Australian Journal of Politics and History: Volume 49 Number 1, 2003, pp. 17-30.

© 2003 Department of History, School of Political Science and International Studies, The Universityof Queensland and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

Reclaiming Community?From Welfare Society to Welfare State in Australian

Catholic Social Thought

PAUL SMYTHThe University of Queensland

Influenced by both conservative and left wing communitarian thinking, current debate aboutwelfare governance in Australia reflects an inflated evaluation of the potential role of the thirdsector or civil society organisations in the production of welfare. This paper gives an overviewof twentieth century Australian Catholic social thinking about state, market and civil societyrelations in the production of welfare. It highlights the neglected, historical role of the CatholicChurch in promoting a “welfare society” over a “welfare state” in Australia. It points to thereasons for the Church’s later embrace of the welfare state and suggests that these reasonsshould make us deeply sceptical of the current communitarian fad.

Introduction1

How should states, markets and civil society combine in the delivery of socialservices? This has become a key theme in Australian welfare reform with thecommunitarian revival on the left and right of Australian politics. Both conservativecommunitarians and Labor advocates of the “third way” court “the community” as apartner in the welfare regime of tomorrow.2 The strength of communitarian andassociational currents informing Australian history suggests that they are moving in anopportune direction. This paper brings a perspective from Australian civil society, fromthe Catholic Church in particular. In terms of health, education and welfare, theCatholic Church has long been the major non-profit service provider in Australia and,indeed, a more significant influence on Australian public policy than has been realised.Its one hundred years of engagement with these questions suggests that while a moreelevated role for civil society may be desirable in the production of social services, thecapacities of this sector should not be exaggerated.

A growing and important Australian literature on welfare and civil society hastended to neglect what the third sector comparativist, L. Salamon, refers to as its“social origins” or “historically embedded relations with the wider institutionalformations including state, market and family”.3 Catholic social services provide aparticularly useful vantage point for reviewing these historical “social origins” not only

1 The research for this paper was supported by an Australia Research Council SPIRT Grantundertaken with Catholic Health Australia and Australian Catholic Social Welfare Commission.Special thanks to John Warhurst for his helpful comments on an earlier draft.2 Paul Smyth and Michael Wearing, “After the welfare state: welfare governance and thecommunitarian revival”, in Stephen Bell, ed., Economic Governance in Australia (Melbourne, 2002).3 L. Salamon, “Government-Nonprofit Relations: an international perspective”, in E. T. Boris & C.Steuerle, eds, Nonprofits & Government (Washington, 1999), pp.329-368.

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because of their size within the sector but also because of that Church’s long-standingengagement with the development of welfare states internationally as well as locally.

Francis Castles, for example, noted the unacknowledged impact of the “CatholicWorld of Welfare” on European welfare states (Germany, France, Italy, Belgium,Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain) highlighting inparticular its coherent set of social policy principles, namely: the principle of“subsidiarity”; an emphasis on the family as a fundamental unit of society; lessemphasis on the rights of the individual citizen and more on the individual as a memberof a social group with a need for the state to value the group; a view of someinequalities as natural and acceptable; and heavy emphasis on the provision of a“family wage” and high levels of social spending to support families.4 All of theseprinciples can be found in Australian Catholic social thought, forming, through theiradaptation to the Australian context, what van Kersbergen might call a “little tradition”deriving from that “grand tradition” of Vatican social teaching which has presenteditself as a “third way” alternative to both liberalism and communism since the latteryears of the nineteenth century.5

Australian Social Policy and Rerum NovarumAny review of the social origins of the third sector in Australia must begin with thatmost distinctive feature of Australian social policy historically, i.e. a preference forusing wage regulation rather than “welfare” to promote social goals.6 From a socialdemocratic perspective this preference became a source of embarrassment over time asAustralia proved a laggard in the international development of welfare states; hence thephrase, “a wage earners’ welfare state”. Catholic social thought provides a differentperspective. As Castles noted, the Church promoted the family and civil society overthe citizen individual and sought accordingly, a family wage as the basis of socialprotection. Indeed the first of the major Vatican texts on social teaching RerumNovarum (1891) (RN) promoted the just wage and, arguably, supplied some of the coreideas of the Australian wage earner social policy model. From this perspective the veryidea of a wage earners’ welfare state was oxymoronic. A minimum wage system, in theCatholic view, would not only protect workers from the worst excesses of monopolycapitalism but it would also free families and civic associations from dependence onthe state.

According to van Kersbergen, nineteenth century Catholic thinking was informed bytwo main strands: a “neo-feudalist” conservatism which sought to revive values andpractices being swept away by the rise of capitalism and industrialisation; and second,a later emerging social realism which sought a reformist accommodation withcapitalism. Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical was closer to the latter approach but was lessconcerned with promoting social reform than countering the influence of the socialistmovement. In opposing socialism, RN strongly emphasised the natural right to privateproperty as the basis for self-realisation and the exercise of familial responsibilities.Beyond that an “organic” understanding of society promoted class harmonisation

4 F. G. Castles, “On religion and public policy: does Catholicism make a difference?”, EuropeanJournal of Political Research, Vol. 25, pp. 19-40.5 K. van Kersbergen, Social Capitalism. A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State(London, 1995).6 F.G. Castles, The Working Class and Welfare (Sydney, 1985).

