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Monsignor John Augustine Ryan (1869–1945) was one of the leading exponents of Catholic social philosophy in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. He attempted to apply Catholic principles, especially as found in the encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, to moral-economic questions. In those encyclicals the Catholic church attempted to develop a third way between economic liberalism and socialism. Ryan wrote extensively on economic justice, the just wage, the rights of property, and the role of government. The following selection is taken from his article entitled "The Christian Doctrine of Property" published in 1922.

The founder of Christianity is sometimes represented as a revolutionist, a communist, or at least as one who did not believe in private property. No such claim can be substantiated by any fair study of the Gospels. Christ nowhere condemned the private ownership of goods as unjust or unlawful.....

What Christ required was not that men should refrain from calling external goods their own, but that they should make a right use of such goods....

From the fact that every human being has intrinsic worth, it follows that he has a moral claim upon the common means of life and of livelihood; from the fact that all persons are equal in the eyes of God and equally destined for eternal life, it follows that they have equal claims upon God's earthly bounty for at least the essentials of right and Christian living....

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, it is right that property should be private with respect to the power of acquisition and disposal, but that it should be common as regards its use; the abundance of the rich belongs by natural right to the poor; the order of reason requires that a man should possess justly what he owns, and use it in a proper manner for himself and others; and finally the man who takes the  goods of another to save himself from starvation is not guilty of theft....

According to the Christian conception, and according to the law of nature and of reason, the primary right of property is not the right of exclusive control, but the right of use. In other words, the common right of use is superior to the private right of ownership. God created the goods of the earth for the sustenance of all the people of the earth; consequently, the common right of all to enjoy these goods takes precedence of the particular right of any individual to hold them as his exclusive possession....Nevertheless, this common right of property, the right of use, is not a sufficient provision for human welfare, Men need not only the general opportunity to use goods, the general right of access to the bounty of nature, but also the power of holding some goods as their own continuously. They require the power of excluding others from interference with those goods that they call their own. Without such a right and such powers, personal development, personal security, and adequate provision for family life are impossible. All this is evident with regard to those things which economists call "consumptive goods'; that is, those goods which are necessary for the direct and immediate satisfaction of human wants; such as food, clothing, shelter, household furniture, and some means of amusement, recreation, and moral, religions, and intellectual activities. The necessity of private ownership in these articles is not denied by anyone today, not even by Socialists.

As the term is ordinarily understood, private ownership means more than ownership of consumptive goods. It embraces more particularly productive goods, the natural and artificial means of production; such as lands, mines, railroads, factories, stores and banks. Today, all these are owned by private individuals or by corporations. With regard too this kind of private property, the Catholic Church, especially through Pope Leo XIII and his successors, has laid down positive and specific doctrine....According to Catholic doctrine...the right of the individual or of a group of individuals to acquire and hold in private ownership some of the means of production, is in harmony with, and required by, the moral law of nature....

[T]he Catholic teaching does not condemn public ownership of what are called public utilities, such as railroads, telegraphs, street railways, and lighting concerns. It does not even condemn public ownership of one or more of the great instruments of production which are not included in the field of public utilities....

Another caution concerns the actual distribution and the actual enjoyment of private property. "While the Church opposes Socialism, it does not look with favor upon the restriction of capital ownership to a small minority of the population. Indeed, the considerations which move the Church to oppose the Socialist concentration of ownership, are an argument against a concentration in the hands of individuals and corporations. Every argument which Pope Leo XIII uses against Socialism is virtually a plea for a wide diffusion of capital ownership. The individual security and the provision for one's family which a man derives from private property, are obviously benefits which it is desirable to extend to the great majority of the citizens. It is not enough that private ownership should be maintained as a social institution. The institution should be so managed and regulated that its benefits will be directly shared by the largest possible number of individuals. Therefore, Pope Leo XIII declared explicitly that it is the duty of the State "to multiply property owners."

Therefore, those ultraconservative beneficiaries of the present order who see in the Church's condemnation of Socialism approval of the existing system with all its inequities, are utterly mistaken. They have missed the fundamental principles and aims of the Church's teaching. The church advocates private ownership indeed, but she does not defend the present unnatural and antisocial concentration of ownership. She is interested in the welfare of all the people, and wisher that all should share directly in the benefits which private property provides. So much for the right of private ownership. The duties of the proprietor occupy a no less important place in the Christian teaching. In general, they are a limitation upon the right of property....

Neither Christian teaching nor sound philosophy regards this right as absolute. The private owner is a steward of his goods rather than an irresponsible master. It is from the pagan code of Roman law, from the virtually pagan Code Napoleon, and from the unmoral and immoral principles of economic liberalism that has arisen the pernicious doctrine that "one may do what one pleases with one's own." The so-called "right of use and abuse" which has obtained such wide currency in industrial thought and practice, is in fundamental opposition to the Christian teaching. The limitations set by that teaching to the powers and rights of the private owner follow logically from the Christian doctrine concerning the common bounty of nature, the common right of access to that bounty, and the recognition of the right of use as the primary right of property. Some of the duties of the private owner have already been pointed out by implication in our discussion of the teaching of the Fathers of the Church. In a general way, the obligations of the proprietor with regard to the right use of his goods may be thus formulated: He must so use and administer his property that other men shall enjoy the benefit of it on just terms and conditions. Only thus can the private right of property be reconciled with the superior common right of access to the bounty of the earth....

Right use, reasonable access to the common bounty, and participation in the benefits of property on just and reasonable conditions, may also require, and sometimes they do require, the recognition of labor unions, sharing by the workers in industrial management and in profits, and the limitation of rates of industrial interest by the State.

In any case, the general principles are clear: The earth is intended by God for all the children of men; individuals or corporations that have appropriated any portion of the common bounty to their exclusive control and disposition hold it subject to this primary and fundamental social purpose; therefore, they are morally obliged to administer it in such a way that all who live by it, or depend upon it, shall enjoy the economic opportunity of a reasonable and normal life.