Joseph Elmer Ritter was born on July 20, 1892 in New Albany, Indiana, the son of Nicholas Ritter, a baker, and Bertha Luette. Ritter was raised in a liberal German Catholic environment and especially enjoyed the religious services and activities at St. Mary's Church in New Albany, where he later celebrated his first mass.
He graduated from St. Mary's Grammar School in 1906. While in the seventh grade he decided to become a priest, and he subsequently enrolled at St. Meinrad's, a Benedictine seminary in Indiana, where he completed his high school, collegiate, and theological studies, graduating in 1917.
Ordained on May 30, 1917, Ritter served for six months as assistant pastor at St. Patrick's Church in Indianapolis before going to the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Paul in the same city.
Here he began a lifelong career as diocesan administrator and leader. Ritter had an excellent academic record and would have preferred to continue study in Rome, but Bishop Joseph Chartrand of Indianapolis had come to depend on him; the papacy in 1922 awarded Ritter an honorary S. T. D. Chartrand increasingly relied upon Ritter and in 1933 secured for him a papal appointment as auxiliary bishop of Indianapolis.
In 1934, after Chartrand's death, Ritter succeeded him, becoming one of the youngest bishops in America. Ritter headed the see of Indianapolis until 1946, serving the last two years as the city's first archbishop.
In 1946, after Pope Pius XII named Ritter archbishop of St. Louis, Ritter created a national stir by ordering the integration of the Catholic schools. When segregationist parents threatened legal action, he reminded them that church law forbade Catholics - under penalty of excommunication - from instituting legal action against their lawful religious superiors. He won the battle. Ritter called racial injustice a sin and argued that Catholics practicing it should not receive communion until confessing. If Ritter's integration order anticipated the 1954 Supreme Court decision forbidding continued public-school segregation, his proposals during the early 1960's anticipated the federal affirmative action programs of the 1970's.
In 1963 he urged Catholics to go beyond mere compliance with integration decrees and actively promote integration. He urged parishes to invite blacks to move into their districts and advised Catholic organizations without black members to recruit them.
The climax of Ritter's career came in 1961 with his appointment by Pope John XXIII as the seventeenth United States cardinal and with his major role at the Second Vatican Council. At Vatican II he promoted liturgical reform, expanded participation by the bishops in church governance, increased harmony between Christians and Jews (including specifically the call to exonerate the Jews from guilt in the Crucifixion of Jesus), and ecumenicity.
Ritter had become the most respected American Catholic cleric abroad. Returning home between council sessions, Ritter sought to implement Vatican II.
In June 1964 he arranged a wedding in which for the first time in the United States an Episcopal groom and a Catholic bride participated in an authorized wedding, officiated at by both Episcopal and Catholic priests in a Catholic church.
Ritter authorized the first English mass, which was held at a liturgical conference in Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, on August 24, 1965. The next day he celebrated an English mass at the conference, after singing Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. "
He died in St. Louis.
Ritter was one of the cardinals elector who participated at the Papal Conclave, 1963. He proved a capable administrator, managing diocesan finances effectively during the Great Depression and completing construction of the cathedral. He demonstrated special interest in the welfare of blacks, opening five catechetical centers for black children, ordering full integration of parochial schools, and crusading against the Ku Klux Klan.
Ritter was a champion of the needy even beyond his diocese. He redistributed diocesan wealth by asking affluent parishes to tithe their income to poorer parishes. Alarmed at the extent of physical and spiritual poverty in Latin America, he founded the first mission from an American diocese to a foreign country when, in the 1950's, he sent three priests from St. Louis to La Paz, Bolivia. "The church must be the champion of the active virtues, not just define them, " he proclaimed. "It must especially through its priests practice them. "
Quotations: Speaking strongly for the council's ecumenical plan at the 1963 session, he declared, "The presentation of this text marks the end of the Counter Reformation. Separation and division in the ranks of Christians are a scandal to the world. "
Ritter's influence was not due to an imposing stature or spellbinding oratorical skills. Rather, he combined warmth, directness, conviction, and determination with organizational skills to achieve his goals.
