John Augustine Ryan
John Augustine Ryan was a Catholic priest and prominent social reformer born in Vermillion, Minnesota, to Irish immigrant parents. As the eldest of ten children in a devout Irish-Catholic family, he was educated in local schools and later at St. Thomas Seminary, where he excelled academically. Ordained in 1898, Ryan pursued graduate studies at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., influenced by progressive theological ideas. His doctoral thesis, "A Living Wage," highlighted the moral imperative for workers to receive fair compensation, a theme that defined his advocacy for social justice throughout his life.
From 1902 to 1915, he taught at St. Paul Seminary while promoting reforms such as minimum wage laws and protective legislation for workers. Ryan's influence grew as he took on various roles, including professor of theology and dean at Catholic University. He was notably involved in the National Catholic War Council's "Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction," which articulated a progressive vision for social reform within the Church. A supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ryan played a role in shaping New Deal policies aimed at promoting social justice. He remained active in social causes until his death in 1945, leaving a legacy of advocacy for economic and social reform rooted in Catholic teaching. His papers are preserved at the Catholic University of America, and his extensive writings continue to be referenced in discussions of Catholic social thought.
Subject Terms
John Augustine Ryan
- John A. Ryan
- Born: May 25, 1869
- Died: September 16, 1945
Catholic priest and social reformer, was born in Vermillion, Minnesota, the eldest of ten children—six sons and four daughters—of William Ryan and Maria Elizabeth (Luby) Ryan. Both parents were natives of Ireland and had emigrated separately to the United States in the late 1840s. The Ryans took up farming in a colony of Irish exiles outside St. Paul, Minnesota. Though money was always short in his family, John Ryan (christened Michael John) grew up in a warm Irish-Catholic environment. Religion was an important aspect of the Ryans’ lives; Ryan and two of his brothers became priests and two of his sisters became nuns.
Educated at a local ungraded district school until he was sixteen, Ryan attended Cretin School in St. Paul, run by the Christian Brothers, from 1885 to 1887. During his studies it became clear that he had a vocation for the priesthood. He enrolled in St. Thomas (later St. Paul) Seminary, first completing the five-year classical course (he was graduated at the top of his class in 1892) and then completing the six-year clerical curriculum.
In June 1898 Ryan was ordained a priest. The following fall he started graduate studies at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. There he came under the influence of his supervisor, the Rev. Thomas J. Bouquillon, a liberal Catholic theologian with strong progressive social views who took an empirical rather than a deductive approach to ethical issues. Ryan received his Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree in 1899, and the next year he was granted his licentiate in sacred theology, which allowed him to teach religion in Catholic schools.
In 1906 Ryan completed his doctoral studies with a thesis published under the title A Living Wage: Its Ethical and and Economic Aspects, which set forth the basic economic and moral ideology that was to dominate his life. Drawing heavily on traditional theological manuals, Pope Leo XIII’s social encyclical Rerum novarum, and the work of the English economist John A. Hobson, Ryan noted that every individual has a God-given right to share in the earth’s bounty. In an industrial society, he argued, this means obtaining a living that permits a worker to live in dignity; the state, he reasoned, must, if necessary, force employers to pay a fair wage.
From 1902 to 1915 Ryan taught at St. Paul Seminary. During the summers he lectured throughout the country to lay and clerical groups on the need for Catholics to become actively involved in the social issues of the day. He vehemently attacked Christian inaction in the area of reform, and in 1909 he put together and published in the Catholic World a complete program of needed reforms including a legal minimum wage; an eight-hour work-day; protective legislation for women and children; the right of workers to picket and boycott; creation of employment bureaus; unemployment, disease, accident, and old-age insurance; public housing; progressive income and inheritance taxes; public ownership of utilities and natural resources; prohibition of speculation in stocks and commodities; and control of monopolies. Assisting the National Consumers League, he was active in the successful 1913 campaigns in Wisconsin and Minnesota for minimum-wage bills to protect women and children.
Ryan was often accused of being a socialist, but he always insisted that he was applying orthodox Catholic theology to the needs of an industrial society. He found support for his programs from the National Conference of Catholic Charities and the National Conference of Charities and Correction. In 1915 he became associate professor of political science at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Within four years he had risen to the post of professor of theology and dean of the School of Social Sciences, while teaching part-time at nearby Trinity College and at the National Catholic School of Social Service.
In 1917 Ryan established the Catholic Charities Review; he served as editor, principal writer, and financial manager for the next five years. His last major scholarly work, Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth (1916), contained an extensive examination of the claims of workers and employers to the finished products of industry.
About 1919 John Ryan turned his attention to public affairs. In that year he wrote the “Bishops’ Program of Social Reconstruction” for the National Catholic War Council. This document, the most progressive statement on social reform issued by the Catholic Church up to that time, was a composite of Ryan’s social ideas. In 1920 he became director of the new Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Council.
Ryan continued his teaching, while increasingly taking to the lecture circuit. He also worked for a federal child-labor amendment; for a minimum-wage law for Washington, D.C; on several projects with the Federal Council of Children and the American Civil Liberties Union (on whose board he served); and for world peace. He often found himself collaborating with non-Catholics to achieve success for his programs.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as president in 1933, Ryan saw in the policies of the New Deal a means for bringing about social reform. He believed that the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act did more to promote social justice then all other federal legislation since the ratification of the Constitution. The National Industrial Recovery Act especially impressed him as a means for reorganizing industry, and from July 1934 to May 1935 he served as a member of the National Recovery Administration’s Industrial Appeals Board. He also acted as a consultant to other federal agencies.
Ryan, always a strong supporter of Roosevelt, in 1936 defended the president’s programs from attacks by the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, a Michigan Catholic priest and profascist political activist. The following year Roosevelt acknowledged Ryan’s assistance by choosing him to give the benediction at his second inauguration.
At the age of seventy Ryan was forced by the mandatory-retirement rule to leave his posts at Catholic University, but he continued working for the National Catholic Welfare Council until his death. During World War II he supported America’s lend-lease policy. He hoped for a major reconstruction of America’s economy after the war, but poor health prevented him from active participation in this movement. In 1945 he gave the benediction at Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration. Later that year Ryan, then seventy-six, died of a urological infection in St. Paul. He was buried there in Calvary Cemetery.
The papers of John A. Ryan are housed at the Catholic University of America. His works include A Program of Social Reform by Legislation (1909); Alleged Socialism of the Church Fathers (1913); Family Limitation, and the Church and Birth Control (1916); Social Reconstruction (1920); Capital and Labor (1920); The State and the Church (1922); The Christian Doctrine of Property (1923); The Supreme Court and the Minimum Wage (1923); Human Sterilization (1927); The Catholic Church and the Citizen (1928); A Better Economic Order (1935); The Constitution and Catholic Industrial Teaching (1937); Relation of Catholicism to Fascism, Communism, and Democracy (1938); and Can Unemployment be Ended? (1940). Full-length biographies are J. P. Richard, John A. Ryan, Prophet of Social Justice (1946), and F. L. Broderick, Right Reverend New Dealer, John A. Ryan (1963). See also P. W. Gearty, The Economic Thought of Monsignor John A. Ryan (1953), and-the Dictionary of American Biography, supplement 3 (1973). An obituary appeared in The New York Times, October 13, 1945.