I received with piercing sadness, yesterday, the NY Times investigative reporting that Cesar Chavez had not only habits of adultery but that he abused teenage girls and even raped his colleague of many years, Delores Huerta. Huerta, now 95 years old, carried this secret for about 60 years, to protect the legacy she shared with Chavez.
This struck me in a personal way. In my late adolescence and even early married life Chavez was for me a hero figure as a historic labor leader, a father figure for Mexican-American farm workers, but also an exemplary Catholic in his prayer, fasts and Eucharistic devotion. Early in our marriage we would boycott supermarkets that carried non-union grapes. Our first daughter, around age 2, referred to grapes as "boycotts."
He is the last of a series of personal heroes, in the public life, who have fallen off the pedestal: JFK, MLK, Fr. Bruce Ritter, Jean Vanier are others. Each represented for me historic greatness and moral goodness. Yet, in their treatment of women they were depraved. Worse was the abuse of the young. And also worse was the combination with spiritual abuse and manipulation.
As I type this, at 2 AM, unable to sleep, I feel dirty myself. It is as if I had collaborated with him in my hero worship. Or as if this was done by my own father or son.
Any More Heroes?
Do we have today, in public life (as distinct from the Church), any moral heroes? I think of one: Jimmy Lai, the Catholic Hong Kong millionaire publisher in jail for defending freedom. He is a hero.
I cannot think of any other heroes of the moment. But we do have decent, moral exemplars in our public life.
By my Catholic values, advocacy for legal abortion is a moral contamination similar to membership in the KKK or the Nazi Party: systemic evil. So I cannot admire any Democratic politician of the last 60 or so years. The last authentically prolife Democrats were: Sargent Shriver, the older Governor Casey of Pennsylvania, and Mayor Ray Flynn of Boston. Even Hubert Humphry, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, and Jimmy Carter were compromised on this issue as the tide was turning approaching 1970.
Happily, we do have a number of public figures with moral integrity. (What follows is not an endorsement of their politics, but of their personal decency, however imperfect.) Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, Gerald Ford, William Buckley, Nicki Halley, Condoleza Rice, Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, William Barr, Paul Ryan, Justices Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Barrett, Denzel Washington, and Tom Hanks
Going back to my own childhood and youth, we can admire: Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman (although dropping the bomb is a problem), George Meany, Gregory Peck, and Adlai Stevenson.
Globally we think of: Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Dag Hamarskjold, Antonio Salazar of Portugal, Desmond Tutu, Nyerere of Tanzania, and Margaret Thatcher.
These 36 figures are not morally perfect. Many of their policies, decisions and values are problematic. But they all maintained a private and public decency and dignity, qualities desperately needed in leadership today.
Catholic World
Within the Church, we have been blessed (again, within my lifetime) with extraordinary people, some canonized, to emulate: St. Mother Theresa, St. John Paul, St. Padre Pio, St. Pope John 23, St. Paul 6, Luigi Giusanni, Pope Benedict, Mother Angelica, Monsignor Luigi Giussani, Chiara Lubich, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, Adrienne von Speyr, Madaleine del Brell, Caryl Houselander, St. Fulton Sheen, Cardinal Van Thuan, Archbishop Luis Martinez, Bishop Barron, Father Patrick Peyton,
We have others still living with us. But I decline to name them. They are still vulnerable to sin. Perhaps specially targeted by Lucifer. "The higher they climb, the further they fall." The memory of Cesar Chavez moves us to pray for the living, even those most admirable.
Conclusion
We remember Cesar Chavez today with deep sadness. Sad for the young, trusting women who continue to suffer from this abuse. Sad for his sin, his disrespect for women, his public hypocrisy.
We pray for his soul.
We pray for ourselves: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
We celebrate today, as I type, the feast of St. Joseph. May his intercession and influence make us chaste, loyal, fatherly, strong yet gentle.
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