Memories of B.A. Santamaria From One Who Never Knew Him

Saturday, February 25, was the 25th anniversary of the death of Bartholomew Augustine “Bob” Santamaria.

I came across the life and work of B.A. Santamaria while I was studying Science at Melbourne University. Uni campuses back then had changed a lot since Bob’s day.

In my era, the most controversial thing to do was man the pro-life club stall – a feat guaranteed to bring out a tirade of abuse from the young campus socialists. This didn’t require debate or oratorical prowess. It just required the ability to remain calm and cheerful.

Bob, on the other hand, took on Soviet-backed trained communist provocateurs as a Campion Society member in the 1937 Great Debate at Melbourne Uni. He defended the Catholics in the Spanish Civil War against the anti-clerical communists, situating their fight within the context of violent revolutions going back to the French Reign of Terror.

The debates around the Spanish war were the beginnings of Bob’s conversations with the world. He continued them for the rest of his life – through his column in The Australian, through his Point of View television show, through his speeches and the lectures he gave to groups and communities, through all the things he wrote for this very magazine.

Bob’s conversations with the world via the press were so significant he was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame.

   I have a recurring picture in my mind, from Bob’s memoir (Against the Tide), of him pacing his driveway practising the delivery of his famously well-written speeches in preparation for a Movement event, dinner or conference. Here in Queensland, I still meet older supporters who relished the trips Bob would occasionally make north, recalling the vast crowds that would pack in to hear B.A.S.

“We fitted over 600 into this hall here,” said one, “there was no room left, shoulder-to-shoulder.”

The natural result of Bob’s huge media presence is to think he was The Movement and The Movement was him. Many critics certainly take this view and depict him a tyrant and the sole directing mind of all The Movement’s operations.

There is some truth to this in that Bob was a rare polymathic genius and so it was natural for people to defer to him, and for people to think his word was the final word.

However, there was always more to The Movement than B.A. Santamaria, and that’s how it was meant to be. He built a structure that relied on subsidiarity to operate. This meant it was up to the men and women on the ground to implement Bob’s ideas – or not.

They were always free in what they did. Internal disagreements and consultations were far more common than Bob’s critics would allow. Also, Bob was in Melbourne. It’s not like he could tell the farming groups in Far North Queensland what they could and could not do – and he knew it.

The Movement has always been the people involved, people like yourselves reading News Weekly. The people in The Movement don’t necessarily need to do anything in particular – because what you can do might be very different from what I can do, or what someone else can do.

The Movement is all of us working together for the Common Good, however we can.

We face serious challenges going forward. The Government is seeking to change laws essentially crippling the ability of religious institutions to live out their beliefs. It wants the state to define right and wrong, and religions will just need to fit in.

What can you do in this regard? What do you think should be done? Join our livestreams and local discussions. Together we can still stand for what is right.

Luke McCormack is national president of the National Civic Council.