November 4, 1984

''PAT RYAN? It's America. It's the opportunity. But when you get it, don't let it pass you by.'' The speaker, with some fervor, was Joe Fields, the Jets' center. Pat Ryan is everyman in sneakers. His story is the kind they don't make anymore: the back-up quarterback rescued from obscurity to lead a team to victory. Last Sunday, when Ryan was sprawled on the ground, his head throbbing from a whack on the side of the jaw by a Patriot helmet, the Jets' orthopedist, Dr. James A. Nicholas, ran onto the field.

People are really very perverse. There is on Manhattan Island, north of 52d Street and all the way up to Fort Tryon Park, as dense and as various a concentration of great art on a permanent basis as can be found anywhere in the world. Inch by inch, and gamut by gamut, there is no capital city of which we need be envious, though there are many that we long to visit. And our situation gets better year by year. New buildings go up, new collections come in, individual masterpieces arrive almost by stealth. Yet what do strangers ask when they come in from out of town? And what is it that the professional critic of art most often hears from his neighbor at dinner? ''What's the new blockbuster?,'' they say nine times out of ten, and if there doesn't happen to be one they pull a face. Everything about that question is exasperating. The very word ''blockbuster'' should be outlawed. The Random House dictionary defines it as ''an aerial bomb containing high explosives and weighing from four to eight tons, used as a large-scale demolition bomb.'' What kind of metaphor is that for some of the subtlest, most fragile and yet most constructive of human enterprises? Nothing can condone the use of that loathsome word, with its implications of brutish and indiscriminate massacre.

An enormous throng of Poles stood and prayed for more than three hours today as a slain Roman Catholic priest was buried with eulogies from the leaders of the church he served and the Solidarity movement he championed. The slayers of the priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, have been identified as three security police officers. On Friday the Government said two others had been detained and a general had been suspended in connection with the case. As people clung to trees and perched on canted roofs to glimpse the plain coffin in front of a parish church, Jozef Cardinal Glemp, the Primate, praised the 37-year-old priest as a martyr who had entered Polish history.

When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attended the funeral of Indira Gandhi in New Delhi today, she was accompanied by armed guards who had flown to India with her. In Paris, tourists are no longer permitted to stand on the sidewalk in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore and gaze into the courtyard of Elysee Palace to watch the official comings and goings at the presidential residence. The heavy green doors of the palace, which used to be open, are now chained closed at all times. A few hours before Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, the Italian Interior Minister, held a news conference in Rome last week, two plainclothesmen minutely inspected the meeting room. Mr. Scalfaro arrived for the session with five or six bodyguards. No Longer in Doubt As those three episodes suggest, world political leaders are finding it more and more necessary to adopt rigorous measures to protect themselves against terrorists and assassins. Some European security people still think the United States Secret Service is heavy-handed and occasionally almost hysterical - the Irish police were appalled by some of the measures taken during President Reagan's European trip last summer - but they no longer question the need for elaborate protective arrangements.

ATLANTIC CITY THE president of the New Jersey chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the director of affirmative action and planning for the state's Casino Control Commission have accused the hotel-casino industry here of failing to live up to a voluntary commitment to channel at least 15 percent of their buying to minority vendors. ''Volunteerism in this area has failed,'' said Jack E. Wood, the commission official. ''We know of no other meaningful answer than legislation that would compel compliance.'' Mr. Wood said he had discussed legislation with some lawmakers and was preparing to urge the commission to join in the effort.