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Cesar Chavez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers' Struggle for Social Justice

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The author is to be congratulated for this scholarly yet readable account of the involvement of the American Catholic Church with the struggle of farm workers for social justice. Based upon solid archival research, including access to the records of the Bishops' Ad hoc Committee on Farm Labor and the papers of Msgr. George Higgins, this is a condensed version of Dr. Prouty's doctoral dissertation from The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, DC. Unlike many re-worked dissertations for publication, this account is a coherent and well written study that also tells a compelling story. His sympathy for Cesar Chavez, a hero of almost saintly proportions to many Hispanic-Americans, is not blind to Chavez's shortcomings in building a strong farm workers union that could sustain itself beyond the heady days of boycotts and hunger strikes of the 1960s and 1970s. Dr. Prouty also discusses the roles of the three churchmen who, as members of the Bishops' Ad hoc Committee on Farm Labor in the 1970s, were crucial to the accomplishments of the nascent United Farm Workers (UFM) union in receiving labor contracts from growers, many of them Catholic, as well as the passage of significant legislation by the State of California. These men, Cardinal Roger Mahoney, the Bishop Joseph Donnelly of Connecticut, and the aforementioned Msgr. Higgins, strongly supported the farm workers when many of their clerical colleagues were indecisive or even hostile.

This careful study by Prouty well represents a shining moment in our Church and national history, when the Bishops supported the struggle of the poor pilgrim People of God to find economic, racial, ethnic and social justice in the face of overwhelming efforts by the most powerful and wealthy to crush us. The Bishops stood strongly with the Catholics in implementing the social teachings of the Church. Let this book serve as model for where we must now be, in implementing integrally the just aspirations of the People of God for liberation and continual progress.

Read also
Economic justice for all: Pastoral letter on Catholic social teaching and the U.S. economy (Publication / Office of Publishing and Promotion Services, United States Catholic Conference)

The Words of Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa

and the several other books and studies of this great American catholic saint.

see also
This Is Progress: A creative New Translation of Pope Paul's encyclical, progress of peoples

On The Development Of Peoples: Populorum Progressio

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN POPULORUM PROGRESSIO

Rerum Novarum: Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Capital and Labor (English translation!)

On The Hundredth Anniversary Rerum Novarum

and so much else, and work for justice for our poor workers, and grant sanctuary to our undocumented families.

Sanctuary: A Resource Guide for Understanding and Participating in the Central American Refugee Struggle

Once upon a time, the U.S. Catholic Bishops were very much concerned with the matter of "Social Justice," and their concern actually paid off. For example, in 1969 the U.S. Bishops' `Ad Hoc Committee on Farm Labor' was formed after five years of César Chávez's United Farmworkers Union striking against the intolerable conditions imposed on the farmworkers by the grape growers in California.

Of course, Pope John Paul II soon came to power and---except for opposition to Communism---tried to put a halt to social activism (or at least, LIBERAL social action) within the Catholic Church.

However, Prouty's fasinating 2006 book recalls a bygone era, when figures like Father John Ryan (head of the National Catholic Welfare Conference's Social Action Department) and the "Labor Priest" George Higgins---if not exactly the Catholic "mainstream"---were at least not anathema to the Church hierarchy. (You might recall that César Chávez broke a 25-day fast emphasizing nonviolence in the movement at a Mass, that was attended by Senator Robert F. Kennedy.)

Prouty details how the Catholic Church initially resisted intervening in the farmworkers' dispute (after all, the GROWERS were mostly Catholics, too), but the U.S. Bishops eventually brokered a settlement between the growers and the UFW, ending five years of fighting after only two months of negotiations. (And they did so despite the fact that the growers contributed less money to the Church, afterwards.)

Prouty notes that "The years 1973 through 1976 marked the pinnacle of the hierarchy's support for Chavez"; not long after that, increasing conservatism in the Church, as well as the UFW's failure to "make the necessary transition from a social movement/union to a union/social movement," led to the demise of such cooperative movements. Still, this is a fascinating picture of history, and will perhaps inspire some visions of "what might have been..."