Scholar defied his church to join opposition to Santamaria crusade
Colin Thornton-Smith
COLIN THORNTON-SMITH
Scholar, historian
12-12-1929 - 18-10-2014
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In the 1950s, Australian Catholics who defied the political orthodoxy of their church in the fight against communism were stigmatised as arrogant and disloyal. French-language scholar Colin Thornton-Smith, who has died aged 84, was one of them.
He was one of the last of the Catholic Worker group which took a stand against the secretive church-sponsored anti-communist organisation known as the Movement, led by the charismatic layman B. A. Santamaria with the mission to "save Australia from communism".
French language and literature was the focus of Thornton-Smith's professional life. His studies of the early 20th-century novelists Francois Mauriac and Georges Bernanos earned him international repute.
In defence of his principles Thornton-Smith had a gritty, often courageous, element to his character well illustrated by an incident early in his career. A priest in his local parish at Warragul declared from the pulpit that Thornton-Smith "had the communist rat on his back" when he obdurately continued to sell the Catholic Worker outside the church, despite the journal having been banned by Archbishop Daniel Mannix. The priest had met his match. In the face of angry taunts Thornton-Smith went on selling the journal each Sunday.
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Scholar defied his church to join opposition to Santamaria crusade