Catherine Mackerras was the mother of seven children, among whom were musician Charles Mackerras and psephologist Malcolm Mackerras. Her conversion to the Catholic church in 1932 shocked her husband and shook their marriage.
She was born Catherine MacLaurin in Sydney in 1899 and remained the only child of parents who belonged to a staunch Scottish presbyterian tradition, even as her father and paternal grandfather rejected religion in favour of what then was known as rationalism. In striking contrast, her Jewish great great grandfather, Isaac Nathan, Australia’s first European composer, had passed on to her paternal grandmother what Catherine described as beautiful “lustrous heavy-lidded Jewish eyes”.
The MacLaurin family were high achievers. Grandfather Normand MacLaurin, born of a strict Calvinist mother in Fife, Scotland, had been raised to high office in a number of fields after migrating to Australia in 1867. A surgeon, he taught at Sydney University and became both vice-chancellor and chancellor. He was in time knighted and the reading room of the university’s old Fisher library was named after him. His large terrace in Macquarie Street became home for Catherine around the age of six when her parents moved there after her grandmother died.
Catherine would, some six decades later, look back on her early years and recall her fascination with churches—the spires of St Marks Church of England in Rushcutters Bay from her first home, St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral and its bells when she lived in Macquarie Street. Her curiosity in those early years was innocent enough but queries to parents about God and those churches were met with somewhat obtuse answers in her rationalist dominated patriarchal family. That curiosity, however, would not abate. As Catherine engaged with her grandfather’s Irish Catholic servants, she became aware that religion, especially that of Irish Catholics, was a social divide where the religion of Rome meant a lower social strata among the working poor who voted Labor.
In her memoir Divided Heart, published posthumously, Catherine relates the personal struggle over years that she underwent pursuing that curiosity. She grew up among adults of varying positions on religion from rationalism to the severity of Calvin. She even wrote that she could recognise a Calvinist, evidence which she saw in her paternal grandfather—even as he rejected his faith but took her to St Stephens Presbyterian church on Sundays. For her, this trait was revealed in a “faint worried frown” which she explained came from “perplexity and tension” which in turn was bound up with “Calvin’s grim and despairing teaching.”
As Patrick Mullins has written in his new book The Divided Heart of Catherine Mackerras, the Protestant faiths that were the foundation of the new colonies in Australia underpinned notions of class and status and relied on “a jingoistic faith in the British Empire.” As such, as her forebears would have it, Catherine’s searching for answers “was unsustainable” says Mullins—she could not remain curious about and yet revolted by the Catholic Church at the same time. Questioning the transitional nature of the British Empire, she realised her family’s protestant faith was a misplaced one that attached its belief to the idea that an empire might be eternal. For all that, family and social engagement kept Catherine within the protestant mould.
From early on, the education of young Catherine was enriched by opportunities to broaden her experience. Her Aunt Sally, her mother’s sister, had spent years in Australia and had taken up with Anglo Catholicism. Sally’s burst of energy for the Catholic faith saw Catherine and her aunt make visits to a long list of Catholic churches in France on a trip there. During World War I while her father served as a surgeon at the front, Catherine was domiciled in Britain and went to school in England and also stayed with her eccentric maiden aunts in Edinburgh. Her Aunt Sally by then had moved from her religious faith to more modern beliefs such as female suffrage. In her kindergarten years, Catherine had been instructed by notable blue stocking teachers Margaret Emily Hodge and Harriet Christina Newcomb. Catherine would also go on to graduate close to gaining the university medal at the University of Sydney. For her time, Catherine’s education as a woman was exceptional. It was not surprising that Catherine grew to be a woman of independent thought and a strong mind, even as she lived within her protestant boundaries.
In April 1924, Catherine married Alan Mackerras, a match of heart and mind that had grown in their years at university. Alan, an engineer and astronomer, like Catherine’s father and grandfather, was strongly protestant in background while also rejecting religious faith. They would begin their marriage in Schenectady in upper state New York and return to Australia only in 1928 after an extensive tour of England and Europe.
Catherine Mackerras would hold strongly to conservative views that a wife’s function was to support her husband and nurture children who would join the world as influential adults. But her individual conscience prevailed as she sought answers to her continuing queries about Christianity and its various expressions. Her search took her first to attend Anglican service where she found no inspiration. Watching the crowds leave a nearby Catholic church she asked herself what could they be finding there. On Christmas Eve 1931, she attended midnight Mass at St Mary Magdalene Church in Rose Bay. She writes in Divided Heart of her experience there: “Surely, the spirit is here!”
It took much reading of texts such as St Augustine’s Confessions and Newman’s Apologia along with stiff rebuttals in argument with her local Presbyterian pastor the Reverend John Edwards. She was also stirred by a talk from Father William Lockington SJ entitled “What Catholics Believe” in Sydney’s Town Hall in 1932. In the end it was a line from Einstein about objective truth that prevailed in her judgement. She would write of her moving beliefs: “This familiarity with the unseen world among Catholics … springs from the acceptance of objective truth which is eternal, immutable and unaffected by the shifting sands of thought and fashion.”
After instruction at the Sacre Coeur Convent in Rose Bay, Catherine was baptised by Monsignor Maurice O’Reilly. Her husband Alan knew nothing of it. Mullins writes: “The books stacked on his wife’s bedside table had not, apparently, alerted him to the change building in her, but its completion via her baptism could not be ignored. Silence was not an option.” Catherine’s conversion ended the strong bond between her and Alan. Discussions followed as to where their children would be educated – resolved by agreeing they would attend Catholic primary and non-Catholic secondary schools. The boys would begin at St Aloysius, Milsons Point and move on to Sydney Grammar; the girls would complete their secondary education at Pymble Ladies College.
The divide that Catherine’s conversion forced on the Mackerras marriage was something that the parents tried to hide from their children, but Catherine’s strong personality overtook Alan, who would leave the family table when spirited discussions became animated. His quiet manner was better understood only as the children became adults. Such was the sorrow Catherine felt at this, she did not mention her husband’s reaction to her conversion in her Divided Heart.
As Catherine endured what Mullins compares with the effect of coming out for gays in the modern world, Mother Borgia at Loreto Convent became a confidante. Catherine established herself as a writer, contributing articles to the musical magazine Canon and The Catholic Weekly and wrote a biography of her great great grandfather Isaac Nathan—Hebrew Melodist.
Catherine Mackerras had chosen faith over her loved ones, remaining loyal until her death in 1977. Her closing words in Divided Heart capture this: “I have often pondered on Pascal’s deep and enigmatic words, ‘You would not search for me, if you had not already found me.’”
Anne Henderson is Deputy Director of the Sydney Institute.