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RYAN, FATHER JOHN A. 1869-1945

PRIEST AND PROFESSOR

Vocation

Father John A. Ryan was born in Minnesota to an Irish immigrant family. While attending a Christian Brothers school he decided to become a priest, and during his training he was deeply influenced by the publication of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Return novaruniy which spoke for social justice and condemned both the excesses of capitalism and the dangers of socialism. He was also impressed by the ideas of Archbishop John Ireland of Saint Paul, who sought to acculturate the Roman Catholic Church to the United States without compromising any of its essential qualities.

Reforming Capitalism

Ryan was ordained in 1898 and earned a Ph.D. at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. His dissertation, published as The Living Wage (1906), presented his belief that capitalism should be reformed to accord with Christian concepts of brotherhood and community. In 1915 he returned to Catholic University for a lifelong teaching career. When the National Catholic Warfare Conference proved successful in coordinating Catholic efforts during World War I, American bishops decided to create a permanent organization to direct Catholic charities. Ryan became head of the Social Action Department of the new National Catholic Welfare Conference and quickly moved into the public eye.

Outspoken Catholic

While Father Ryan attracted attention for his progressive stands on social issues, his public support for traditional Catholic views on the relations between church and state triggered much concern and criticism in Protestant circles, although he insisted that he believed in religious liberty. When he became an active supporter of the presidential candidacy of Alfred E. Smith in 1928, his views on the state and Catholicism confirmed the fears of anti-Catholic Protestants.

Against Capitalist Excess

Ryan's course, already set by Re rum novarum, was further influenced by Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo anno in 1931, wrhich again condemned laissez-faire capitalism and repeated the need for economic systems to reflect the values of Christianity: "Free competition has destroyed itself: economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel." Pope Pius XI called for a new partnership between labor and capital to replace the present system without adopting the excesses of Marxism. Ryan found this sufficient basis for his support of the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now a monsignor, he became the most visible Catholic cleric defending the president, repeating that the reform programs of the New Deal were as conservative as the ideals of the Pope.

Countering Coughlin

In the election year of 1936 Father Ryan agreed to give a radio response to the anti-Roosevelt, anti-New Deal tirades of Father Charles E. Coughlin. In his speech, "Roosevelt Safeguards America," Ryan dismissed the radio priest's charges that the New Deal was communistic or that the administration was filled with Communists. Instead, Ryan insisted, the New Deal programs were actually checking the growth of communism. Those who charged to the contrary were breaking the Eighth Commandment, against bearing-false witness. Father Ryan then attacked Coughlin's economic ideas, insisting that they did not conform to papal encyclicals on economics and social justice. Father Ryan later concluded that the speech was "one of the most effective and beneficial acts that I have ever performed in the interest of my religion and my country."

Catholics and Roosevelt

It is impossible to estimate how many voters Father Ryan persuaded in 1936, but Roosevelt attracted a vast majority of Catholic votes to the Democratic column. A crucial part of the Democratic Party for the next thirty years would be composed of urban Catholic voters who joined Roosevelt's New Deal coalition. Father Ryan was instrumental in building that coalition. He retired from Catholic University in 1939 and died in 1945.