Reception
During his lifetime, Ryan met fierce criticism for his economic and political thought. He was at times labeled a socialist for his endorsement of policies such as public housing, social security, unemployment insurance, and women’s rights in the work place, as well as his critique of unregulated free market capitalism. Refusing to prescribe to either a liberal or conservative political doctrine, instead choosing to support policies based on his theological beliefs, Ryan displeased both liberal and conservative politicians at times. Ryan’s overtly political acts also earned him disapproval within the Catholic Church.
Yet Ryan was also a deeply respected moral theologian throughout his lifetime. With his position with the NCWC, he was authorized by the Bishops as their principal Catholic spokesman for social reform within the United States, and became the first Catholic priest to deliver the benediction at a presidential inauguration in 1937.
Read more about this topic: John A. Ryan
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)