Episode 305: Karl Schmude, President of the Australian Chesterton Society (August 27, 2025)

In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Thomas Storck and Christopher Zehnder interview Karl Schmude, President of the Australian Chesterton Society.

Among the questions they ask are the following:

1. Australia is I think the most recent major country of European culture to be established, i.e., in the late 18th century, after a century and more of secularization in Europe, and then for a time was treated as a British prison colony. In what ways does this make Australia different from other parts of the Western cultural world? Is it proper to speak of an Australian tradition given that it was settled at the end of the European Enlightenment?
2. Has the significant numbers of immigrants - as you noted, from Italy, Malta, Poland, Lebanon, affected the originally British character of Australian culture? And has the more recent immigration affected this? In particular, has there been significant immigration from countries without any Christian cultural tradition and if so, what effect has this had?
3. I have read about the Campion Society of the 1930s, and I was very impressed by their attempt to develop Catholic intellectual, social and cultural life - an effort that I don't know had any equivalent elsewhere. Yet in the end it was not successful? Why was that?
4. One gets the impression of an increasing hostile secularist culture in Australia, e.g., the conviction of Cardinal Pell for a crime that seemingly he could not possibly have actually committed, or the Conversion Practices Ban Acts of 2024. Can you comment on such trends and the response of Catholics or other Christians. (In the U.S. Evangelical Protestants still form a powerful political and cultural bloc. Is this the case in Australia?)
5. Can you tell us something about Campion College and why it was founded? Does it attempt to carry on the work originally begun by the Campion Society in the 1930s?
6. In addition to Campion College, there are several other Catholic higher educational institutions, are there not? How would you describe these? Are any of them authentically Catholic?
7. In what ways is the task of both retaining Catholics and evangelizing different in Australia from other parts of the Catholic world?