22 Ibid., 9 June 1938, p. 22.
23 Orders of the Day, August 1938, H/B.
24 Interview with Mrs. W. B. V. Knowles, 16 February 1972. The Society was only loosely centralised until early 1938, when ANSCA encouraged it to develop as a more effective middle-class girls’ movement.
25 Orders of the Day, January 1938, Box 6, Hackett papers.
26 See Torchlight, January (No. 3), March (No. 5), July (No. 9) 1939, M.A.A.
27 Adv. 1 September 1938, p. 5.
28 Maher to Bishop Dwyer (Wagga Wagga), 23 May 1938, ANSCA files, National Civic Council offices, Hawthorn, Victoria.
29 See Connellan (Secretary of the Conversion of Australia Movement, Corpus Christi College) to Father Aubrey Goodman, M.S.C., Goodman papers, Sacred Heart Monastery, Kensington, N.S.W.
30 See back-copies of The Troubadour (began September 1937) at the Franciscan Seminary, Box Hill, Victoria.
31 C.W. 5 November 1938; cf. Keane, ‘Address to the Clergy’, 7 June 1938; cf. letter by Frank Maher in Adv. 4 August 1938, p. 8.
32 ANSCA Report, 31 December 1940, p. 5.
33 Interview with Mr. B. A Santamaria, 14 September 1971,
34 ANSCA Report 31 December 1940, p. 5.
35 See the Victorian Catholic Directory, 1939. The five were: Ken Mitchell (Melbourne)- John Larkins (Ballarat); Harold M. Regan (Armidale); John P. Kelly (Brisbane)* and K. Byrne (Perth).
36 Maher to Bishop Dwyer, 23 May 1938, ANSCA files.
37 See brochure and associated literature, ANSCA files.
38 Adv. 17 February 1938, p. 7.
39 Orders of the Day August 1938, H/B.
40 Adv. 8 September 1938, p. 23.
41 Ibid., 8 December 1938, p. 2.
42 Ibid., 26 May 1938, p. 11.
44 Ibid.
45 See information sheet on McGuire, c. September 1938, ANSCA files.
46 Dunne noted, however, that the Legion of Mary had 19 Praesidia in the archdiocese. Dunne to Maher, 20 January 1939, ANSCA files,
47 Interview with Father J. H. Cleary, 21 November 1971; Keane Address to the Clergy’, 7 June 1938.
48 Keane, Address to the Clergy*, 7 June 1938, speaks of the existence of two Catholic rural groups ‘at opposite ends of the State*, but does not give their exact location.
49 See Maher to Paul McGuire, 3 October 1938; Bishop Hayes (Rockhampton/ to Maher, 12 October 1938; John P. Kelly to Maher, 14 December 1938; H. M. Regaa to Maher, 5 January 1939, ANSCA files.
50 Maher to McGuire, 3 October 1938, ANSCA files,
51 Maher to Bishop Dwyer, 23 May 1938, ANSCA files; cf. Keane, Address to the Clergy’, 7 June 1938.
52 See B. A. Santamaria, ‘The Education of Catholic Workers’, Adv. 15 September 1938, p. 23.
53 Keane, Address to the Clergy/ 7 June 1938. I suspect that this deliberately obscure passage refers to the distribution of anti-Communist literature, probably at certain Trade Union meetings.
54 See Orders of the Day, April 1939, H/B.
55 See Campion Memorandum I, in possession of Mr. Justice McInerney.
56 Maher to Bishop Dwyer, 23 May 1938, ANSCA files.
57 C.W. 2 April 1938.
58 There is a copy of this Report, dated 20 July 1939, in the papers cf Father William Keane, Jesuit Archives. The Committee which produced it consisted of Murray McInerney and Gerald McDonald. They received much assistance from Herbert M. Cremean, M.LA., State Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, to whom they were referred by Bob Santamaria: Interview with Mr. Gerald McDonald, May 1970.
59 ANSCA Report, 31 December 1940, p. 2.
60 Ibid., p. 3,
61 See correspondence, section ‘Immigration’, ANSCA files.
62 Santamaria sought through the Diocesan Organisers to promote the sales cf a Melbourne-produced Italian language newspaper edited by Father H. Modotti, SJ., L’Angello della Famiglia. See H. M. Regan to Maher, 5 January 1939; cf. Report of Federal Conference of Catholic Action Organisers, February 1939, resolution No. 2L Adv. 27 April 1939, p. 26. Note also B. A. Santamaria, The Italian Problem in Australia’, Australasian Catholic Record, October 1939.