Daniel Mannix

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Statue of Daniel Mannix outside St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne
Statue of Daniel Mannix outside St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne

For other people called Daniel Mannix, see Daniel Mannix (disambiguation)

Daniel Patrick Mannix (March 4, 1864 - November 2, 1963), Irish-born Australian Catholic clergyman, Archbishop of Melbourne for 46 years, was one of the most influential public figures in 20th century Australia. Mannix was the son of a tenant farmer near Charleville, in County Cork, and was educated at Irish Christian Brothers schools and at the prestigious St Patrick's College, Maynooth seminary, where he was ordained as a priest in 1890.

In 1895 he was appointed to the chair of moral theology, and in 1903, not yet 40, he was appointed president -in effect the intellectual head of Irish Catholicism. Although he was a fierce Irish nationalist, he disapproved of violence against the British authorities[citation needed], and personally welcomed Edward VII and George V during their visits to the college.

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[edit] Appointment in Melbourne

Mannix was consecrated titular Bishop of Pharsalia and Coadjutor to Archbishop Carr of Melbourne in Maynooth College Chapel on 1 July 1912. Melbourne was one of the great centres of Irish emigration, where the Roman Catholic Church was almost entirely Irish. In Australia at this time, the Irish Catholics were commonly treated with disdain by the Anglo-Scottish Protestant majority, and also as potentially disloyal. Mannix was thus regarded with suspicion from the start, and his militant advocacy on behalf of a separate Roman Catholic school system, in defiance of the general acceptance of a secular school system, made him immediately a figure of controversy.

In 1914 Australia entered World War I on the side of Great Britain and when Mannix denounced the war as "just a sordid trade war", he was widely denounced as a traitor. When the Australian Labor Party government of Billy Hughes tried to introduce conscription for the war, Mannix campaigned against it and it was defeated. He spoke out more frequently about the 1917 referendum, which was also defeated. The extent to which Mannix influenced the outcome of the vote has been debated widely.

When the Labor Party split over conscription, Mannix supported the Catholic-dominated anti-conscription faction, led by Frank Tudor (although Tudor was not a Catholic). Among the Catholic politicians whose careers he encouraged were James Scullin, Frank Brennan, Joseph Lyons and, later, Arthur Calwell. In 1917, when Carr died, Mannix became Archbishop of Melbourne.

Mannix opposed the Easter Rising in 1916 and always condemned the use of force by Irish nationalists[citation needed], and he counselled Australians of Irish Catholic extraction to stay out of Irish politics.[citation needed] However he became increasingly radicalized, and in October 1920 he led an Irish republican funeral cortège through the streets of London following the death of hunger striker Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork City in Mannix's native county.

By the end of the war Mannix was the recognised leader of the Irish community in Australia, idolised by Catholics but detested by most Protestants, including those in power federally and in Victoria. For many years he was ostracised and not invited to the official functions his position would have entitled him to attend.[citation needed]

Mannix formed the Irish Relief Fund, which provided financial support for the families of those shot or imprisoned by the British. When he left Australia in 1920, to visit Rome and the USA, the British government refused him permission to visit Ireland or British cities with large Irish populations, which resulted in an extended stay in Penzance. There was also a serious, though unsuccessful, move to prevent him returning to Australia.

Mannix supported trade unionism but opposed militancy and strikes. In the 1920s he became outspoken in opposition to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Communist Party of Australia. On all matters of personal and sexual morality, he was a traditionalist and an upholder of the authority of the Church.

In Melbourne, Mannix was the leader of the city's largest ethnic minority as well as a religious leader. From his palatial house, Raheen, in Kew, Melbourne, he would daily walk to and from St. Patrick's Cathedral, personally greeting any of his flock that he encountered. On official engagements he was chauffered about in a large limousine. In 1920 he led an enormous St Patrick's Day parade with a guard of honour made up of Irish Australian winners of the Victoria Cross.

