The Socialist Trend in the Catholic Church - in Australia and New Zealand

Patrick Ford, parish priest at Our Lady Start of the Sea, Watsons Bay, N.S.W., taught the content of the papal social encyclicals at seminaries in the Archdiocese of Sydney.

His best known work, Cardinal Moran and the A.L.P., was published in 1966 by Melbourne University Press. In a well documented political history, Fr. Ford traced the growth of Cardinal Moran's opposition to the rise of Socialist influence in the new N.S.W. Labour Party and his call for moderation and the defense of the legitimate rights of the worker. This work records too the efforts of Moran's campaign on Labour's electoral fortunes, the Party's return to moderation and its winning wide Catholic support.

In the Whitlam years, Fr. Ford published The Right to Freedom in health and Medicine - an analysis, in the light of Catholic social teaching, of the socialisation of the Australian health services.

Today, Fr. Ford is convinced that the social principles of the Catholic Church are now not applied within parts of the Church itself.
The Socialist Trend in the Catholic Church in Australia and New Zealand is the story of that discovery. It queries the legality of the substitution of diocesan salaries for the traditional parish remuneration of the clergy; and treats of parish property, parish schools and some aspects of the Roman Curia.