TO SERVE THE NATIONAL CITY AND THROUGH IT THE NATION - No threat of sectarian war.

(From Canberra Times)

T HE FEARS of four archbishops that Labor is playing the sectarian card with its schools policy at this election are misplaced. Labor is simply playing the class warfare and wealth-envy card, and religion scarcely comes into it. The archbishops may disagree with it, either on principle or because schools over which they have some (if only some) sovereignty are in the firing line. But they can hardly be surprised that politicians, in seeking to ration out public goods, might make some virtue of giving to those they see as the neediest. It's hardly unChristian. That the archbishops can hardly be unaware of that, or, in the case of the Catholic ones, that it will be Catholic systemic schools which will be the prime beneficiaries of any Labor distribution, invites some questions about whether they were simply being partisan.

Most Australians have very little recollection of the sectarian warfare which divided Australian society until the mid-1950s, particularly dividing Catholics (most of Irish background, a significant factor) from other citizens, and, as often as not reflected not only in social and educational terms, but in the employment market. That Catholics, in those days, were overwhelmingly of the working class and tended to vote Labor, probably exacerbated the divisions. Most Catholics attended Catholic schools, which were not subsidised by government. The overwhelming numbers of these attended generally poorly equipped parish schools, sustained by the efforts of Catholics in the local community and religious priests, brothers and nuns. A small proportion of the more middle-class Catholics attended private Catholic schools, organised not through their dioceses (and thus under the control of bishops) but directly by religious orders. Most of these schools were organised, like the Anglican, other Protestant and non- denominational private schools, along English private school lines and charged healthy fees.

State aid for non-government schools, introduced under the Menzies Government 40 years ago, undermined many of the divisions. So, already, had the 1950s split in the Labor Party, which, in some of the states, notably Victoria and Queensland, saw the emergence of a Catholic-dominated Democratic Labor Party seeking to sabotage the formal Labor Party, seen as too dominated by the Left. Melbourne's then Catholic Archbishop, Dr Daniel Mannix, was an inveterate player of the political game, and at times allowed his underlings to suggest to the flock that voting Labor was a sin. In NSW, where no major split occurred, the Catholic Archbishop Cardinal Gilroy, was far more neutral or Labor-leaning, and frequently quarrelled with Archbishop Mannix about the wisdom ...