GROWING UP IN AUSTRALIA – ONE PROTESTANT, ONE CATHOLIC – TWO VIEWS

Executive Director of The Sydney Institute and columnist with The Australian, Dr Gerard Henderson was educated by the Jesuits at Melbourne’s Xavier College and raised a Catholic. Former Justice of the High Court of Australia, The Hon Michael Kirby AC GMC, grew up in a strong Anglican tradition – one that he has described as essentially protestant. On Tuesday 20 October 2020, Michael Kirby and Gerard Henderson recorded their diverse experiences of faith within the Australian context – all filmed for a Sydney Institute Youtube broadcast. Discussion was moderated by Sydney Institute Chair, Jacquelynne Willcox.

 GROWING UP IN AUSTRALIA – ONE PROTESTANT, ONE CATHOLIC – TWO VIEWS

GERARD HENDERSON

Thanks Jacqueline – and thanks to Michael. I get the idea.  I’m here to represent someone who, unlike Michael, would never qualify to belong to the Rationalist Society.  So I assume I’m here to speak from some kind of “irrational” perspective.  Which I’m happy to do today.

Now Michael Kirby, as you would have heard, is a man of the Protestant Reformation.  And it’s probably fair to say that I’m a kind of Catholic Counter-Reformation guy. That’s where we differ, I guess.  Now, I’ll follow Michael’s lead and say a bit about myself. I don’t like talking about myself much – but I’ll say a few words today.

I was born in September 1945 and christened at Our Lady of Good Counsel church in the Melbourne suburb of Deepdene.  I received a great name – Gerard Henderson. And I’ll tell you why Gerard Henderson is a great name – because there are very few of us around. Likewise, with my sister Veronica. But this is not the case with my brother Paul.  The reason there are so few Gerard or Veronica Hendersons turns on the combination of a Catholic first name and a Protestant surname.  Paul, on the other hand, is not primarily a Catholic name – in spite of Saint Paul (nee Saul) who, The Bible tells us, was converted on the road to Damascus.

So how did this all come about?  Well, my paternal grandfather was a Protestant who married a Catholic.  And my maternal grandparents were Catholic. My father Norm was brought up a Catholic as – of course – was my mother Pauline. When I add it all up, I reckon my background is about 60 per cent Irish and 40 per cent Scottish – but neither English nor Welsh.  I should also point out that “Gerard” is the first name of Saint Gerard Majella who was listed as the patron saint of mothers in distress. But I’ve always referred to him as the patron saint of neurotic Catholic mothers.  I once said this to Gerard Noonan, who was editor of the Sydney Morning Herald at the time, and he took great offence – on behalf of his mother, I assume. So, I decided not to repeat the remark – except here today.

I grew up in Whitehorse Road, Balwyn – up the hill was Reid Street where Robert Menzies lived for about four years before he became prime minister, for the second time round, in December 1949.  He had moved from Howard Street in Kew to Reid Street in Balwyn. And I remember riding my tricycle past the house accompanied by my mother or father – we would refer to it as the Menzies house.

Balwyn at the time was a rather middle-class Protestant suburb. It was part of the greater area of Camberwell which, until fairly recently, was an alcohol-free zone.  There was no organised sport on Sundays.  The primarily Protestant councillors at Camberwell Council prohibited the existence of hotels and bottle shops at all times – along with organised sport on the sabbath.  Catholics, on the other hand, were not opposed to alcohol and did not have a problem with Sunday sport – provided Catholics also attended Mass on that day.

So the Catholic Henderson children grew up in a different tradition to our Protestant neighbours.

As far as I recall, the famous person of roughly my generation from the Camberwell local government area is Barry Humphries – who has written about his background in his autobiography More Please. He depicts his mother as a bitter anti-Catholic and a terrible snob.

I went to Burke Hall, which was the Xavier College preparatory school, and then to Xavier College. Both schools were in Kew and run by the Society of Jesus (i.e. the Jesuits).  Barry Humphries went to Melbourne Grammar – an Anglican school – on St Kilda Road. About 20 years ago, I criticised one of Barry’s shows, Remember You’re Out!  – although I’m quite a fan and have been for years. But I thought this one was pretty hard on the Irish and pretty hard on the Catholics among others – and wrote this in my Sydney Morning Herald column at the time.

Subsequently, Humphries was interviewed by the Herald Sun in Melbourne.  The journalist asked him why he was not spending much time in Australia. And Barry said he didn’t come home much because every time he did, he was criticised by Gerard Henderson. The journalist asked: “Why would that be, Mr Humphries?”  He replied along the lines: “Because Gerard went to Xavier College and I went to Melbourne Grammar.” In a sense, there was some kind of truth in that quick response – since what I had objected to was an element of anti-Catholic sectarianism in his (then) work.

