Refuting the Archbishop of Melbourne [1950]

Honoured by Australian educational institutions, feted and chaperoned by government officials, and provided with a platform for his views by the national broadcaster, Russell was treated much like a visiting dignitary throughout his lecture tour. But he also ruffled some feathers, and at least one eminent Australian objected strenuously to Russell’s mere presence in the country. In widely-published remarks from an address to a Catholic police commission breakfast, which appeared in the same newspaper article, the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr. Daniel Mannix, lamented that the philosopher-peer had not been refused admission to Australia. The feisty Archbishop was no stranger to controversy himself during a long and eventful episcopacy, which lasted from 1917 until his death aged ninety-nine in 1963. Russell also discussed his spat with the Archbishop in the interview he gave to the West Australian from the Esplanade Hotel, Perth, on 10 August.