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Daniel Patrick Mannix (4 March 1864 - 2 November 1963), Irish-born Australian Catholic clergyman, Archbishop of Melbourne for 46 years, was one of the most influential public figures in 20th century Australia, and certainly the most powerful cleric in Australian history.
Mannix was born the son of a poor tenant farmer near Charleville (now Rath Luirc) in County Cork, and was educated at Christian Brothers schools and at the prestigious Maynooth seminary, where he was ordained as a priest in 1890. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant scholars the college had ever produced. 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.
Mannix was consecrated as a bishop in 1912. Had he stayed in Ireland, he would probably have become a Cardinal. But in 1913 he accepted an appointment as coadjutor (assistant) to the elderly Archbishop Thomas Carr of Melbourne, one of the great centres of Irish emigration, where the Catholic Church was almost entirely Irish. In Australia at this time, the Irish Catholics were commonly treated as an underclass by the Anglo-Scottish Protestant ascendancy, and also as potentially disloyal. Mannix was thus regarded with suspicion from the start, and his militant advocacy on behalf of a separate 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 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 contributed to the defeat of two referendums on the subject. When the Labor Party split over conscription, Mannix supported the Catholic-dominated anti-conscription faction, led by Frank Tudor. James Scullin, Frank Brennan, Joseph Lyons and, later, Arthur Calwell were among the Irish Catholic politicians whose careers he fostered. In 1917, when Carr died, Mannix became Archbishop of Melbourne.
By the end of the war Mannix was the recognised leader of the Irish community in Australia, idolised by Catholics but detested by many Anglo-Australian 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. When he left Australia in 1920, to visit Rome and the United States (the British government refused him permission to visit Ireland), there was a serious, though unsuccessful, move to prevent him returning to Australia.
In fact Mannix was not an extremist. He opposed the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 and always condemned the use of force by Irish nationalists, and he counselled Australian Irish Catholics to stay out of Irish politics. He supported moderate Catholic politicians in the Labor Party and opposed socialist tendencies. He 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, and felt he had to maintain the prestige of the Irish community. He lived in a mansion, Raheen in Kew, was chauffered about in a large limousine, and was driven at the head of the enormous St Patrick's Day parade with a guard of honour made up of Australian Irish Caholic winners of the Victoria Cross.
After Ireland became independent from Britain in 1922, Mannix became less politically controversial and animosity to him gradually faded. From the 1930s he increasingly 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 to 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, when the power of the Communist Party in the trade unions was at its height, Mannix authorised Santamaria to form the Catholic Social Studies Movenment, 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 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. This is believed to be the main reason why Mannix never became a Cardinal. As a mark of displeasure, Rome appointed Archbishop Justin Simonds as coadjutor to Mannix - 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, Manzies was re-elected in 1961, and Mannix and Calwell were 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 while the Church was preparing to celebrate his 100th birthday the following March.
Further reading
- Niall Brennan, Dr Mannix, Rigby Ltd, Adelaide 1964
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