Australian PM's and American Presidents - Religion convictions or the lack of them.

[Bob Crowley]

To be honest, I wasn't sure where to put this, but for the time being I'll it here.

This post had a peculiar beginning. I had posted something about an Australian woman photographing a ghost on the USS Arizona. While I was trying to find a reference to her story, I chanced upon another story that a former Australian Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, was supposed to haunt the Hotel Kurrajong in Canberra, where he died in 1951, having succeeded wartime PM John Curtin after his death.

I was then motivated to have a look at Chifley's religion and it turned out he was Catholic, with a Presbyterian wife, whom he married in a Presbyterian Church in 1914. This was counter the church's hardline attitude to "mixed" marriages in those days, which was something which affected my parents marriage also - my father was Catholic, mother Anglican and they married in a Presbyterian Church, so I was baptised Presbyterian (probably part of a "deal" for the marriage to go ahead).

It is recorded that PM Chifley, who become head of the nation, used to sit at the back of his church because he didn't feel accepted by it due to his marriage in a Presbyterian Church.

My curiosity about his religious conundrums led to the following article -

The religious beliefs of Australia's prime ministers

I note that it reports that on matters of Electability ...

"There are two issues here. First there is the JFK factor. Kennedy had to convince American voters in 1960 that Catholics could be trusted. He, in a famous speech, said that he was not the Catholic candidate but a candidate who just happened to be Catholic. Australia had already had four Catholic prime ministers by this stage (three Labor and one conservative of Labor origin). Just this year Tony Abbott used similar terminology and said that he was not a Christian politician but a politician who happened to be a Christian."

Australia had a lot of Irish Catholics in those days, and while Australia has only been a constitutional nation since 1901, as opposed to 1788 for the first American President (the same year the First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay in the new colony downunder), we've had more Catholic Prime Ministers.

But reading the article, there appears to be the same old problem - issues of state versus religion. Which comes first - their politics or their beliefs?

In Ben Chifley's case, I wonder if a priest ought to hang around the Hotel Kurrajong. Who knows - a pipe smoking ghost just might turn up and request some clarification of church teaching.

But at least he knew what his faith entailed - I see alleged "God parents" at baptisms in the local Catholic Church and it is obvious they haven't got a clue what it's all about. They're just going through the motions to help out their friends.

 

[Marc Munday]

To be honest, I wasn't sure where to put this, but for the time being I'll it here.

This post had a peculiar beginning. I had posted something about an Australian woman photographing a ghost on the USS Arizona. While I was trying to find a reference to her story, I chanced upon another story that a former Australian Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, was supposed to haunt the Hotel Kurrajong in Canberra, where he died in 1951, having succeeded wartime PM John Curtin after his death.

I was then motivated to have a look at Chifley's religion and it turned out he was Catholic, with a Presbyterian wife, whom he married in a Presbyterian Church in 1914. This was counter the church's hardline attitude to "mixed" marriages in those days, which was something which affected my parents marriage also - my father was Catholic, mother Anglican and they married in a Presbyterian Church, so I was baptised Presbyterian (probably part of a "deal" for the marriage to go ahead).

It is recorded that PM Chifley, who become head of the nation, used to sit at the back of his church because he didn't feel accepted by it due to his marriage in a Presbyterian Church.

My curiosity about his religious conundrums led to the following article -

The religious beliefs of Australia's prime ministers

I note that it reports that on matters of Electability ...

Australia had a lot of Irish Catholics in those days, and while Australia has only been a constitutional nation since 1901, as opposed to 1788 for the first American President (the same year the First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay in the new colony downunder), we've had more Catholic Prime Ministers.

But reading the article, there appears to be the same old problem - issues of state versus religion. Which comes first - their politics or their beliefs?

In Ben Chifley's case, I wonder if a priest ought to hang around the Hotel Kurrajong. Who knows - a pipe smoking ghost just might turn up and request some clarification of church teaching.

But at least he knew what his faith entailed - I see alleged "God parents" at baptisms in the local Catholic Church and it is obvious they haven't got a clue what it's all about. They're just going through the motions to help out their friends.

I will just put it this way their fruits don't represent the same God that I worship....

One is a God of Love, Truth and Equality.

The other is a False God of provision for Greed, Deceit and Wealth.

 

[tz620q]

Australia had a lot of Irish Catholics in those days, and while Australia has only been a constitutional nation since 1901, as opposed to 1788 for the first American President (the same year the First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay in the new colony downunder), we've had more Catholic Prime Ministers.

But reading the article, there appears to be the same old problem - issues of state versus religion. Which comes first - their politics or their beliefs?

There are many ways in which Australia and America are alike; but in this case there might be a few differences. Please correct my history if it is faulty; but my impression is that most of the Irish Catholics (and for that matter the Scotch Presbyterians) were forcibly sent to Australia as punishment. I don't think there was a large established Anglican presence there to complain about the influx of Catholics, or if there was, their complaint was rather ironic since it was Anglicans in England sending them. In the U.S., other than Maryland, most colonies were settled by Anglicans and they wanted to keep it that way. So sudden influxes of Irish during the Potato Famine of the 1840's led to backlash against Catholics, including church burnings. This peaked with the formation of the Know Nothing party, who was openly anti-Catholic. They ran Millard Filmore for president in 1856 and received 21.5% of the popular vote, which was behind the Democrat and Republican candidates. After that American politics swung to mainly the Democrats, who favored slavery, and the Republicans, who were against slavery; and the Know Nothing party declined. In 1960, the fear was that Kennedy would be a puppet of the Pope, which was a common piece of rhetoric from the Know Nothings a century before. Hatred is a lingering disease.

 

[Bob Crowley]

There are many ways in which Australia and America are alike; but in this case there might be a few differences. Please correct my history if it is faulty; but my impression is that most of the Irish Catholics (and for that matter the Scotch Presbyterians) were forcibly sent to Australia as punishment.

I don't know what percentage of the convicts sent to Australia were Irish Catholics or Scotch Presbyterians, but even after the convict trade ended, there were still a lot of Irish Catholics coming to Australia, some of them no doubt due to the Potato Famine (although many times that would have gone to the USA).

For example there's one story here about 4000 female Irish orphans sent to Australia.

Remembering the 4,000 Irish Famine orphans shipped to Australia

As with the New England colonies, Australia was dominated by Anglicanism in official belief and practice, with the same sort of anti-Catholic bigotries. I've got a vague memory of seeing job ads when I was a kid stating that "Catholics and Jews need not apply".

That sort of discrimination has been illegal for years, but it's an example of the barriers the Irish Catholics faced for a long time. I don't think it's much of an issue now - these days other refugees sometimes face discrimination, and some of those not showing much sympathy are quite possibly descendants of Irish refugees.

As my old Presbyterian pastor used to say "One bunch of sinners is pretty much the same as the next".

 

[Gnarwhal]

Which comes first - their politics or their beliefs?

In my lifetime at least, it seems like religion only came up in elections when the person in question wasn't a mainliner. In 2012 we saw a lot of it, partly because there had been rumors circulating since 2007 or so that Obama was a closet Muslim, but also because some of the Republican candidates weren't protestant. Rick Santorum is a Catholic and Mitt Romney is Mormon. Whenever that's the case people seem to be more leery about how those convictions will influence an administration.

I know Kennedy was the prototype for this kind of scrutiny in the US, since his whole opposition believed he would hand the country over to the Vatican once he was sworn in. I'm sure the Klan had a big hand in that propaganda since they're as much anti-Catholic as they are racist.