B.A. Santamaria: The Power of One
by Veronica Brady
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 60
Autumn 1998

Introduction

Was Bob Santamaria's public theology more a politics of power than love?

Allan Patience
Allan Patience is Professor of Political Science at the Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne.

THE STATE FUNERAL FOR the late B.A. "Bob" Santamaria gave many a moment for pause. Someone we had taken for granted was suddenly gone from us.

Archbishop Pell's address in the crowded St Patrick's Cathedral emphasised the contribution Santamaria made to contemporary Australian political history. Few Australians have been as publicly and so deeply identified with Catholicism as the man whom Dr Pell was mourning and whose memory he was celebrating. Even old opponents (perhaps even political enemies) confessed at the end to an admiration of Santamaria's public courage, his political integrity and his unhesitating faith. Others expressed deep admiration for his recent criticisms of contemporary public policy, especially his perceptive and often stinging attacks on economic rationalism. There is no question about Santamaria being a man of remarkable moral courage in a harsh Australian culture which is generally inimical to women and men of such stature.

So how are we to assess Santamaria, his Catholicism and his politics now that he has passed from us? What is the inheritance we have received from this intense and influential figure in modern Australian politics? Is he Australian Catholicism's greatest son?

To: Whispering in the marketplace