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Keywords: Santamaria

  • RELIGION

    Labor Party reform through Catholic Social Teaching

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 April 2017
    6 Comments

    It can be disconcerting to hear our family history told by a sympathetic outsider. I found Race Matthews' new book that treats Catholic engagement in public social issues fascinating in that respect. Matthews' perspective is that of a member of the Labor Party who admires Catholic Social Teaching, especially its commendation of the communal ownership of business enterprises. He sees the possibilities this presents for the reform of Australian society, particularly if adopted by the Labor Party.

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  • RELIGION

    Cardinal Pell and the culture of silence

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 10 March 2016
    23 Comments

    Even as a young priest George Pell was marked for higher things. He was a protege of B. A. Santamaria who had a significant following among Victorian bishops and priests. He was chosen to go to further study in Rome and then in Oxford. He was quickly given positions of responsibility. Within this trajectory there was no room for a priest who rocked the boat on clerical misconduct. To ask questions about why Ridsdale was being constantly moved was evidently not part of the plan.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Untangling Abbott from Santamaria

    • John Warhurst
    • 01 September 2015
    18 Comments

    There is always an appetite for anything linking Tony Abbott and Bob Santamaria. The journalist in Abbott has encouraged observers to play up the links, even though it has never been entirely clear  what he is saying. He has explained that he was impressed as a young man by Santamaria’s courage as an 'advocate for unfashionable truths’, but he also pays his public dues to a number of prominent figures including John Howard, Cardinal George Pell, John Hewson, Bronwyn Bishop and even Pope Benedict XVI.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    ASIO and me

    • John Warhurst
    • 03 August 2011
    1 Comment

    I received the documents in a battered brown suitcase. They were from a time of high drama within the Movement and the Labor Party concerning the Labor Split. In the course of my research, I wrote to several international sources. This brought me to the attention of the CIA and ASIO. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abbott and Santamaria's undemocratic Catholicism

    • Paul Collins
    • 17 August 2010
    26 Comments

    Tony Abbott is wrong to suggest that B. A. Santamaria made Australian Catholicism 'more intellectual'. Santamaria embraced a form of doctrinaire conformism that is the death of thoughtful commitment. It would be worrying if this kind of integralist Catholicism infected contemporary public life.

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  • INFORMATION

    Defending Abbott and Santamaria

    • Gerard Henderson
    • 17 August 2010
    8 Comments

    How times change. Early in the 20th Century, it was Protestant Orangemen who warned Australians not to vote for a Catholic. In the early 21 Century, such warnings are now delivered by a former Catholic priest in a publication of the Jesuit Order. –Gerard Henderson, The Sydney Institute

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Wren-Hardy stoush exposes sectarian bigotry

    • Juliette Peers
    • 06 August 2010
    6 Comments

    The Power Without Glory trial ought to be read as a high-profile and long lasting punishment meted out to traitors to a so-called Australian normality. Frank Hardy's acquittal and the campaign to defend his novel partly belong to mid 20th century Australia's strong anti-Catholic undertow.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abbott, Santamaria and Catholic Liberals

    • John Warhurst
    • 30 March 2010
    22 Comments

    Tony Abbott had a close association with B. A. Santamaria and personifies church ties with politics through his relationship with the man he has called his confessor, Cardinal Pell. The question is whether Abbott is a one-off or represents a larger group of Catholic Liberals.

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  • INFORMATION

    Disagreeing with Gerard Henderson

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 12 March 2010
    1 Comment

    Dr Henderson does Maritain a grave injustice in so cavalierly dismissing him as favouring the 'you-beaut idea to advocate Catholic/communist dialogue'. Maritain was strongly opposed to communist ideology, but he also recognised it contained positive elements, some of which he said were drawn with the Gospels.

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  • INFORMATION

    Santamaria and the bishops in politics

    • Gerard Henderson
    • 11 March 2010
    2 Comments

    Towards the end of his life, the French philosopher Jacques Maritan thought it was a you-beaut idea to advocate Catholic/communist dialogue between the Vatican and Stalin's heirs in Moscow. Santamaria made mistakes, yet on the issue of Soviet totalitarianism he was smarter than Maritan. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rosemary Goldie and the Santamaria Split

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 10 March 2010
    12 Comments

    In July 1953, the Vatican's agent Rosemary Goldie — who died on 27 February — met Santamaria but was unable to convince him of the need to keep Catholic Action out of direct political involvements. She was dismayed by the Movement's defiance of clear directives from the Holy See.

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