We come at last to where we can understand specifically how
the common sense thought of G. K. Chesterton fell victim to the uncommon
nonsense of socialism. We have seen how
socialism began creeping into Catholic social thought through the popularity of
the proposals of the agrarian socialist Henry George, and how in Rerum Novarum Leo XIII carefully refuted
not only George’s theories, but the whole of socialism.
The question then becomes how, in light of Rerum Novarum, any Catholic (or, for
that matter, anyone else with the ability to use common sense) could possibly
construe Catholic social teaching in any way other than what we at CESJ believe to be consistent with what we
call the Just Third Way. The answer lies
in the career of the man who almost singlehandedly changed what it means for
something to be true in the understanding of Catholic social teaching or
anything else: Monsignor John A. Ryan, S.T.D. (1869-1945).
The story begins with Henry George’s mayoral bid in 1886. As the solidarist economist Dr. Franz H.
Mueller related in his book, The Church
and the Social Question (1984), “the newly elevated Archbishop of New York,
Michael A. Corrigan, supposedly at the urging of Bishop Bernard McQuaid of
Rochester, N.Y., formally denounced Georgism with the result that Father
McGlynn publicly and scornfully contradicted him.” (Franz H. Mueller, The Church and the Social Question. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute
for Policy Research, 1984, 65.)
After a great deal of discussion among the U.S. Catholic
hierarchy, McGlynn was excommunicated in 1887.
He had refused to go to Rome to answer charges resulting from his
efforts to advance George’s socialist program after several more warnings to
desist. He was reinstated in 1892 after
an equivocal recantation through a third party.
This was quite probably because many members of the hierarchy, although
agreeing that while McGlynn richly deserved excommunication both for open
disobedience, insulting behavior, and espousing heretical views, were doubtful
about the political wisdom of such a move.
McGlynn managed to obtain a private audience with Leo XIII
in 1893. Georgist legend has it that
during this audience McGlynn persuaded Leo XIII to accept George’s “single tax”
proposal as consistent with Rerum Novarum. There are at least two problems with this
claim, either one sufficient to refute it.
One, it was the “single tax” that the pope and others specifically
condemned in the georgist proposal. The question
of title was, to all intents and purposes, irrelevant to the main point. This was whether “ownership” means the right
to control what is owned and receive the “fruits of ownership,” i.e., income and disposal of both the
income and what is owned.
Two, there is no contemporary evidence or even claim that
the pope said any such thing. The
earliest mention I have found is from 1916 — long after George, McGlynn, and
Leo XIII were dead — in ABC of Taxation
by Charles Bowdoin Fillebrown, a georgist.
It was during the height of George’s popularity in the late
19th century that John A. Ryan read George’s Progress and Poverty in his “early teens.”(1) He later claimed that he did not fully
understand it. (Ibid.) Reading the book, however, inspired him to commit his life
to social justice. (Ibid.)
(1) Harlan Beckley, “Reflections on the Life of Monsignor John
A. Ryan,” Robert G. Kennedy, Mary Christine Athans, Bernard V. Brady, William
C. McDonough, and Michael J. Naughton, editors, Religion and Public Life: The Legacy of Monsignor John A. Ryan. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of
America, 2001, 7.
Ryan must have received a severe shock when he was eighteen
and McGlynn was excommunicated. Ryan
would have been discerning his vocation to the priesthood, and McGlynn and
McGlynn’s version of social activism may have been something of a model for
him. If we believe the account of Eric
Goldman in Rendezvous with Destiny (Eric
F. Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny.
New York: Vintage Books, 1956), however, Ryan quickly learned how to mask his
philosophical and social heterodoxy.
I wish to point out that in the following account I am only
repeating Goldman’s claims, and drawing the obvious inferences. I am inventing nothing. The fact that Goldman clearly admired Ryan,
and viewed him as an opponent of Catholic orthodoxy in matters of social
thought suggests that he, Goldman, believed that the position of the Catholic
Church to be in error, and that Ryan was (and remains) in the right, despite
his obvious differences with the Church he represented.
Goldman — and I stress that I am only reporting what Goldman
wrote — claimed that Ryan was a champion of social justice reacting against [alleged]
Vatican condemnations of progress and scientific truth. As far as I can tell from Goldman’s laudatory
account of Ryan’s activities, these were presumably contained in Pius IX’s 1864
Syllabus of Errors and Pius X’s 1907 Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the
Modernists. Fitting the latter into
the timeframe becomes a little problematical, however, as Ryan published his
formative doctoral thesis, A Living Wage,
in 1906.
According to Goldman, Ryan spent his career reforming a
reactionary Catholic Church and bringing it into the modern age on social
issues. (Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny, op. cit., 85.) For his efforts he was allegedly threatened constantly
with excommunication: “daily excursions close to excommunication” (ibid., 86) as Goldman put it. Unlike McGlynn, Ryan was supposedly able to
avoid application of the ultimate remedy by his skill at political maneuvering
and equivocation. (Ibid.)
In addition to George, Goldman claimed that the populist
politician Ignatius L. Donnelly influenced Ryan, which may be supposition on
Goldman’s part. Donnelly is noted for
his inventive and revisionist theories concerning the “antediluvian world” and
“high Neolithic civilization” that, in Donnelly’s belief, existed before the
Flood,(1) questions regarding whether William Shakespeare actually wrote the
plays attributed to him,(2) and for authoring some now long-forgotten science
fiction novels.(3)
(1) Ignatius
Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian
World (1882); Ragnarok: The Age of
Fire and Gravel (1883).
(2)
Ignatius Donnelly, The Shakespeare Myth
(1887); The Great Cryptogram: Francis
Bacon’s Cipher in Shakespeare’s Plays (1888); The Cipher in the Plays, and on the Tombstone (1899).
(3)
Ignatius Donnelly (as Edmund Boisgilbert), Caesar’s
Column (1890); Doctor Huguet: A Novel
(1891); (as Ignatius Donnelly) The Golden
Bottle, or, The Story of Ephraim Benezet of Kansas (1892).
Judging solely from Goldman’s account — and keep in mind that
he appeared to admire Ryan greatly — there is more than a little that is
suspicious in Ryan’s social thought, and much that is directly contrary to
Aristotelian-Thomism, the “official” philosophy of the Catholic Church. Applying today’s academic techniques of
innuendo and insinuation, and adding a few ad
hominem abusive and circumstantial logical fallacies, we have more than
enough here to “convict” Ryan of undermining Catholic social teaching and
Aristotelian-Thomism, thereby influencing many people’s misunderstanding of
Chesterton’s thought and philosophy.
Fortunately, we do not need to rely on such flabby and underhanded
faith-based techniques when we have reason on our side — to say nothing of the
fact that Chesterton would find it hard to forgive us if we “defended” the
Apostle of Common Sense and his social thought using such scurrilous methods. In the next posting in this series, then, we
will start to look at the logical flaws and fallacies of Ryan’s social thought,
and make our case on the basis of reason and evidence.
