THE RIDDLE OF FATHER HACKETT. A Life in Ireland and Australia. By Brenda Niall. National Library of Australia. 320 pp. $39.95

Brendan Behan once famously joked that the first item on the agenda of any Irish organisation would always be The Split. It is a sentiment with which the subject of this excellent biography might have agreed. His father, a prominent doctor in Kilkenny, was denounced from the pulpit for his public support of the disgraced Parnell; he himself would take the losing side in the civil war that followed Irish independence; in later life, he found himself – not always enthusiastically – on the side of Mannix and Santamaria in the disputes that kept Menzies in power past his use-by date. And on a personal level not unconnected with his parents’ public condemnation by their parish priest, he was the only one of the nine Hackett children who retained his Catholic faith.
Even today, you will not find agreement on where the greater blame lies for the Irish civil war of 1922-23. For someone reading about it for the first time, it would be hard to find a better summary than Melbourne writer Brenda Niall provides in the first half of the book. While I question her use of the expression “de Valera’s anti-treaty republicans” (the “Long Fellow” had little influence and no control over the Irregulars), the account is fair and even-handed and all the more convincing for being written by a non-Irish person.
I liked in particular her focus on republican propagandist Erskine Childers and his cousin Robert Barton, men of the highest integrity whose contribution to the national struggle is often overlooked. Both were personal friends of Hackett as were also many of the leaders on the other side in the civil war and it appeared that the priest moved easily between the two factions. He was in Cork in the days leading up to the killing of Michael Collins and this book has a photostat of a short letter he received from Collins the day before the latter was killed, thought to be the last that Collins ever wrote and possibly referring to efforts Hackett was making to bring him to meet Dev.
In accounts of the years before and after the 1916 rebellion, you will often find references to influential but unnamed people in the background – “a clerical go-between”, “a priest friend of Collins”, “a well-known priest with republican sympathies”. At a time when the bishops were hostile to nationalism, most of these priests would have wanted to remain nameless, but there is enough here to suggest that Hackett, answerable to his Jesuit Provincial rather than to a bishop, was one of these anonymous clerics.
Unlike modern times, Irish Jesuits of a century ago were not known for radicalism of any kind, certainly not of a nationalist hue. Indeed, their association with prestige schools might have seen them described as “Castle priests”, in contrast with for example, the Capuchin friars. So, Hackett was very much an exception, particularly when based at The Crescent school in Limerick, where among other things, he set up an armed cadet corps, a junior version of the Irish Volunteers.
Father Hackett’s life has more than its share of the unanswered questions suggested by the title of the book. Not the least of these is why he was sent to Australia, in the prime of his life, with strong and lasting friendships among the men and women who would determine the future of the newly independent Ireland. At least four members of cabinet in the first Free State government were Jesuit Old Boys; so were prominent public servants like Robert Brennan (father of the writer Maeve Brennan), Frederick Boland, future President of the UN General Assembly and John Charles McQuaid, the most influential Irish churchman of the 20th century. Seen as a potential troublemaker, it is possible that Hackett’s permanent exile came as a result of political pressure on his Superiors.
Apart from a short time at St Aloysius College in Sydney, Hackett spent the last 30 years of his life in Melbourne, either as teacher or headmaster at Xavier College or in parish work. While he appears to have been an indifferent classroom teacher and a divisive headmaster his main contribution was in his work with the older and brighter students, both at school and university. He felt that Sheahan’s Apologetics on its own would never produce an educated laity and he set up the Central Catholic Library in Collins Street, to bring influential Catholic and non-Catholic writers to a local readership. Here the Campion Society met and found in him an enthusiastic supporter of their discussions and lectures. They were the origin of groups such as Catholic Action and The Movement and of influential publications like The Catholic Worker and News Weekly.
Their Irish nationalist background brought Hackett and Daniel Mannix together. The relationship appears to have been close, each appreciating the dry, unconventional wit of the other. The Jesuit was required to attend on the Archbishop every Monday for discussion, prayer and evening meal; for 16 years, he accompanied the older man on his six-week summer holiday in Portsea. In time, he was seen as a kind of gatekeeper, a position that did not endear him to all.
By inclination, Hackett was attracted to people of power and influence, first in Ireland and later in Australia.  He found his most congenial company among non-Catholics – Barton and Childers in Ireland, Robert Menzies (“I like him”) and Lord Somers in Australia. When he was sacked as headmaster of Xavier College, he received generous sympathy from those in similar posts in the other “public” schools, notably Geelong Grammar. Like them, he was of the view that elite schools should see it as part of their role to produce principled and ethical leaders in politics and the professions. He would not be unhappy with Tony Abbott, Brendan Nelson, Christopher Pyne, Barnaby Joyce and the other Jesuit Old Boys currently in public life in this country.
I cannot praise this book too highly. Readable and learned, it cites an intimidating list – a small library – of sources. It is a book about people as much as events. The author recalls Fr Hackett as a regular visitor to her family and his enjoyment of the cigar her father, himself a non-smoker, kept for his visitor. Her personality seems to be revealed in the aspects of her subjects that she chooses to highlight with approval. There is “imperious” Mannix, his attitude to the establishment “exquisitely modulated disdain, bordering on ridicule”; de Valera “strikingly tall, austere”, his government “drab and paternalistic”;  Santamaria’s “eloquence and clarity of mind.”
Future biographers of people like de Valera, Collins, Mannix, Menzies, Calwell, Santamaria, would do well to follow some of the leads found here. The book has angles, ways of looking at historical events or social trends, avenues for research that are novel and intriguing. Insights into subjects such as the Irish civil war, Irish neutrality during WWII, the Movement, the DLP, Catholic education, will send readers searching for more detail and researchers for new sources.
And given this book, Fr William Hackett SJ will no doubt find a place in the next incarnation of The Top 100 Irish Australians.