Recent weeks have seen the deaths of former NSW Liberal Premier and federal Finance minister, John Fahey, and former Labor federal minister, Senator Susan Ryan.
They were both exemplary public figures who not only made a major contribution to Australian public life but did so in a way that drew praise from all sides of politics.
Their personal stories illustrate many aspects of the journey Australian Catholicism has taken over the past fifty years. Ryan left the church while Fahey remained at its official core.
Ryan represents the human face of the shrinking church during this period. Relatively few Catholics practice their faith and the remainder form a vast tribe of cultural Catholics increasingly distant from the official church. She represents the lost potential of those, many of them educated women, who have left it all behind.
Yet while the church has been shrinking it has also been building new structures, including in university education through the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and the University of Notre Dame Australia. Fahey, as ACU Chancellor, represented this development. These universities are playing an increasing role in Catholic life as illustrated by the presence of many of their staff in the processes of the Plenary Council 2021-22.
They both shared a commitment as republicans to fighting for an Australian Head of State. Fahey was a senior minister in the Howard government at the time of the 1999 republican referendum while Ryan was an influential figure in the new Australian Republican Movement (ARM).
'The lives of Ryan and Fahey may seem worlds away from each other... But Australia is fortunate that such leaders can maintain deep differences while working together in solidarity for shared causes.'
Ryan emerged from the women’s movement and entered the Senate for the ACT at the 1975 elections. A feminist, she was Minister for Education and Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women in the Hawke government and the first female Labor minister. Her proudest parliamentary achievement was the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984, which declared illegal all discrimination based on gender, marital status or pregnancy. Later she sponsored the Affirmative Action (Equal Opportunities in Employment) Act.
After leaving Parliament in 1988, she remained a public figure in many senior government and non-government roles, most recently serving as federal Age Discrimination Commissioner. She fought for an Australian Bill of Rights and was Deputy Chair of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM). She was widely admired for paving the way for justice and parliamentary representation for women.
Fahey shared Ryan’s Irish-Catholic background, but not her party politics. He entered the NSW Parliament in 1984 and became state Premier in 1992. During his premiership Sydney won the right to hold the Sydney Olympic Games. Switching to federal politics Fahey served as Finance minister from 1996 to 2001 in the Howard government.
Fahey’s office was an incubator for republican leadership. Greg Barns, campaign director for the Yes case during the 1999 referendum, was his chief of staff, and another of his staff members, Marise Payne, now Foreign Minister, was Ryan’s predecessor as ARM Deputy Chair under Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership.
Fahey too made a major post-parliamentary contribution after retirement in 2001. Two of his causes were his sport, especially rugby league, and his church. He became president of the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) in 2007, a commissioner of the National Catholic Education Commission and Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University in 2014.
Ryan was educated by the Brigidine Sisters at Maroubra. She credited them with her commitment to gender equality and social justice, learning from the nuns that St Brigid was the equal of St Patrick as patron saint of Ireland. But not long after leaving school she parted ways with her church, unable, like many Catholic women of her generation, to reconcile her personal beliefs with the demonstrably unequal role of women in the church and its opposition to contraception and abortion. She remained a member of the large Irish-Catholic tribe and sought common cause on issues like human rights.
Fahey was educated by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart at Chevalier College in Bowral. He remained faithful to his church, briefly training to be a priest, and keeping his rosary beads at hand. He was a Liberal moderate committed to sexual equality, while remaining absolutely opposed to abortion and euthanasia. In 2019 he was honoured by Pope Francis with the Knight Grand Cross of St Gregory the Great.
The lives of Ryan and Fahey may seem worlds away from each other. One, an orthodox Catholic, was resolutely opposed to the abortion rights aspect of what the other, a former Catholic, stood for. But Australia is fortunate that such leaders can maintain deep differences while working together in solidarity for shared causes.
John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University, the Chair of Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn and a delegate to the Plenary Council.
Main image: John Fahey (Jeff J Mitchell / Getty)