In 1943, Australia was living in the shadow of World War II which it had entered as a nation in 1939 under prime minister Robert Menzies.
The global war against tyranny had become all too real for Australia. In 1942 there was the Japanese bombing of Darwin and other parts of the northwest of Australia. In addition there had been the mini submarines in Sydney harbour, the fierce hand-to-hand and island-hopping by Australian troops in New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, air-raid drills in schools and rations.
The Australian War Memorial estimates that over 1 million Australian men and women served in the war in all theatres of Europe, North Africa and Asia Pacific. This figure is particularly sobering given that the population of Australia in 1943 was only 7,234,904.
1943 was also notable because, in that year, a weekly newspaper was founded under the title Freedom. It was reputedly printed from a grocer’s shop and distributed from there, where it changed format several times and by 1947 changed its name to News Weekly. We welcome the latest special edition of News Weeklyhere.
It was in July 1943 when Freedom’s editor, at almost 28 years old, B.A. Santamaria delivered a memorable speech in the rural town (as it was then) of Wagga. He was serving at the time as National Secretary of the National Catholic Rural Movement (NCRM) and was invited to address the question of rural reconstruction for post-war Australia.
Santamaria was received with some elation both by the audience and by the editor of the local Wagga newspaper. The article was headed, Brilliant Talk to Rotary by Mr B.A. Santamaria. In the talk, Santamaria acknowledged that the two wars had contributed to the depopulation and dislocation of many a family farm and rural town.
Central to the Santamaria speech that day was a notion of freedom that was embedded in relationship and virtue. Santamaria based his portrait of freedom on his research of Catholic social teaching and in his own convictions. He explained that true freedom allowed people to associate and collaborate together for their own flourishing and healthy families, from which they developed what he called “neighbourly co-operation” and the imaginative initiatives that this encouraged.
We can imagine B.A. Santamaria with passionate verve addressing the forces which deprive rural families of vocational freedom: economic and social factors which coerce farms, rural businesses and families to fragment and abandon once-flourishing areas. He noted:
“Those who remain are plagued with a burden of debt unprecedented in the history of Australia, owing between £500,000,000 and £600,000,000, faced with an annual interest of between £20,000,000 and £30,000,000. The financial position then of the vast bulk of Australia’s farmers is hopeless.”
In addition to rural poverty and debt, Santamaria pointed out that educational opportunities, cultural riches and investment were minimal in rural areas, the community “capital” had been broken, and the people demoralised. People were forced into slum-like conditions.
The NCRM, he explained, advocated a fostering of independence and localised “self-government”. It developed educational initiatives and collaboration aimed at encouraging free self-development and vocational direction. This endeavour was opposed to the entire philosophy of “speculative commercial farming” which Santamaria pointed out was not only destructive for people but also for the land herself.
The disasters of desertification in the U.S. Dust Bowl crisis and in Africa were, he said, “monuments of shame to the acquisitive and unethical practices of human beings. It has created, and still creates, deserts in Australia.”
It is interesting that the matrix of freedoms being developed by the NCRM was echoed decades later by Pope St John Paul II, who would call this freedom with solidarity: a freedom wedded to respect for the truth, formed in community and bound together with charity. Here freedom was not simply the shallow liberal notion of freedom from restraint, morality and commitment, but a spiritual and moral freedom which was always humbly responsive to reality and for opportunities to do, support and be good.
In this Wagga speech, Santamaria describes the NCRM notion of freedom by discussing local and concrete examples of social initiative taken by NCRM members. He warns that work requires “not only a technique but a spirit, the spirit which realises that the common good precedes the selfish interests of the individual, and that the ideal of service to the local community is not inferior to that or to private property.”
Likewise, in his 1987 encyclical, Sollicitudo rei Socialis (On Social Concerns), Pope John Paul II identifies the failings of the secular West’s truncated notions of freedom and the East’s crippled and often lethal notions of community.
Here, the Pope warns against a blasé notion of endless social, technological or political progress or development which ignores the God-given (and graced) truth and dignity of the human person:
“In order to be genuine, development must be achieved within the framework of solidarity and freedom, without ever sacrificing either of them under whatever pretext. The moral character of development and its necessary promotion are emphasised when the most rigorous respect is given to all the demands deriving from the order of truth and good proper to the human person.”
As we launch into 2025, the Thomas More Centre aims to shine a light on the importance of an authentic and integrated sense of “freedom” – we aspire to catch a few sparks of the originality of The Movement’s early years, and the many flames which are still to be captured in the thought of such leaders as John Paul II.
In Australia we have felt the loss of freedom in diverse and often subtle ways: losses of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and in some cases freedom of association.
Many people are prompted to ask questions about freedom.
This provides the TMC with opportunities to bring the rich Christian bases for freedom in Christ to the tables of our communities.
To do this we need your continuing support and interest. We hope in the coming weeks to suggest some practical avenues for financial, organisational and personal support.
Please keep sending us messages and emails. We endeavour to reach out and get back to you, even with our small and busy team.
Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre
