Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction

With the outbreak of the World War I, Catholic bishops realized that if they did not help mobilize their flocks for the war effort, nativists would once again begin to target them as disloyal. They also realized the need to ensure that Catholics were well represented among chaplains and all other services provided for American soldiers and sailors both in the United States and overseas. In 1917, John J. Burke, with the backing of Cardinal Gibbons and other bishops, called for a meeting of Catholic representatives from across the country at Catholic University to establish a National Catholic War Council.

Development of the program

Following the war many hoped that a new commitment to social reform would characterize the ensuing peace. The Council saw an opportunity to use its national voice to shape reform. In April of 1918, the Council created a Committee on Reconstruction to consider a Catholic vision of the future of postwar America. The Committee met throughout the fall of 1918 to develop such a vision, but by then it was working under considerable pressure. Several organizations and groups, labor unions, business federations, political parties, reform associations and other churches, both at home and abroad, had already produced their own visions of postwar reconstruction or were working on them as the committee sat. The war had also ended in November, more quickly than most Americans had expected.

The committee's secretary, Rev. John O'Grady, turned to Father John A. Ryan to write a Catholic program. Ryan had surveyed several proposals for reconstruction made by other groups and had been working on a draft of a speech on the subject. Combining Progressive thought and Catholic theology, Ryan believed that government intervention was the most effective means of affecting positive change for his church as well as working people and the poor. After some initial reluctance, Ryan wrote out a draft based on his earlier work. Peter J. Muldoon, Bishop of Rockford, Illinois and Chairman of the Administrative Committee of the War Council, approved Ryan's draft, while noting that it lacked practical suggestions to local parish groups AbOUT how to implement the reforms it promoted.

Introduction of the program

On February 12, 1919, the National Catholic War Council issued the "Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction," through a carefully planned public relations campaign. The plan offered a guide for overhauling America's politics, society, and economy based on Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum and a variety of American influences. lt contained eleven proposals that anticipated New Deal legislation. These proposals called for government insurance for the sick, unemployed and aged; labor's participation in industrial management; public housing; unions' right to organize, and a "living wage" for all workers.

Reception

The Program received a mixed reception both within the Church and outside it. The National Catholic War Council was a voluntary organization with no canonical status. Its ability to speak authoritatively was thus questioned. Many bishops threw their support behind the Program, but some, like Bishop William Turner of Buffalo, and more notably, William Henry O'Connell of Boston, opposed it. O'Connell believed some aspects of the plan smacked too much of socialism.

Response outside the Church was also divided: labor organizations backing it, for example, and business groups criticizing it. Upton Sinclair declared it nothing less than a "Catholic Miracle."

Some observers were shocked by this "seeming radicalism" from a church that had long seemed so conservative on social and economic issues. Stephen C. Mason of the National Association of Manufacturers wrote to Cardinal Gibbons complaining that the program was "partisan, pro-labor union, socialist propaganda".

Legacy

Many of the proposals of the Bishops' Program were implemented later under the New Deal. John A. Ryan was such a fervent supporter of the New Deal that he was nicknamed "Monsignor New Deal".