Abstract

One of the most prominent Catholic social thinkers of the twentieth century, Msgr. John A. Ryan, devoted significant attention to the issues of birth control and family limitation. Although he is well known for his writings on labor and wages, scholars have paid less attention to Ryan’s work on birth control. He deliberately employed a strategy of concentrating on contraception’s harmful effects on society, and his effort represents an important early twentieth-century attempt to persuade the American public of the Catholic viewpoint on a matter of major political and cultural importance.