After the Irish Free State was created in 1922, Mannix became less politically controversial and animosity to him gradually faded for the most part. From the 1930s he came to see Communism as the main threat to the Church and he became increasingly identified with political conservatism. He was a strong supporter of Lyons, who left the Labor Party in 1931 and led the conservative United Australia Party in government from 1932 until 1939, although he continued to support Catholics in the Labor Party such as Calwell.

Mannix's best-known protege in his later years was B.A. Santamaria, a young Italian-Australian lawyer, whom Mannix appointed head of the National Secretariat of Catholic Action in 1937. After 1941, Mannix authorised Santamaria to form the Catholic Social Studies Movement, known simply as The Movement, to organise in the unions and defeat the Communists. The Movement was so successful in its efforts that by 1949 it had taken control of the Victorian branch of the Labor Party.

In 1951 the Liberal Party of Australia government of Robert Menzies held a referendum to give the government the constitutional power to ban the Communist Party. Mannix surprised many of his supporters by opposing this, on the grounds that it would give the Communists a propaganda victory and drive them underground: his may have been a decisive influence in the referendum's narrow defeat. This alliance with the Labor leader, Dr. H.V. Evatt was short-lived, however.

The Labor Party split again in 1954 over attitudes to Communism and the Cold War. Santamaria's supporters were expelled and formed the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). Mannix covertly supported the DLP and allowed many priests and religious to work openly for it. This involvement in politics was opposed by the head of the Australian Church, Norman Cardinal Gilroy, Archbishop of Sydney[citation needed], and also by the Vatican[citation needed]. Rome appointed Archbishop Justin Simonds as coadjutor to Mannix - Simonds was widely seen as Rome's man in Melbourne.[citation needed]

In 1960 Calwell became Labor leader and sought Mannix's support to bring about a reconciliation between Labor and the DLP, essential if the Menzies government was to be defeated. Some figures in the DLP supported this idea, but Mannix supported Santamaria in his resistance to such suggestions. The negotiations fell through, Menzies was re-elected in 1961. Mannix and Calwell became permanently estranged.

By the 1960s the distinct identity of the Irish community in Melbourne was fading, and Irish Catholics were increasingly outnumbered by Italians, Maltese and other postwar immigrant Catholic communities.

Mannix, who turned 90 in 1954, remained active and in full authority, but he was no longer a central figure in the city's politics. He died suddenly in November 1963, aged 99, while the Church was preparing to celebrate his 100th birthday four months later.

[edit] Legacy

  • Corpus Christi College, Australia's oldest surviving seminary, was founded by Mannix on Christmas Day, 1922. Mannix had envisaged a national seminary along the lines of Maynooth, but had to abandon plans to reform St. Mary's Seminary, Manly, New South Wales, when the Holy See ruled in favour of regional seminaries for Australia.
  • Daniel Mannix was the subject of a 5 part dramatised documentary, "Turbulent Priest", written by Gerry McArdle and transmitted on RTÉ Radio 1.

[edit] Further reading

  • Niall Brennan, Dr. Mannix, Rigby Ltd., Adelaide 1964
  • Bryan, Cyril. Archbishop Mannix: Champion of Australian Democracy. Melbourne: The Advocate Press, 1918.
  • Brady, E. J. Doctor Mannix, Archbishop of Melbourne. Melbourne: Library of National Biography (Dominion Series), 1934.
  • Murphy, Frank. Daniel Mannix – Archbishop of Melbourne. Melbourne: The Advocate Press, 1948. New and enlarged ed. Melbourne: The Polding Press, 1972.
  • Ebsworth, Rev. Walter A. Archbishop Mannix. Armadale, Victoria: H. H. Stephenson, 1977.
  • Gilchrist, Michael. Daniel Mannix, Priest & Patriot. Blackburn, Victoria: Dove Communications, 1982.
  • Santamaria, B. A. Daniel Mannix – The Quality of Leadership. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1984.
  • Kiernan, Colm. Daniel Mannix and Ireland. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984.

[edit] External links

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Preceded by
Thomas Carr (1886-1917)		 3rd Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne
(1917-63)		 Succeeded by
Justin Simonds (1963-67)