Reclaiming Community? 19

rather than conflict as well as the idea that societies are made up of unequal roles andresponsibilities with a corresponding inequality of reward.

Van Kersbergen stresses that this organic view led to an emphasis on charity ratherthan rights enforced by the state as the basis of social reform, an emphasis which didnot change until the 1960s. Social harmony and balance occurred, it was proposed,when classes fulfilled their responsibilities to one another. The other important conceptnoted by van Kersbergen was that of subsidiarity which meant that the state should notabsorb other social units but intervene in the affairs of the family and civil society onlywhen there is no other way to address the problem and its interventions ought to endwhen a successful resolution of the problem is achieved.

Van Kersbergen’s account highlights the political conservatism of RN with its anti-socialist concerns; concerns which, as Duncan has said, fell strangely on Australianears where the Church faced an entirely different political context. Unlike Europe,Duncan writes, here “there was no Catholic landed class, or yearning for monarchy[…] Far from the church being seen as linked with an oppressive social order andhence alienated from the working class as in parts of Europe, the Australian church wastied to its working class people.”7 Here the challenge for Church officials was less tolecture on the evils of socialism than to show how some form of socialism might bemore or less compatible with RN.

Rerum Novarum and the “wage earners’ welfare society”This was done by distinguishing between two types of socialism: the acceptablesocialism of the Australian Labor Party, characterised in terms of practical socialreformism; and the other, unacceptable socialism which was associated withContinental Europeans and depicted as doctrinaire, revolutionary, lacking in practicalproposals and anti-Christian. Australian Catholicism was seen at the time as “bold andradical” by world standards.8 Its leader, Cardinal Moran, known to the Vatican as oneof the “democratic cardinals”, explained to the Paris paper L’Univers, that thesocialism of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was acceptable to Catholics because itwas not like the “doctrinaire socialism” of Europeans: “Our Labour Party does notcherish any vague theories, any ambitious and high sounding formulae. Its object isprecise reforms and concrete measures in favour of the toiling masses. It is a clanmovement if you like, in the sense that these self-trusting men feel that they are able tolook after their own affairs”.9

Moran’s substantive social policy ideas drew on the “social capitalism” model of theprogressive German bishop von Ketteler. Thus Moran campaigned for social insuranceorganisations based on industry and professional groups, employer–employee jointmanagement and profit sharing, and land settlement schemes to spread capitalownership. These ideas made little headway but this did not stop Moran supporting themore statist policies of the ALP especially those involving nationalisation ofcommercial and financial monopolies. The most significant convergence of Catholicsocial teaching and Australian social policy occurred with the “living wage”.

7 Bruce Duncan, The Church’s Social Teaching: From Rerum Novarum to 1931 (Melbourne, 1991),pp. 162-163. See also D. G. M. Jackson, “The Radical Tradition of Australian Catholicism”,Twentieth Century, Vol. 13, Winter 1959, pp. 343-350.8 James Murtagh, Australia: The Catholic Chapter (New York, 1946).9 See A. E. Cahill, “Cardinal Moran’s Politics”, The Journal of Religious History, Vol. 15, 4,December, 1989, pp. 525-531.

20 Paul Smyth

Blackburn has argued recently that the extent of Catholic influence here has not beenrecognised. He believes that the “origins of the living wage in Australia are to be foundin the ideas of the Catholic social reformers, Cardinal Moran, O’Sullivan and Heydon,and the radical liberal humanist, Higgins, not the trade unions of the 1890s”. He tracesthe influence of the medieval doctrine of the just wage and argues that this was“secularised” in Australia through the Harvester Judgement of 1907, where Higgins, inlanguage directly echoing RN, laid down his “new province for law and order” basedon the provision of a wage sufficient to allow the individual and “his” family to live in“reasonable and frugal comfort”.10

To paraphrase Moran, the living wage would enable a self-trusting people to managetheir own affairs free from the miseries generated by unregulated markets but also freefrom over-reliance on the State. The latter points to the principle of subsidiarity whichfor the first half of the twentieth century was as important a concept as the “livingwage”. Indeed they were two sides of the same coin. For Catholics, statism was asmuch a problem as capitalism. Here the medieval guild system provided a non-statistway of thinking about “socialist” policy futures. The medieval understanding ofCharity was proposed as the basis for social organisation and promoted in opposition tothe dull compulsions of the State. Charity would be the glue for an “organic society”built up from below by trade unions, mutual societies, church-based schools andhospitals as well as charities, all of which would be organised by the church and be freefrom State interference beyond the minimum legal and regulatory frameworks requiredfor overall social order.

