Cottage Catholicism: young Santamaria and the lure of the pastoral.

If the sight of collared clergy calmly eating salad sandwiches in the city immediately after the funeral of Bob Santamaria reminded me somehow of the verities of an old Catholicism, the assembly of Liberal politicians jockeying for prominence upon the Cathedral steps certainly didn't. A once unimaginable homage from the elite; part expression of gratitude towards Santamaria and his like for their role in preserving the interests of conservative forces in the sixties and seventies, and part commentary upon the comfortable absorption of the Catholic establishment itself. No sight here of the third way, of the cutting edge of opposition extolled by Santamaria in the early years and, again, in the twilight phase of his political life. Much has been said of this latter period of alleged reflection, but the earlier interests of the young Santamaria warrant equal attention. Between the heady days at University and the full-blown anti-communist endeavour within the unions and elsewhere, Santamaria was to find himself engaged in a very different kind of political work. Ironically, this work was to clarify his frustrations with cultural politics, and to set him resolutely upon the more organisational and oppositional directions of his life for the next forty years. In his memoir he was to recall this early period of involvement in the National Catholic Rural Movement (NCRM), in terms so effusively affectionate--`the most personally rewarding work in which I have ever been engaged before or since'--as to suggest an almost conscious appreciation of the significance of his move away from an essential animating idealism. Only when the communist enemy had been vanquished would this earlier preoccupation with the cultural be able to return to full stride.

Santamaria's involvement in the NCRM coincided with its halcyon days from 1939 to 1953. At the height of its popularity in the mid 1940s, membership exceeded 5000 (Santamaria later claimed 8000), with groups in every state of Australia. Adopting the motto of `Restoring Christ to the Countryside ... and the Countryside to Christ', the NCRM aimed to develop agriculture as `the central institution of national life'. Yet despite the plethora of campaigns, policies and programmes--the promotion of co-operation and Independent Farming, the reform of rural finance and of rural education, the revival of the rural home--the organisation was to develop little beyond being an essentially symbolic movement, distinguished by the inordinate elaboration of its inspiring imagery, the recurring confirmation of its visionary cosmology, and the continual contrivance of the appearance of enactment. More than anything, the NCRM was to be a long and unfulfilled succession of new dawns forever being heralded.

In his later fond recollections, Santamaria refrained from any mention of this extreme millenarianism. Yet throughout the thirties and forties apocalyptic visions saturated the NCRM's accounts, with constant reference being made to the breakdown of civilisation, to rapidly spreading disease or spiritual crisis. At conferences and elsewhere, a feeling of crisis pervaded, a sense of a last stand having to be taken. The religious perspective enabled a marvellous adroitness in reducing the emerging complexities of social life to the familiar moral contestation between good and evil. Beyond `the neat little groups of cottage Catholicity', enemies lay everywhere in `the pagan environment'. The paranoia was palpable, and the fear of defilement rampaged. `The forces of evil gather strength; they push home their advantage at every point; they propagate their insidious doctrines through every channel, the press, the radio, the cinema, in the school and the universities, in the city and in the country.' The city was taken as the embodiment of such evil doings: it was `the great enemy', its very tempo `breaking down the human body', allowing men and women `to shirk the responsibilities of life'.

What was the source of this millenarianism? Part of the explanation can be found in Santamaria himself, a young man in his early twenties cutting his political teeth, and suddenly finding himself in the company of his cultural heroes such as Mannix. But the NCRM's millennial flavour did not just begin and end with Santamaria. Two vital circumstances were present. First, there was a group of people attempting earnestly to make sense of a world which was in no way easy to read. Devout rural Catholics were, along with their neighbours, wrestling still with the devastating outcome of a major depression, the latest instalment in a long-standing restructure of the economic and cultural fortunes of rural life. Secondly, a foreboding vision was required, and this was to be amply furnished through the efforts of a core grouping of young and enthusiastic Catholic cadres; university graduates fired by the vision of cultural renewal promoted through the Campion Society. Santamaria was an enthusiastic young member. Drawing their inspiration from the papal encyclicals of Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadraegesimo Anno (1931), and from an eclectic stable of writers such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, the Campions recited the central themes of the conservative refrain; a profound lamentaton over the perceived direction of modern life, and the countervailing ideal of the medieval village with the church as the dominant institution. The NCRM was to cleverly forge a connection between those with a deep anxiety concerning the long-term prospect of a worthwhile life in country areas, and an eager cabal of young men utterly convinced about their programme of renewal. The latter formed the core of authority within the movement, the real decisions and deliberations remaining largely concealed, with opportunities for participation carefully orchestrated. Not quite the perfect match of interests made in heaven it claimed to be. At the time, justification for such a differentiation was romantically conceived. Oft quoted was the line by Vincent McNabb: `the ploughman often needs the penman--not to help him in the furrow, but to warn off those who would take him from his furrow, or take his furrow from him'. Many years later, feelings of deep unease over such presumption were to surface for Santamaria himself, and were never able to be comfortably retired.

