The right man for the job

Prince of the Church: Patrick Francis Moran, 1830-1911, by Philip Ayres; Melbourne, Miegunyah Press, 2007; 384 pp.

Reviewed by Martin Sheehan

Philip Ayres’ new book, Prince of the Church, is a vivid portrait of the man who was, arguably, Australia’s greatest churchman, Patrick Francis Moran. Ayres’ book uncovers many interesting and intriguing facts about Moran, particularly his early life in Ireland and in Rome, and his relationship to the Irish Church and the Irish nationalist movement, as well as his huge influence on the development of the Australian Catholic Church in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

I first encountered Moran as a teenager in the pages of Vance Palmer’s excellent little book, National Portraits, originally published in 1940. Palmer’s Moran was a cosmopolitan, cultured figure, a man whose long years at various posts inside the Vatican bureaucracy had mellowed his allegiance to Irish nationalism. The Moran described in Palmer’s essay was highly suited to the largely Protestant-secular culture of the early colony of New South Wales. Refraining from partisan polemic, he wooed the local political and social Establishment with his refined intellect and his diplomatic approach to Church-State relations.

Combative character

This is not a portrait that accords with Philip Ayres’ view of Moran, however, and his role in the Australian Church. Ayres’ Moran is a far more pugnacious and combative character, quite prepared to poke the local Protestant Establishment in the eye and offend their sensibilities if he felt Catholic Truth needed defence. Far from being the consummate diplomat, Moran comes across in Ayres’ book as a prelate with little feel for the opinions of others, certainly not for the beliefs and culture of local Protestants.

Indeed, he comes across as someone who, it could be argued, contributed to the ghettoisation of Australian Catholics by his intransigence and his unwillingness to allow Catholics to integrate into the wider non-Catholic community of New South Wales. Moran also had a somewhat baleful influence on the nascent Catholic culture of the Australian colonies. Under his predecessor – the English Benedictine, Archbishop Roger Vaughan – the Church in New South Wales was influenced by English Catholicism, with its cultured and aristocratic forms of worship, its attachment to the Church’s ancient liturgical musical tradition. Moran changed all that, replacing English with Irish clergy where he could, and doing away with much of the English liturgical forms that had thrived under Vaughan.

Reinforcing difference

But Ayres makes a strong case for understanding Moran’s approach in the context of the political and social realities of life for most Catholics of Irish origin in Australia. Facing a dominant Anglo-Protestant culture in the colony, and increasing pressure from a political class wishing to implement compulsory secular education for all Australian children regardless of denomination, Moran felt obliged to reinforce what made Catholics different from other Australians.

To that end, Moran set out to build a distinctly Australian Church, though one dominated and guided by Irish Catholic forms of worship and culture. One way in which he achieved this was through the establishment of an Australian seminary at St Patrick’s, Manly, for the training of an indigenous clergy to serve the needs of the local Church. His elevation to Cardinal also proved a boost for the Australian Church, and was even seen by many local Protestants as a mark of distinction and a sign of maturity for the rapidly developing society of colonial Sydney.

Perhaps Moran’s greatest triumph was the influence he gained over the development of the early Australian Labor Party and the broader trade union movement. With its ideological roots in English secularism and socialism, the early ALP could easily have become an anti-Catholic force in the new Australian Commonwealth at the start of the twentieth century, dedicated to eradicating religion from society and potentially turning many working-class Irish Catholics away from their Church.

Reformism and ameliorism

Despite his own conservative and aristocratic inclinations, Moran had the foresight to see that most of his working-class, trade-unionist flock viewed the ALP as their natural political home and as the champion of their values. Moran therefore threw the moral weight of the Church behind the developing a trade union movement and the early ALP, guiding them away from more radical forms of socialism and towards a reformist and ameliorist commitment to social justice. In doing this, Australia owes a great debt to Moran for restraining the more radical and extremist tendencies in the Australian labour movement, thus probably avoiding the kind of violent class conflict that existed in Europe at that time and later.

Moran emerges from Ayres’ fine book as a giant not only of the early Australian Church, but also of the wider Roman Catholic Church at the end of the nineteenth century. Despite his many faults, Moran was the right man for the job, gaining greater respect for Australia’s Catholics at a time when they were struggling against a largely hostile and alien Australian community. More than any other early prelate, Moran established the Australian Church, giving it a distinctly Australian outlook and directing it outwards towards Asia. Ayres’s highly readable and scholarly account of Moran’s life should contribute greatly to a deeper understanding of Moran’s highly significant and unique contribution to the establishment of Catholicism in Australia.

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