Here we illustrate these points from papers delivered at a series of CatholicCongresses held in the first decade of the twentieth century. What was sought was amiddle way between capitalism and socialism. The anti-statist tendency was wellexpressed by P.S. Cleary: “Catholic social reform”, he said, “rejects every proposalwhich weakens independence or energy.” Referring to Renan, he said that “the FrenchRevolution [had] left nothing standing but a giant State and millions of individualdwarfs”.11 Generally speaking, however, as Archbishop Delaney of Hobart wrote, thegraver concerns for liberty arose not from the “throne of political rulers” but ratherfrom the excessive individualism spread by the “kings of business and finance”. Apeople made in God’s image, he said, should not become the “chattel of another”. Forsuch independence to be effective, he believed, individual private property rights werenecessary although these had to be balanced with the rights of others. This required theState to adjust and balance different claims.

The family as much as the individual enjoyed a priority over the State. “The ideathat the children belong to the State rather than to their parents […] is a stupid refrain”,said Delaney, “of the wild cant which flew about amidst the orgies of the FrenchRevolution”. Beyond the family, the person also enjoys the right to engage inassociations for mutual aid, again a right which is prior to the State but as with thecompeting rights of private property requiring the adjustment and protection of theState. Summing up these fundamental principles of a Catholic approach to nationbuilding, Delaney said, “The centres of initiative, the springs of progress, must besought in the individual, in the family, and in voluntary association”. If the practice ofcharity was further ignored and “the successful few lord it proudly over the defeated 10 Kevin Blackburn, “The Living Wage in Australia: A Secularization of Catholic Ethics on Wages,1891-1907”, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 20, 1996, pp. 93-113.11 P. S. Cleary, “The Church and the Worker, An Historical Sketch”, Third Australasian CatholicCongress (Sydney, 1909), pp. 248-269.

Reclaiming Community? 21

masses”, he considered, then the more far reaching methods of socialism might bejustified. Preferable, he believed, was the ideal of an organic society based on “mutualtrust and mutual concern”. It corrected cruder conceptions of equality and it warned“high and low” that they needed each other: “the health of the parts is indispensable tothe full vitality of the whole and […] no organ of the body is immune so long as all theothers are not sound”.12

The principles of charity evoked by these authors were defined in opposition to the“charity” which had become associated with the aftermath of the Reformation andindustrial revolution. In the age of monasticism, it was proposed by Cleary, there hadbeen no room for extremes of wealth and poverty living side by side. The Church hadset aside one third of parish tithes for the “poor brethren”. This medieval “socialsecurity” had crumbled with the Reformation, he said, when much of the monasticsystem was shut down. Later, with the onset of the industrial revolution, continuedCleary, “the guild halls and church houses [had become] parish workhouses;assessments were placed on parishes, and the greatest atrocity of modern legislation,the English Poor Law, strove to extract, by pains and penalties, what the Church hadobtained by voluntary charity”.13 For these writers, there was a lineage between themedieval system of guilds and charities with the modern trade unions, farmers’cooperatives and mutual benefit societies, which were attempting to provide analternative social framework for economic life to that of the Poor Laws, developedwithin laissez-faire capitalism. “Christian charity” would provide the principles; thechallenge was to develop the appropriate institutional forms.

One of the endeavours of these national Catholic Congresses was to publicise andfoster Catholic associational life. The wide range of groups and societies underpinningCatholic mutual aid, educational, health and welfare activities were on display. Thefoundation of this Catholic welfare society was the voluntary work of religiousinstitutes and congregations. In a major review of these associations, the Bishop ofGoulbourn, Dr Gallagher, said they reminded him of the “knights of chivalry in theMiddle Ages”. He believed that much of their strength derived from their independenceof the State:

The Catholic religion gains nothing […] from connection with the Government […] Better breastall difficulties, and be prepared for all sacrifices in the health-giving air of liberty, than besuffocated by the protection or tied to the apron strings of the State.14

Others have noted ways in which the extraordinary solidarity of the Catholiccommunity in this period was underpinned by class and ethnic factors as well as byreligious affiliation and ecclesiastical rules such as bans on marriage outside theChurch and attending state schools.15 In a climate of often intense sectarian conflict,associational endeavours in the welfare field were often as much about keeping thepoor within the religious group as about meeting their welfare needs i.e. these were, byand large, associations for Catholics to advance the interests of Catholics. According toGallagher, a particular task for the associations was to rescue what he called the

12 Most Rev. Dr. Delaney, “The Chief Factors in Sociology”, Third Australasian Catholic Congress(Sydney, 1909), pp. 232-238.13 Cleary, “The Church and the Worker”, p. 256.14 Right Rev. Gallagher, “Organisation of Catholic Societies”, Second Australasian CatholicCongress (Melbourne, 1905), pp. 291-300.15 Michael Hogan, The Sectarian Strand, Religion in Australian History (Ringwood, 1987); PatrickO’Farrell, The Catholic Church and Community, Third Revised Edition (Kensington, 1992).

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“submerged twelfth” that otherwise would be “handed over altogether to the SalvationArmy”.