The Campion version of the pastoral ideal was to resurface again and again in various guises throughout this period of Catholic activism. The NCRM did not have exclusive preserve on the pastoral ideal within the local Catholic imagination. In her book, Faith and Feminism, Sally Kennedy makes mention of over thirty Catholic communities having been established in Australia by 1939, with Whitlands--founded by Melbourne lawyer Ray Triado and friends--amongst the better known. These were not communities of Catholic farmers but of Catholic intelligentsia and others enthused by the Campion vision which was then so popular, especially in Melbourne circles. In contrast to the NCRM initiative these communities appeared almost spontaneously, in isolation from each other, often based around core friendships and outside of any formal organisational structures. While Santamaria's NCRM shared a common well-spring of ideas, it clearly lacked the liberatory emphasis and the relative autonomy permitted to the laity in the independent groupings. Groups such as Whitlands represented an intense enactment of liberatory cultural aspirations at a local level, whereas the NCRM was distinctive for the centrally directed nature of its endeavour and by its interest in public policy and the national stage. But there was more than simply an incompatibility in temper between the two kinds of initiative. Evidence suggests that an outright antagonism existed. The NCRM can be viewed as a not so subtle, and deliberate, effort to rein in the various spontaneous groupings under a central authority, one more in keeping with the clergy's (and especially the bishops') own sense of their self importance. In this respect, Santamaria was an ideal appointment--he possessed indefatigable energies combined with a natural bent for organisation and a fondness for the crisp lines of authority. As so often happens in the face of such a combination, spontaneity proved to be a poor match for political efficiency.

Such machinations aside, the NCRM retained for Santamaria a nascent form of cultural politics. In its initial full flush of enthusiasm the organisation prided itself on its conscious integration of theory and practice, albeit in a highly instrumental cast. The primary vehicle for this integration lay in the group as the basic organisational unit, with the principles of so-called Catholic Action as the technique for its achievement. For Santamaria, Catholic Action would provide the necessary training--`spiritual, intellectual and for action'. Success would follow from adherence--`without the slightest deviation'--to principles and programmes. The objective was for `a particular mentality' to be instilled, and for `the rule of life' to be `vitally integrated with the life it is meant to promote'. The cultural intent of the NCRM was boldly stated--aiming for `a new order and a new man', providing, of course, that the new man derived from `the antiquity of the tradition of Christianity'.

In 1940, Santamaria observed that the economic problems of agricultural life could be tackled only `as part of a bigger problem', the primary difficulty to overcome being `a cultural one'. Yet as time wore on, Santamaria's impatience with the long road of cultural transformation began to mount, with the targets of his frustration rapidly multiplying. The groups themselves appeared to be languishing in a theological quagmire; various programmes and promotions had petered out with little if any result, and the NCRM's fortunes at a political level were dealt a crucial blow with the resignation of a Victorian cabinet member over allegations of NCRM influence in a Victorian Land Bill. And to add to all these worries, there was the more general predicament of post-war prosperity taking the shine off apocalyptic pronouncements. When the prospect of land settlements sponsored by the Italian and Dutch governments collapsed, so too did Santamaria's residual interest in the NCRM. By then, the industrial groups commanded his total energies and, besides, he had become dismissive of the cultural side of the NCRM's work, irritated by the groups' seeming disregard for achieving effect in the real political world. `Reasons have never interested me very much', he was to write to an NCRM clergy in 1957, `it is results that count'.

Santamaria's passing has seen the NCRM returned to public memory, although as little more than a curiosity and without any interest in the conditions of its origin. The Catholic establishment in Melbourne would want no more, having itself long ago covered over this momentary fissure in its prevailing temper of compliance. Following the NCRM's decline, it was as if such moments of radical divergence had never occurred. Not only had the experience been excluded from official accounts of the diocese history, but collective memory itself had given it little recognition. When it came to productive material life, upward mobility had always been the dominant strategy for Australian Catholics, not alternative practices.

The memory of the NCRM is worth rekindling. The experience of the thirties, coupled with a powerful vision of an alternative, had proven sufficient to galvanise various groups of individuals to take a radical step towards new forms of practical life. But the conditions for such endeavours are always complex. In the case of the thirties groups, there were already important inner resources upon which individuals could call--for all its shortcomings, religious formation imbued within the individual a strength and character utterly essential for such undertakings. It imparted too a collaborative disposition, a certain cooperative discipline which could act as an important qualification to the equally necessary abstract commitments and enthusiasms. Holding it all together both intellectually and practically may have proven unsuccessful, but the significance lay in that the effort itself had been made. Little wonder that Santamaria held such cherished recollections.

While speculative, the part reconciliation between Santamaria and many of his previously estranged Foes--Jim McClelland and Bernie Taft amongst them--bespeaks of a mutual recognition of commonalities. In the more recent dark years of economic rationalism, Santamaria's dogged intensity and persistence in holding fast to another line of thinking--of the values of social life over and above alleged economic imperatives; of a profound scepticism towards the very different kind of simple faith of the market--won admiration from old enemies. Removed from the battlefront, the destructive dimension of his politics began to fade. The points of departure remained clear, but common ground also came into sight. Of course, Santamaria's own formulation of the challenge ahead and of our necessary response remained couched in the old verities. Could it ever have been otherwise? Yet the real choices confronting us will be more stark, and yet more complex, than those faced by that small clutch of Catholic intellectuals in the thirties, and by the Catholic farmers, clergy and their helpers in the forties. More complex than that imagined even by an older and more mellow Santamaria. The necessary challenge ahead of us involves the complicated task of having to find arrangements both conducive to communities of direct association, and able to establish and maintain powerful practices of qualification to the very different extended exchanges of the market, the media and intellectual culture. The lure of the pastoral resides in the imagined and far more simple dissolution of the necessary and, so often, creative tension within such arrangements--an impossible longing for a state of restful completion. Abandonment to this ideal will allow us only to avoid confronting the true nature of the task at our peril. For many the option of staying in the dominant culture will not exist. For those with any option left at all, it could be a choice between the rewards of silence and compliance, or the arduousness of standing in new forms of association, wishing to defend and extend values of collaboration and common humanity, to forge a practical life of worth. Come that moment, the inner resources of our own very different kinds of formation will be tested, and we may well recall, perhaps even fondly, those who made an earlier move in another and more simple direction. A more fitting farewell to an old foe than the glib praise of erstwhile allies.