Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa
26 May 2012 - 2:41 am NZ time
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Marrying Out
An award-winning radio series on sectarianism and mixed marriage in Australia
In two programmes, Siobhán McHugh explores the religious bigotry and post-colonial tensions between English (Protestants) and Irish (Catholics) still prevalent in Australia only two generations ago. Based on three years research and over fifty oral history interviews, the series explores the family feuds occasioned by Protestant/Catholic mixed marriage and the virtual social apartheid that at times resulted from systemic discrimination against the Irish Catholic underclass until the 1960s.
- Part 1 - Not in Front of the Altar
In pre-multicultural Australia, marrying across the Protestant/ Catholic Divide was consorting wth the enemy for many families. Mixed- religion couples describe being estranged, disinherited and vilified in a society where a quarter of the population (Catholics) was barred from applying for some private sector jobs and Freemasons and Catholics jostled for control of the public sector. The Catholic Church showed its disapproval of the 'impediment of mixed marriage' by relegating such ceremonies to a cheerless setting away from the main altar, out of sight of family and friends. Yet from the 1890s to the 1960s, one in five Australian weddings was a mixed marriage. (52′19″)
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- Part 2 - Between Two Worlds
Children raised in a mixed marriage had to negotiate a delicate balancing act. Until 1966, the Catholic Church required both parties to pledge in writing that all children would be raised Catholic. Some compromised by raising the boys Protestant and the girls Catholic. Some Protestant parents refused to comply; others were assiduous in nurturing their children's Catholic faith, even after the death of the Catholic parent. Some children were secretly baptised and raised in one parent's faith unbeknownst to the other - eventually a source of enormous family conflict. In a society polarised between the two main religions, children of mixed marriages were torn by divided loyalties. (53′00″)
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Kaye Ambrose with her father on her wedding day in 1966. She married John, raised Catholic, in her Methodist church. John's father boycotted the wedding and did not speak to her until four years later, when their baby died. Source: Kaye Ambrose.
Information
John and Helen Haynes on their wedding day in 1962. John, a Protestant, was cut out of three family wills for marrying Helen, a Catholic. Source: John and Helen Haynes.
Siobhan McHugh is an award-winning writer and documentary maker. She lectures in Journalism at the University of Wollongong. Marrying Out won a gold medal at the New York Radio Festival in 2010.
The music for Marrying Out was composed by Melbourne composer Dr Thomas Fitzgerald, with the assistance of the Faculty of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong. An award-winning composer, conductor and performer, Tom plays piano, violin, viola and other instruments in the series. His song, Marrying Out, is performed by folk artist Kavisha Mazzella. Lawrence Allen is the male vocalist.
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