Quadragesimo Anno and Chifley’s “economic state”In terms of social welfare this vision of a wage earner welfare society characterisedAustralian Catholic social thinking roughly through to the 1970s when it endorsed thewelfare state — which, of course, is also true of Australian welfare thinking generally.As I have proposed elsewhere, it is very important that we recognise the welfare stateas a second phase in a twofold revolution: first came Chifley’s “economic state” and,decades later, Whitlam’s “welfare state”.16 The accuracy of this distinction becomesapparent when we observe Australian Catholic responses to the rise of the “economicstate”. The fragility of the wage earner welfare society model had been exposed by theGreat Depression and Catholics accordingly supported the recognition of the right topaid work as the basis of social security and supported positive economic interventionby the state in order to achieve it. However it rejected the expansion of state providedsocial welfare which was seen as a threat to the independence of familial andassociational life.

The economic catastrophe of the Great Depression together with the rise ofCommunism and Fascism in Europe signalled the eclipse of the wage earner welfaresociety in Australian Catholic social thought. With the collapse of the hegemony ofliberal ideology, Catholics became locked in a struggle with Communism forideological leadership on the left. Murtagh observes that to the “broad lines of catholicsocial policy” laid out in the Moran period, one major principle was added: “namely,the principle of occupational or vocational groups representing management,employees, and consumers, for the self-government of industry”.17 Here he is referringto that corporatism placed at the centre of international Catholic Action by the papalencyclical, Quadragesimo Anno (QA).

Quadragesimo Anno reaffirmed the basic thrust of Rerum Novarum. It formulatedmore fully the key notion of subsidiarity while laying out a more detailed blueprint ofthe form worker-employer cooperation might take in a modernised industrial society.The notion of subsidiarity was defined thus:

It is indeed true, as history clearly shows, that owing to the change in social conditions, much thatwas formerly done by small bodies can nowadays be accomplished only by large organisations.Nevertheless, it is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that oneshould not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish bytheir own enterprise and industry. So, too, it is an injustice and at the same time a great evil and adisturbance of right order to transfer to the larger and higher collectivity functions which can beperformed and provided for by lesser and subordinate bodies. 18

According to QA, such a principle would be found embodied in a society organisedaround guild-like associations based on trades and professions which would all co-operate harmoniously. The State’s role would be supervisory, harmonising group

16 Paul Smyth, “The Economic State and the Welfare State: Australia and Singapore 1955-1975”,CAS Research Paper Series No. 23, Centre for Advanced Studies, National University of Singapore,2000.17 Murtagh, Australia: The Catholic Chapter, p.251.18 David J. O’Brien and Thomas Shannon, Renewing the Earth: Catholic Documents on Peace,Justice and Liberation (New York, 1977), p. 60.

Reclaiming Community? 23

interests, filling gaps in voluntary provision and only performing those functions,which only it could do effectively, e.g. defence.19

The task confronting the Church in the 1940s was to clarify what the corporatism ofQuadragesimo Anno might mean in the context of postwar reconstruction in Australia.Catholics sought a system which avoided the “Totalitarian State” while not “returningto the jungle warfare of unrestricted competition”. Working with other ChristianChurches, the official Church Catholic Action group developed a blueprint for postwarreconstruction which was presented to the Australian government in the AustralianBishops’ Social Justice Statement, Pattern for Peace (1943) and set the framework forits approach to social policy throughout that decade. This document took up the idea ofa corporatist society in which class conflict would be overcome by giving workersgreater status and responsibility and by building an economic and political ordergrounded in industrial democracy.20 Pattern for Peace was one of a series of majorsocial justice statements in the 1940s including especially on the economy,Socialisation (1948) while the issue of postwar welfare reform was taken up in SocialSecurity and Human Rights (1946). 21

The corporatist approach did not fit with Australian policy traditions and it had littleimpact. The Australian tradition, as Michael Fogarty writes, was more on the Britishpattern and lacked the institutions of “vertical” social integration which were morecharacteristic of European polities. 22 It did fit with certain European traditions and thecorporatism of QA gained some notoriety because of resemblances to the Fascistpractice of Mussolini. After the War however, a version of corporatism continued to bevery influential in Christian Democratic welfare states. As Metaphora notes, the neo-corporatist model was seen as a way of “privatising the social character of politicswithin capitalism” and protecting this sphere from the apparatus of state power whilemaintaining a framework of state regulation. “Welfare state surrogates”, he suggests,were given authority to exercise public powers and duties outside of the formalapparatus of the state. Such organisations, he writes, are understood to be not mereextensions of the state but to “have identities defined by systematic principles of socialresponsibility which precede and in some ways transcend the state”. They areempowered by the state yet distinct from it.23

As a working-class organisation, the Australian Church was an unlikely contenderfor the kind of class mediating role played by European Christian Democratic Parties.Its effective role always remained much closer to the “socialism without doctrines” ofthe Moran tradition. We see this in literature prepared for study groups by the CatholicSocial Studies Movement or Catholic Action.24 “The Catholic mind”, it proposed, “hashad more than its due share in building up the Australian Social Code”. In this “fightfor social justice” waged by the union movement, it claimed Catholics had been the

