Australian Catholics and Conscription in the Great War

During the Great War the Australian people twice voted to reject conscription for overseas military service. In the historiography of those plebiscites it is generally accepted that most Catholics opposed compulsion because of their Irish and working class backgrounds rather than their religion. However, in December 1917, members of the Catholic hierarchy and official church institutions, who had been silent during the first plebiscite in October 1916, actively campaigned against conscription because the government’s proposal did not exempt teaching brothers and seminarians. Although their opposition had nothing to do with theology, its source was religion rather than ethnicity, class, or national sentiment. This article examines the bishops’ concern, challenging the notion that they used it as a convenient excuse to abandon their neutrality in order to be re–united politically with their people, and argues that they did so out of a legitimate concern for the welfare of their church

Bishops · Excuse · Historiography · Irish · Military service · Neutrality · Nothing · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy

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