Growing up Catholic after the Second World War – unlike the families of Barry Humphries and Michael Kirby – we didn’t look to Buckingham Palace. We looked to Rome.  We respected the Queen – who was head of what was termed the British Empire as well as the Church of England.  But our spiritual leader was the Pope.  Our local leader was Dr Daniel Mannix, the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne. He was an Irishman who came out here in 1913 at around age 50 from Maynooth College near Dublin.  Mannix took on the Protestant Establishment on a wide range of issues – from advocating government aid for Catholic schools, to opposition to conscription for overseas service during the First World War, to the status of Ireland.  Someone once asked me to explain Mannix’s philosophy at the time.  And I put it this way – I have to do this visually.  I said essentially: “It was doing this [putting up two fingers in the two-finger salute] to the Protestant Establishment as the tribal leader of the Catholic minority in Melbourne.”

Now, that was certainly true of Mannix’s early years in Australia. By the time he became an older man – I’m talking here about the 1940s and 1950s (he died in 1963), the issue had changed somewhat.  But taking on the Protestant Establishment – and, at times, the Vatican itself over Ireland – was his position up to the outbreak of the Second World War.

I still remember the Coronation of 1953 – I was seven at the time. We always went to Sunday Mass and our home was full of holy pictures of Christ, his mother Mary, the saints and martyrs and so on.  Later on, I reflected that all the graven images which survived Oliver Cromwell’s pillage of the churches in 16^th century England seemed to have found their way to our house. It was not a place where Michael would have felt at home.

As I said earlier, we didn’t look to the Queen in London – we looked to Pius XII in Rome (who died in late 1958). As far as I can work it out, Pius XII was the last Catholic pope.  By the way, that’s something of a joke.  Around the time of the Coronation – which was held in Westminster Abbey – I remember attending mass at  our Lady of Good Counsel when the parish priest delivered a sermon about the Coronation and all that.

This was before television, but there were lots of good newspapers in Melbourne.  And there was radio. And the cinema news-reels (they provided moving images of coronations and the like) and which were screened at what were termed hourly-shows.  And, as I recall, the priest said words to this effect: “Look, you can show an interest in the Coronation and Westminster Abbey.  But just remember, it was ours originally – it was a Catholic Church before the Protestant Reformation when it was stolen from us.”  I’ve never forgotten this.  Sure, at the time, all this had taken place 450 years ago.  But what is half a millennium when it comes to such important tribal matters?

So growing up Catholic in the 1950s there was the Pope in Rome, who was Italian.  And the saints and martyrs were essentially what would have been called in those days “foreigners”.  Apart, that is, from the English martyrs like the Jesuit priest Edmund Campion (1940-81). At Burke Hall we had four school-houses, two of which were named after English Jesuit martyrs.  Campion House – named after Edmund Campion – the real thing, not the contemporary Sydney version.  And Southwell House – named after the Jesuit priest Robert Southwell (1561-1595).

I was on the Southwell team and much admired this English martyr.  It took both of them a long time to get canonised.  Campion and Southwell did not receive this particular gong until 1970 – 50 years ago. We thought the likes of Campion and Southwell should have been canonised earlier. But the Holy See is a nation state and the Vatican did not want to upset the government of the United Kingdom until many years after the Protestant Reformation.

Now there’s another side to this tribal Catholicism. I didn’t have any Protestant friends until I got to Melbourne University in the 1960s.  Just as Michael didn’t have any Catholic friends. But, like Michael Kirby, we Catholics did not bear any animosity to non-Catholics when we eventually mixed together.  Moreover, my family’s secular religion was Australian Rules football – and, in particular, the Essendon Football Club.  Essendon was very successful in the late 1940s through the 1950s.

But Essendon was essentially a Protestant team – unlike teams based in such (then) working class suburbs which contained many Catholics of Irish background as Collingwood, North Melbourne and Richmond – with a strong Masonic Lodge influence.  There were a few not so successful players from Y.C.W. (Young Christian Workers) teams who got a game with Essendon.  The Y.C.W. was a Catholic organisation. But the key Essendon players were from Protestant backgrounds – including my heroes Bill Hutchison, Jack Clarke and John Coleman.  Another hero was Norm McDonald, an Indigenous player who starred in many finals games for Essendon – including the 1949 and 1950 premiership terms.  I’m not sure about McDonald’s background – but all the others were Protestant.

We also followed the cricket.  There had been great tension in the Australian Test side in the 1930s and 1940s between the Protestants including the star batsman Don Bradman and the Catholics including star spin bowler Bill O’Reilly. This was not so evident in Australian Rules – possibly because the Victorian Football League comprised 12 teams in one state whereas the Test Team comprised just a dozen men throughout Australia.  In any event, this division did not matter much for us – we just barracked for Australia in cricket as we did for Essendon in Australian Rules football. And the Catholic Church.

In the 1950s, it was common for some Australians to refer to Britain as “home”.  As I recall, John Howard once told me that this was the case when he was growing up in a Protestant household.  The Hendersons never referred to Britain as home.

In a sense, we never had a “home” beyond Australia’s shores. Sure, we looked to Rome – but we didn’t identify as Italian (apart, that is, from some Catholics of Italian background). And, despite our predominant Irish background, we weren’t Irish.  In fact, after the disaster that was the Irish Civil War (1922-1923) a lot of Irish Australians lost interest in Ireland.  So we had no intention of “returning” to Dublin or Limerick (where my maternal grandmother was born).  We only had Australia.