19 Ibid., p. 27.20 See Murtagh, Australia: The Catholic Chapter, pp.234-239.21 See M. Hogan, ed., Justice Now! Social Justice Statements of the Australian Catholic Bishops Firstseries: 1940 – 1966 (Sydney, 1990).22 Michael P. Fogarty, “The State and Social Policy in Britain”, Twentieth Century, Vol. 14, Autumn1960, pp. 244-266.23 R Metaphora, The Catholic ethic and the Spirit of Corporatism: historical and contemporary linksbetween church and state in social services, health care and education (PhD Thesis, University ofMassachusetts ,1999), p.20.24 For a discussion of social ideas informing the Movement, see Frank Maher, An Introduction toSocial Principles (Catholic Social Guild, n.d.).

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“back bone”. Among the “Catholic principles” adopted into Australian Social Code, itsaid, were the living wage and industrial courts for arbitration and conciliation, theright to form unions for collective bargaining, old age and invalid pensions, widows’pensions (NSW) and family endowment. No country in the world, it said — with thepossible exception of New Zealand — had enacted so many Catholic principles.25

Catholic proposals for a corporatist state — along with the other utopias of Left andthe Right — faded with the unexpected achievement of full employment. At the sametime, the church fully endorsed the Chifley “economic state”. Thus the authors ofStudies in Australian Social Problems observed that it was a “splendid thing” thatGovernment had accepted an obligation to guarantee full employment. In theDepression, it said, if a person lost their job, “it was his loss and his family’s tragedy.But it was nobody’s responsibility […] he was told his unemployment was his ownaffair”. Now, it continued, the Government “takes a different attitude. It tells a manthat he is not alone. It tells him that society owes him a debt to see that his life is notwasted in unemployment […].” If full employment had any dangers, it continued,“there is no disadvantage which follows in the train of Full Employment which doesnot apply doubly to unrestricted capitalism and its evil offspring of unemployment”.26

At the same time Catholic thinking did not support the expansion of state socialservices. Thus the study guide, following QA, reasserted the importance of charity asthe basis of service rather than social rights. The value of charity to the Catholiccommunity, it said, was everywhere evident in the dedicated lives of members ofreligious institutes and orders who worked in Catholic welfare, health and education.Such services were provided not in the “counting house spirit” of secular services butin the spirit of that “Charity” which had been summarily defined in Rerum Novarum:

Charity, which is “the bond of perfection”, must always play a leading part […] Certainly charitycannot take the place of justice unfairly withheld, but a wide field will always remain open forcharity […] For justice alone can never bring about a union of hearts and minds. Yet this union isthe main principle of stability in all institutions. In its absence, as repeated experience proves, thewisest regulations come to nothing. In this unity comes the intimate conviction that all sections ofsociety are one great family, children of the same heavenly father, and “one body in Christ, andeveryone members of one another.27

At the same time government support for those without income throughunemployment, sickness and old age was welcomed as were some services such asbaby health clinics which were best provided by governments. Nevertheless, these newinitiatives were to be regarded as, at best, “temporary expedients”. Catholics should“not think of the social service state, or as it sometimes called, the ‘welfare state’ as theideal”.28

This antipathy to the welfare state derived not so much from the Continentaltraditions informing QA than from the British Catholic tradition associated with writerslike Chesterton, Belloc and Dawson. Thus the literature claimed that rather than beingthe “prelude to a proper Christian order”, the “welfare state” might lead to the “servile

25 Diocesan Directorate of Catholic Action, Outlines for Catholic Action discussion groups, SocialConditions in Australia (Sydney, 1940), pp.1-2.26 Catholic Education Office, Studies in Australian Social Problems (Melbourne, 1950), p.94.27 Outlines of Discussion for Catholic Action Discussion-Groups, p.6.28 Studies in Australian Social Problems, p. 95.

Reclaiming Community? 25

state” predicted by Belloc decades before. Bismarck, the reader was warned, hadpioneered the welfare state as a weapon for keeping “workers in their place”.29

In a reassertion of the wage earners’ welfare society the book argued that in a “saneand reasonable order in which men are paid adequately” families should be able toarrange for their own security. “The milk which a benevolent State supplied to thechild at school”, it continued, was “no substitute for the food provided by a father fromthe wage he had justly earned by the sweat of his brow”.30 In like vein, similareducational material for Catholic Action groups declared that a “sensible application ofthe principle of subsidiarity” would be the encouragement by the State of small groupsand associations to provide their own social services. In the process a “true democracy”with “self-reliant citizens” would be created. The “masses” would become a“people”.31

This tradition prioritised first the family wage, and later, full employment as a wayof civilising capitalism without resort to excessive reliance on the state. Its goal, asMoran had put it, was a self-trusting people, able to look after their own affairs. It wasnot enthusiastic for state-provided social services in a welfare state, but then, neitherwas anybody else. Fabians and communists wanted socialism not “handouts” whileconservatives thought welfare a road to serfdom.32 In the result, on the foundation ofthe social security provided by the “economic state”, Australia proceeded into the post-war period as still a “welfare society”.

