Everything about Daniel Mannix totally explained
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, and personally welcomed
Edward VII and
George V during their visits to the college.
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 wasn't 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, and he counselled Australians of Irish Catholic extraction to stay out of Irish politics. 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.
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'd 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, and also by the
Vatican . Rome appointed Archbishop
Justin Simonds as coadjutor to Mannix - Simonds was widely seen as Rome's man in Melbourne.
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.
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.
Newman College and the Australian Catholic Students Association each hold annual public lectures in his name.
Monash University's Residential College, Mannix College, is named after Daniel Mannix.
Daniel Mannix was the subject of a 5 part dramatised documentary, "Turbulent Priest", written by Gerry McArdle and transmitted on RTÉ Radio 1.
In Power Without Glory, Frank Hardy presented a loose caricature of Mannix in the character of Archbishop Malone. Malone was played by Michael Pate in the book's 1976 miniseries dramatisation.
Salesian College Chadstone's Year 9 'Mannix' campus is named after Daniel Mannix.Further Information
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