When the Royal Tour occurred in 1954, my parents took us to the Melbourne CBD at night to see Elizabeth II.  We admired the lights and we saw the Queen pass by with her diamond jewellery. Even our school arranged for a day-time trip to suburban Abbotsford (I think) to see the Queen.  It was all good fun – but no more than that.  After all, the Queen was head of the Church of England – and we didn’t belong to that Church. 

By the way, I do not think the Queen has ever visited a Catholic Church in Australia in over six decades.  And I believe she has only done so on a couple of occasions in Britain – even though she has had good relations with the leaders of the Catholic Church in the UK.

As to politics, I grew up in an Australian Labor Party family. My father Norm, an ALP member, regarded the one-time prime minister Ben Chifley as his political hero.  My mother, Pauline, was not involved in political parties and I do not recall any political disagreements at home.

But the Labor Split came in 1955 – and my father along with thousands of good anti-communist and predominantly Catholic members resigned from, or were expelled by, the ALP.  As so my father became a member of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) – which gave its preferences to the Coalition (i.e. Liberal Party and the then Country Party) candidates.  DLP preferences saved Robert Menzies and John Gorton from defeat in the 1961 and 1969 elections respectively.

The Labor Split did change the political climate in Australia – particularly in Victoria and Queensland where the DLP did relatively well until it expired in the mid-1970s.  So, whereas the Liberals had been my parents’ political opponents – they became a preferable alternative to the Labor Party which had driven out so many anti-communist members of its parliamentarians and rank-and-file members in Victoria and Queensland.

The Labor Split of 1955 impacted my teenage and early adult years.  In one sense, it increased the sense of isolation experienced by some Catholics.  However, in another sense, it helped to resolve the issue.  As I mentioned earlier, Catholics in Australia felt discriminated against – because, while their taxes supported the government schools, they received no government assistance for their education system which had been set up in the late 19^th Century. Catholics were instructed by their bishops and priests to send their children to Catholic schools wherever possible.

The problem was this.  Whereas a working class Protestant could attend a government school for nothing, if a working class Catholic attended a Catholic school his or her parents would have to pay all the costs involved.  Now, I should say that the private school Xavier College, which I attended, is not the Xavier College of today. It had Jesuits who taught for no money along with Jesuits who ran the school.  Consequently, the fees were much lower in relative terms than today. This worked for the Hendersons since my family was not wealthy.

Those men who had an experience in a Christian Brothers school  or the like – and those women who were taught by the Sisters of St Joseph and the like – would have had a different educational experience to me.  But what we had in common was a sense of injustice that no Catholic school, with high fees or low fees, received government assistance directly or indirectly. In short, the taxes of Catholics paid for the education of non-Catholics but not of Catholics.

The breakthrough came in 1963, when the Catholic activist Bob Santamaria (then president of the  National Civic Council) on behalf of the Democratic Labor Party convinced the Menzies Coalition government to give a limited form of state aid at the Commonwealth level to government and non-government schools alike in the form of science building grants. This was followed at the state level in 1967 when the Santamaria/DLP political tag team convinced Henry Bolte’s Liberal Party to provide government assistance to non-government school students in Victoria.  This soon spread to other States.

And so, by the end of 1967, the great grievance that Catholics, of my generation and earlier, had grown up with disappeared.  This was accompanied by other changes.  Until around the last 30 years, there was usually only one Catholic in a Commonwealth Coalition government cabinet.  This was the case until around the end of Malcolm Fraser’s government in 1983.  The Coalition did not return to government until 1996 under John Howard’s leadership. However, since then there was been an abundance of men and women who grew up Catholic in Coalition cabinets and party rooms.

That’s how we all ended up.  When I got to university in the 1970s, I met a lot of non-Catholics – mainly in campus politics.  I also met a number of Jews. People often ask me to explain my support for Israel to exist as a Jewish state.  I believe it is a result of making Jewish friends at the University of Melbourne – and also with some Jewish Australian intellectuals.  Two in particular – namely Hugo Wolfsohn (1918-1982) and Frank Knopfelmacher (1923-95).

I think the reason why many Catholics and Jews, who were interested in politics at the time, found common interests turned on the fact that we were both minorities.  Catholics, at any one time, have never comprised more than 25 per cent of the Australian population.  Jews – less than one per cent. In a sense, we were both on the outside.  For example, in those days Catholics were not welcome in the exclusive Melbourne Club.  Nor were Jews.  Consequently, we had a bit in common – since we were both excluded.  Which made us a bit united.

By the time we get to the 1970s, virtually all this – which Michael and I have been talking about – begins to fade away. Also, the Catholicism and Protestantism of today is different from that of the 1940s and 1950s.

In conclusion, I will add one point.  I never tried to convert anyone.  In any event, I don’t believe that I would have succeeded in any such venture. For starters, I was not a strong enough believer. But if I had attempted such a task, I wouldn’t have started with Michael Kirby.  Not with a Protestant Reformation kind of guy with a focus on the maintenance of Protestant Northern Ireland – with its six Ulster counties – against the perceived advance of Popery. That would have been too difficult a task – even for a Catholic Counter-Reformation kind of guy.