Mater et Magister and Whitlam’s “welfare state”I have argued elsewhere that the welfare state developed as a macro social policymirror to the demonstrably successful practices of Keynesian macro-economic policy.By this I mean simply that in the welfare society, social outcomes were thought to bebest left to the decision making of individuals, families and associations. Theresponsibility belonged to them not the state. Hence social rights, enforceable by thestate, were not recognised and accordingly governments were not obliged to takeaccount of social need, to plan to meet that need or to adjudicate between differentclaims on state resources for meeting social need. The rise of Australia’s welfare stateconsensus began in earnest in the sixties when affluence had produced a new profile ofneeds not addressed by the blunt policy instruments for achieving full employment andeconomic growth. Notably from the time of the Vernon report it was argued withincreasing force that if governments could manage an economy to satisfy the economicright to work then they should also be able to work with civil society to satisfy newlyemerging social needs.33

In terms of Vatican social teaching the landmark was Pope John XXIII’s Mater etMagister. According to Dorr it was a decisive move away from the right, while forGremillion, it marked the Church’s “welcoming of the welfare state”.34 The latter hadbrought with it “fullness of a more excellent life” and it was something which the

29 Ibid., p.94.30 Ibid., p.96.31 Australian National Secretariat of Catholic Action, Studies in Catholic Action: A PracticalApproach (Melbourne, 1948), p.178.32 Paul Smyth, Australian Social Policy: The Keynesian Chapter (Kensington, 1994).33 Smyth and Wearing, “After the Welfare State”.34 Donald Dorr, Option for the Poor. A Hundred years of Vatican Social Teaching (Dublin, 1983); J.Gremillion, The Gospel of Peace and Justice. Catholic Social Teaching Since Pope John (Maryknoll,1976), p.5.

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Church ought to engage with and support. A little later in Gaudium et Spes (1965) theSecond Vatican Council declared that:

Because of the increased complexity of modern circumstances, government is more often requiredto intervene in social and economic affairs, by way of bringing about conditions more likely tohelp citizens and groups freely attain to complete human fulfilment with greater effect.35

While a full account of the transition in Australian Catholic social thinking fromopposition to support for the welfare state cannot be attempted here, two aspects shouldbe observed which were quite unlike what went before. These were a new welfarepluralism and an “empirical” mode of analysis. Yeatman has recently argued that there“was more in common between Keynesian liberal-democratic and Nazi fascist socialpolicy than supporters of the Keynesian Welfare State like to think”.36 This argumentrests on her view that “the state exists in order to express a nation based in theindivisible will and/or shared identity of the (‘one’) people”. Certainly in the Australiancase you would not want to describe the Keynesian “economic state” as resting on an“indivisible will”. It was more like an armistice than a consensus. No group was able toimpose its social blueprint on the others. Liberals, Catholics, Communists …had had toagree to disagree. This situation was the context for the post-war shift in AustralianCatholic social thinking towards pluralism.37

The issues were brought to a head by Tom Truman’s book, Catholic Action andPolitics which suggested Catholic Action was a threat to “the Free Society in generaland Australian Democracy in particular”.38 Mayer’s collection of essays on Catholicsand the “free society” soon followed and an extensive literature generated.39 MaxCharlesworth was the principal exponent of the new pluralist Catholic position, theterms of which had been worked out largely by the United States Jesuit, J. CourtneyMurray. Charlesworth wrote that there were indeed many Catholics who resisted thenew pluralism and thought that if you possessed the “true religious vision” then itought to be something you would seek to impose on others; after all, “error has norights”. Explaining the new pluralism, Charlesworth distinguished it from the “laissez-faire” view that “every man is free to choose his own “values” simply because we are

35 Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Second VaticanCouncil, December 7, 1965), quoted in J Gremillion, The Gospel of Peace and Justice (New York,1976), p.311.36 Anna Yeatman, “Social policy and the Global economy”, in I. O’Connor, Paul Smyth and JeniWarburton, eds., Contemporary Perspectives on Social Work and the Human Services (Sydney,2000).37 See Smyth, Australian Social Policy.38 Tom Truman, Catholic Action and Politics ( Melbourne, 1959).39 H. Mayer, Catholics and the Free Society. A Symposium (Melbourne, 1961); earlier, in the UnitedStates, Paul Blanshard, American Freedom and Catholic Power (2nd edition, Boston, 1958), hadgenerated similar argument with his book. The literature generated by this issue in Australia was quiteextensive. For some of this literature see John Burnheim, “Catholics and Australian Democracy”, inTwentieth Century, Vol. 15, Summer 1960, pp. 101-108; L. C. Webb, “The Churches and theAustralian Community” in E. L. French, ed., Melbourne Studies in Education 1958-59 (Melbourne,1960); “An Australian Blanshard?”, Prospect, Vol.3, No.1, 1960 pp2-4; James G. Murtagh, “TomTruman’s Catholic Action and Politics”, Australian Catholic Truth Society Record, 20 May 1961;Austin Gough, “Review Article: Catholics and the Free Society”, Historical Studies, Vol. 10, No. 39,pp. 370-378; A. J. M. Sayre, “The World of Mr Gough”, Prospect, Vol. 6, No.1, 1963, pp. 16-19,November 1962; “The Gough Mixture”, Prospect, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1963, pp. 22-24. Here we simplyseek to illustrate the way in which a pluralist political philosophy became central to Catholic thinkingabout the roles of church and state.

