Books

B.A. Santamaria's correspondence published by MUP

Contents - Feb 2007 - Buy a copy now Editorial: The Church and globalisation - Peter Westmore Education: Australia's Catholic school systems: the case for radical surgery - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around the World East Timor: priests threatened with execution - Peter Westmore Fr John Speekman: Vatican orders reinstatement of wrongly removed Sale Diocese parish priest - Michael Gilchrist Priesthood: Orthodox priests in a divided Church - Fr John Trigilio The Church and the environment: address the moral pollution first - Wanda Skowronska Salesians help rebuild post-tsunami Sri Lanka - Br Michael Lynch Why we need holy days of obligation - Joanna Bogle Music: Johann Sebastian Bach and the heavenly choir - Fr Finbarr Flanagan Letters: Shared guilt - Errol Duke Letters: Lost! - Moya and Leo Morrissey Letters: Truth and love - Chris Hilder Letters: Root Cause - Marie Kennedy Letters: Safe-sex? - Jack Blair Poetry: Gender-Bender Autos - Bruce Dawe Letters: Limbo? - Lawrence R. Hurley Letters: Manipulating language - Carol V. Phillips Letters: Obedience - Matthew Buckley Letters: Latin Mass - John Gariano Letters: Religious materials - J.W. Smith Letters: Catholic dolls - Anne Cramer Books: TREASURE IN CLAY: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: BEGINNING AT JERUSALEM: Five Reflections on the History of the Church - Sr Mariana Handley (reviewer) Books: SPIRITUAL DIRECTION: Who Is It For and What Are Its Benefits? - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: B.A. Santamaria's correspondence published by MUP Books: New Titles from AD Books Reflection: Why the Church must continue to uphold priestly celibacy - Fr Pat Stratford

Melbourne University Press has just published a book containing the selected correspondence of B.A. Santamaria, founder of the National Civic Council.

Edited by Victorian writer and academic, Patrick Morgan, the Santamaria letters cover an extraordinary 60 years in public life, and show facets of his character not hitherto revealed.

The letters are both personal and professional, and in them he speaks frankly on matters of church, state and family and he is revealed as a person more subtle in his views than his public persona would suggest.

His correspondents included religious leaders, such as Archbishops Mannix and Pell, prominent politicians, like Malcolm Fraser, Bill Hayden and Clyde Cameron, and influential media and social commentators like Kerry Packer and Phillip Adams.

The book lends new insights into controversies in which Bob Santamaria was deeply involved, from his work with the National Catholic Rural Movement in the 1940s and '50s, the struggle against communism in the trade unions, the Labor "split" which led to the formation of the DLP, and his emergence in the 1980s and 1990s as a foremost critic of unbridled capitalism.

All people with an interest in the history of the Movement, Labor history and the role of the Catholic church in public life will find this book a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the most original thinkers Australia has produced, and one of the most important figures in 20th century Australia.

Copies of the book may be ordered from Freedom Publishing for $49.95. The online bookstore is at www.freedompublishing.com.au

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 20 No 1 (February 2007), p. 18