page_title: Catholic Church in Australia
section_title: Post Australian Federation
hierarchical_section_title: Catholic Church in Australia / History / Post Australian Federation
caption_attribution_description: James Scullin
context_page_description: The Catholic Church in Australia is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual and administrative leadership of the Holy See. From origins as a suppressed, mainly Irish minority in early colonial times, the church has grown to be the largest Christian denomination in Australia, with a culturally diverse membership of around 5,439,268 people, representing about 23% of the overall population of Australia according to the 2016 census.
  The church is the largest non-government provider of welfare and education services in Australia. Catholic Social Services Australia aids some 450,000 people annually, while the St Vincent de Paul Society's 40,000 members form the largest volunteer welfare network in the country. In 2016, the church had some 760,000 students in more than 1,700 schools.
  The church in Australia has five provinces: Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. It has 35 dioceses, comprising geographic areas as well as the military diocese and dioceses for the Chaldean, Maronite, Melkite and Ukrainian rites. The national assembly of bishops is the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, headed by Brisbane's Archbishop Mark Coleridge.
context_section_description: The Australian Constitution of 1901 guaranteed Freedom of Religion and the separation of church and state throughout Australia. Australia's first Catholic cardinal, Patrick Francis Moran (1830–1911), had been a proponent of Australian Federation but in 1901 he refused to attend the inauguration ceremony of the Commonwealth of Australia because precedence was given to the Church of England. He was criticised in The Bulletin for speaking against racist immigration laws and he alarmed Catholic conservatives by supporting Trade Unionism and the newly formed Australian Labor Party.
  The Catholic Church was rooted in the working class Irish communities. Moran, the Archbishop of Sydney from 1884 to 1911, believed that Catholicism would flourish with the emergence of the new nation through Federation in 1901, provided that his people rejected  "contamination" from foreign influences such as anarchism, socialism, modernism and secularism.  Moran distinguished between European socialism as an atheistic movement and those Australians calling themselves "socialists"; he approved of the objectives of the latter while feeling that the European model was not a real danger in Australia. Moran's outlook reflected his wholehearted acceptance of Australian democracy and his belief in the country as different and freer than the old societies from which its people had come. Moran thus welcomed the Labor Party and the Catholic Church stood with it in opposing conscription in the referenda of 1916 and 1917. The hierarchy had close ties to Rome, which encouraged the bishops to support the British Empire and emphasize Marian piety.
  Another Irish cleric, Archbishop Daniel Mannix (1864–1963) of Melbourne, was a controversial voice against conscription during World War I and against British Empire policy in Ireland. He was also a fervent critic of contraception. In 1920, the Royal Navy prevented him landing in his Irish homeland. Yet despite early 20th century sectarian feeling, Australia elected its first Catholic prime minister, James Scullin, of the Australian Labor Party in 1929 – decades before the Protestant majority of the United States would elect John F. Kennedy as its first Catholic president. His successor, Joseph Lyons, a devout Irish Catholic, split from Labor to form the fiscally conservative United Australia Party – predecessor to the modern Liberal Party of Australia. His wife, Dame Enid Lyons, a Catholic convert, became the first female member of the Australian House of Representatives and later first female member of cabinet in the Menzies Government. With the place of Catholics in the British Empire still complicated by the recent Irish War of Independence and centuries of imperial rivalry with Catholic European nations, as prime minister, Lyons travelled to London in 1935 for the Silver Jubilee celebrations of King George V and faced anti-Catholic demonstrations in Edinburgh, then visited his ancestral homeland of Ireland and also had an audience with the Pope in Rome.
caption: James Scullin of the Australian Labor Party was the first Catholic to become a Prime Minister of Australia
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