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indifferent to “values”. This attitude, he thought was “a way of escaping responsibilitytowards one’s neighbour and society at large”. The better view of tolerance, he argued,was based rather on a respect for the importance of values and beliefs, so much so thateach person must be allowed to determine them freely and responsibly. Church andstate should thus be kept separate and the state should uphold the right to freedom ofconscience.40

The other feature of postwar Catholic social thinking was its “empiricism”, or, asHogan writes, its “eclectic, non-theoretical” style which became the new language ofpolitical engagement as the “economic” ideologies of the thirties and forties becameirrelevant where the basic questions of state versus market had been settled.41 In thisway Catholic and Australian social policy generally began to address a new socialagenda no longer taken up with issues of economic governance. Residual poverty, theentry of married women into the paid workforce, changes to the family and the care ofthe aged, issues arising for the flood of post-war migrants, urban planning, rights forindigenous peoples: these formed a new social policy terrain which was being mappedempirically and becoming the basis of a new welfare state consensus.42

For the Catholic Church the most dramatic symbol of the end of the “welfaresociety” model was arguably the financial crisis in its school system resulting in theGoulbourn secondary school strike in 1962 and subsequent incorporation into anational education system.43 In the welfare sector, the need for the Church to worktogether with other agencies and the state in a new mixed economy of welfare becamea constant theme. Thus the head of Catholic welfare, Monsignor McCosker, addressedthe Conference of Major Religious Superiors’ Child Care Committee in the mid 1960s.The old charitable order in which individuals responded to need as they saw fit wasover. McCosker declared that in an “affluent” and “complex” society, such decisionshad to be made in the light of and in conjunction with government and church policiesas a whole and had to employ “modern methods and techniques”.44 In like vein theNational Catholic Welfare Committee wrote to the Australian bishops in the earlysixties: Australian education now had “overall planning and uniform standards” andCatholic schools were very much a part of a national system, they said. Social andmedical sciences were rapidly becoming the basis of similar planning. In welfareservice, they proposed, the Church had to be “geared to live in this planned society”.45

Welfare state and civil societyThe theoretical underpinnings for the kinds of macro social policy planning which hadbegun to develop across the fifties and sixties were eventually supplied by British andAmerican writers such as Titmuss and Wilensky and Lebeaux. The residual welfare ofthe wage earner welfare society was contrasted with the “institutional welfare” of thewelfare state. We cannot discuss the development of the central notion of needs-basedplanning here but simply signal that the whole experiment raised major issues

40 Max Charlesworth, “Tolerance and Freedom of Conscience”, Prospect, No. 3, 1959, pp. 9-10.41 M. Hogan, ed., Option for the Poor: Annual Social Justice Statements of the Australian CatholicCommission for Justice and Peace, 1973-1987 (Sydney, 1972), p. 2.42 For example, see Peter Wertheim, “Two Labour Parties?”, Twentieth Century, Vol. 16, Spring1961, pp. 51-54.43 M. Hogan, The Catholic Campaign for State Aid (Sydney, 1978).44 Monsignor McCosker, address to “Conference of Major Religious Superiors”, ACSWC archives,n.d.45 National Catholic Welfare Committee, Annual Report 1967, ACSWC archives.

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concerning how the new institutions of centralised welfare state planning were to relateto the citizens, families and associations of civil society in the production of welfare.We also note that consideration of these issues took place in the turbulent politicalcontext of the Whitlam and Fraser years when the more egalitarian plans of the formerwere constrained by the latter but without destroying what was a new welfare statesettlement.46

Initially the welfare state created something of a crisis of identity for Catholic socialwelfare. As David Shinnick observed at the National Catholic Conference of theChurch in Social Welfare held in 1980, some had argued that with the arrival ofprofessionalised, state social services, the Church might vacate the field.47 Thespectacular growth of the federal agencies in the Whitlam period no doubt reinforcedfor some this sense of redundancy. Fraser’s federalism quickly recast the issues andencouraged widespread deliberation over the ways in which the distinctive butcomplementary roles of central agencies and non-government organisations might bestbe put together. Two views of the Church’s role emerged: a Catholic welfare statepluralism and an anti-state liberation model.

The former was elegantly put to the conference to which I have referred by BrianJohnstone, an Australian moral theologian. Fully supporting the institutional asopposed to the residual model he argued that Catholic associations should continue tooperate. They had their ethos and their “care” should be driven by needs as they sawthem and not by the availability of government funding. Their ethic and their visionshould drive the way resources were distributed, job applicants selected, and clientgroups chosen. At the same time he clearly understood the rationale and need for socialplanning. Indeed he said that the medieval Catholic understanding of charity had beenstrong on care but “weak on positive plans to eradicate suffering”. At the same time heaffirmed as the Catholic view that welfare benefits were a right and should not have tobe earned; a view he noted Professor Ronald Henderson had also affirmed in hislandmark report on poverty in Australia.

