“I wanted to win the war… but I did not want conscription”

Posted on 28 October, 2021 by C.L.

Here is an amazing excerpt from a 1962 ABC interview with Daniel Mannix. While looking for video resources relating to the plebiscites of 1916-1917, I chanced upon this NFSA clip. Aged 98, the famously sharp Archbishop of Melbourne has been asked to relate the exact circumstances of his decision to take on the Commonwealth and the entire establishment. Forty years from now, no such video will exist of a Catholic bishop denouncing coercion.

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10 Responses to “I wanted to win the war… but I did not want conscription”

rosie says:

28 October, 2021 at 6:13 am

Perhaps not but it is pleasing to know some Melbourne parish priests are refusing to discriminate on the grounds of medical status and others are offering status unknown masses as well as compliant masses to maximise the number who are able to attend mass.
rosie says:

28 October, 2021 at 6:16 am

at least Archbishop Comensoli was ‘uncomfortable’ about needing a vaccine passport to attend mass.
Tel says:

28 October, 2021 at 7:54 am

Lost her job but maintained her integrity … difficult choice but that’s what heros are made of.

https://americasfrontlinedoctors.org/2/frontlinenews/she-refused-to-just-follow-orders-why-cortez-colorado-lost-its-most-dedicated-pharmacist/
C.L. says:

28 October, 2021 at 9:45 am

“Compliant masses”?
Franx says:

28 October, 2021 at 10:04 am

Archbishop Commensoli, in keeping with Archbishop Mannix, could readily point out that the Church wants to overcome any pandemic but that to achieve this, the Church does not want – could in truth not agree to – forced medical intervention nor to the the creation of a persecuted class. (And this, without considering either the questionable effectiveness or possible dangers inherent in a medical intervention.)
Otherwise, and by not declaring that the ‘Roadmap’, as a civic document, is at best unjust and that, as a quasi sacred text it is anathema, history will reveal Church leaders not as men of God nor as upholders of right but as compliant clerics in league with a
premier who said something along the lines that he was not interested in protecting freedom but ‘lives’. Lives lived without freedom are lives lived as slaves. It was against this tyranny of the depriving of freedom as a process making slaves of the living that Archbishop Mannix prevailed.
As ever, the Church needs its prophets.
rosie says:

28 October, 2021 at 10:57 am

I don’t know what to call them CL but masses where people have to show their vaccination status to attend.
My mother’s parish isn’t offering them so she won’t be going there, and she is annoyed about it, but I’ll take her to a different one that offers a ‘status unknown’ option.
rosie says:

28 October, 2021 at 10:57 am

I mean her parish isn’t offering a status unknown option.
rosie says:

28 October, 2021 at 11:00 am

example
dover_beach says:

28 October, 2021 at 11:11 am

What a fantastic snippet. Thank you CL.
a reader says:

28 October, 2021 at 2:30 pm

Interesting to see the way that Sydney’s Anglican and Catholic archbishops chose not to open their churches until everyone could attend compared to other places. The churches are all opening over the next couple of weeks as a result and the government removed any restrictions from them earlier than any other place that they put vax passports on