The ethos and ethics of Catholic associations, he emphasised, ought to lead to adistinctive, visible Catholic policy and practice. Catholics, he explained, ought tofollow the principle of “subsidiarity” which he said was about maximising “powersharing”; a sharing which ought to include “patients” as well as staff. The principle of“solidarity”, he continued, meant relations with clients ought also embed a genuinesense of solidarity: “in their poverty, we are poor. In their oppression we are oppressed.We may not regard them as ‘others’ or as ‘aliens’ upon whom we act.” In this way, heconsidered, a Catholic caring institution would be a genuinely healing community andnot a place where “active suppliers” dispensed services to passive “consumers” as wasthe case in the “market model”. These differences were something to be celebrated in awelfare state not smoothed over in the name of an overall social harmony. While someportrayed “conflict, difference and tension” as “counterproductive”, Johnstone believedin the importance of recognising and valuing differences. They can create tensions, hesaid, but should be understood as a “positive gain for a society”, allowing for the“wider dispersal of centres of power and influence”. Thus Johnstone argued “for aplace in society for institutions with a different stance on values — such as a Catholic

46 For an account of this context, see Smyth and Wearing, “After the welfare state”.47 David Shinnick, “Welfare and Justice: A Social Justice Approach to Social Welfare”, inProceedings of National Catholic Conference of the Church in Social Welfare (Canberra, 1980),pp.39-55.

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Hospital of Catholic Welfare Agency”. Their values, he urged, should be “nailed to themasthead for all to see”. 48

The other approach to welfare at the Conference, articulated by Shinnick, was whathe termed liberative welfare. Its special target was what he called the “Puritanideology” of the “Christian work ethic” which he said had dominated Westernunderstandings of welfare until “recent times”. This ideology posited that “the poor arepoor through their own fault” thus encouraging a limited, welfare paternalism. Drawingon the insights of liberation theology and radical structuralist critiques of welfare, thismodel emphasised the need for a radical redistribution of wealth, resources and powerif true development was to occur. This perspective demanded radical social changeunlike what he called the “status quo model of society” which would be promoted bygovernments. Liberative Church associations had to be “prophetic”, not just about“picking up the pieces” and this would require “different relations with government”.49

ConclusionAt a time when contemporary communitarians promote “third way” social policiesbeyond the welfare state, policies which assert new roles and responsibilities for theassociations of civil society, I believe there is much to learn from this brief overview ofAustralian Catholic social thought. The Church itself has charted its own third wayacross the twentieth century and, as we have seen, has typically valued theassociational dimension of human existence more than either liberals or socialdemocrats. From this perspective we must be struck by the need for care inapportioning roles between state, market and civil society in the production of socialwelfare.

From the outset we see that the role of civil society is a relatively minor onecompared to that of the state and the market, where in Catholic thinking it is essentialto have a genuine “third way”. While Catholic thinking has supported the marketeconomy in general terms it has had no illusions about the need for social regulationssuch as the “just wage” and full employment if families and civil associations are tohave the opportunity to flourish and not disintegrate. So-called “third way” plans todaywhich promote neoliberal economic policies and look to civil society to pick up thepieces do not look very robust from a Catholic perspective.

This history also cautions against romantic communitarian sentiments which seeksomehow to resurrect a welfare society from the ruins of the welfare state. The ideathat we could simply unravel all institutions of state planning and return to the days ofthe “welfare society” when social welfare decisions were indeed taken in private withgovernments merely scattering ad hoc subsidies at election time is unthinkable. Theremust be the macro social policy planning functions of coordination, integration andarbitration undertaken by the state and as, the Church came to affirm, there must be aframework of agreed social rights to inform such planning.

With all of that in place we could then consider the role of civil society vis à vis thestate in the production of social services. Here we agree with Johnstone that the quasi-market contractual model is not well suited to maximising social outcomes. It has noregard for the differences among players who are regarded as the same, i.e. profitseeking economic actors. It has no regard for the differences in ethos and culture ofagencies and how these add different values to services in different agencies. More 48 Brian Johnstone, “Why should there be a Catholic commitment to social welfare?”, in Proceedingsof National Catholic Conference of the Church in Social Welfare (Canberra, 1980), pp.25-35.49 Shinnick, “Welfare and Justice”.

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likely it robs the organisations of civil society of their difference. The experience ofCatholic corporatism also shows us how maintaining plurality and difference isendangered by too close a cooperation between civil society and state. A welfaregovernance that would embed a healthy pluralism would seek to embody the principleof subsidiarity, avoiding excessive centralism at all costs. From the full spectrum ofCatholic thinking we also see how much the above presumes a sense of agreementbetween the state and the agencies of civil society which may or may not obtain. As theliberation model reminds us there are limits to cooperation.