Washington D.C., Mar 5, 2020 / 05:12 pm (CNA).- A New Jersey parish has made headlines in recent weeks, after an eight-year-old boy with autism was reportedly denied Holy Communion. The parish said there had been a misunderstanding, and was working to ensure the boy could receive the Eucharist.
Misunderstandings, whatever the cause, happen in parish life, and can lead to feelings of frustration and disappointment among parishioners and parish leaders.
When parish issues arise pertaining to disabilities, one organization tries to help: the National Catholic Partnership on Disability. While not commenting on the situation of the New Jersey parish, Charleen Katra, the organization’s executive director, talked with CNA about how parishes can be welcoming to people with disabilities, and form them in the Catholic faith.
People with severe disabilities deserve Catholic catechesis and sacramental preparation, and parishes can serve them from a young age with open doors, open hearts, and dialogue with them, their loved ones, and even other parishioners, Katra told CNA.
“It’s a ministry of hospitality and evangelization,” Katra added.
The parishes most successful at this ministry don’t necessarily begin with training, she said. Rather, they begin with “a heart of hospitality.”
Katra’s organization helps to serve people who live with physical, intellectual, sensory, mental or emotional disabilities. The group provides resources for parish staff and leads training on meaningful participation in the sacraments, accessible parishes, and catechetical best practices.
“A lot of what I do is lowering everybody’s frustration levels,” Katra said.
Her advice?
“Don’t make it harder than it is,” she said.
“Jesus the Master Catechist has shown us what to do. And what to do is full inclusion. If God puts people in front of you, you serve them, to the best of your ability.”
“Open your doors. Open your hearts. Seek out training if you need it,” she said. “It’s about accompaniment, being with someone, being with them, being with their family, being what they need.”
The National Catholic Partnership on Disability was established in 1982 to help implement the U.S. bishops’ guidance on people with disabilities. Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville now serves as the partnership’s episcopal moderator.
The U.S. bishops continue to provide guidance to address some concerns of persons with disabilities, their families and advocates, and clergy and others in pastoral ministry.
“Parish ministers and all Catholics should respond to the severely disabled and their families with tremendous love and generosity, and with a readiness to support and assist them,” Father Andrew Menke, executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Divine Worship, told CNA.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops publishes Guidelines for the Celebration of the Sacraments with Persons with Disabilities. The document, last updated in June 2017, runs to 16 pages.
People with disabilities, too, need growth in holiness. Their participation in the grace of the sacraments is “essential” to this, the guidelines explain. The liturgy must be “completely accessible” to persons with disabilities, because liturgical forms are “the essence of the spiritual tie that binds the Christian community together.”
“Accessibility involves far more than physical alterations to parish buildings,” the bishops said. “Realistic provision must be made for Catholics with disabilities to participate fully in the Eucharist and other liturgical celebrations.”
Catechesis for people with disabilities, for instance, “must be adapted in content and method to their particular situations,” the bishops continued.
The bishops’ guidance encourages the inclusion of people with disabilities in typical catechesis classes, “unless their disabilities make it impossible for them to participate in the basic catechetical program.”
Even then, participation in parish life is “encouraged in all ways possible.”
Katra’s organization works with publishers to provide resources for catechists and leaders who are working directly in faith formation. It helps provide resources for those who have diverse learning styles.
Any work with parishioners with disabilities needs to be tailored to the individual, Katra said. Parishes “need to learn about the individual as well as his or her disability,” she said, adding that clergy should be consulted and advised about an individualized process and individual needs.
“Patience, compassion and empathy are necessary for success,” Katra said.
Parents are experts on this subject and always are a key resource, she added.
“They are with this person 24/7,” she said. “They know what causes them to get more anxious. They also know typically what will help them calm down and come back to a more balanced emotional state.”
Katra recommends that parishes provide to parents or guardians an information form that asks many specific questions about their loved one. Good questions seek out details about sensory needs, learning style and communication style, she explained.
She suggests parish leaders take a proactive approach to foresee needs before they arise.
Still, Katra acknowledged that there can be parish situations where a parish staffer responds “we don’t have anything” or “we aren’t trained to do this.” While there is likely no intent to hurt or offend in such situations, parishioners with disabilities and their families might find these situations to be hurtful and to fail to affirm their Catholic identity.
In such cases, Katra encouraged simply apologizing.
“We’re a Church. We’re about mercy, we’re about forgiveness,” Katra said as an example. “Start from a place of ‘I’m sorry, we’re sorry, if in any way we hurt or offended you’.”
“We want to serve you. We want you here. It pains us that we sent the wrong message. What can we do to make it right?” she added. “We’ll do some adaptations or we’ll get some training so that we can better serve not only you, but many other families that have the same or similar needs.”
“Move forward in a healthy way, in a relationship, because that’s what we are as a Church,” Katra advised.
In catechesis, sometimes instructors should provide more time or require less work. Some parishioners benefit from a “multi-sensory approach,” that is hands-on, visual and auditory. Parishioners could need “sensory-friendly” items like fidgets or squeeze balls, noise cancelling headphones, and weighted lap pads to aid their participation.
There are also communication styles and adaptations for people with difficulties communicating. For instance, someone who is non-verbal uses “prayer hands” to indicate the words “Amen.”
Parish catechetical leaders and volunteer catechists should be offered training and resources, like professional growth days, conferences and newsletters.
While some parishes might fear they lack the resources and volunteers to serve parishioners with disabilities and their families, Katra offered hope.
“We just have to use our resources wisely. Seek out those people who are already there in front of you. Don’t think you don’t have them, you do,” she said.
You can’t respond to a call you don’t hear,” she added, saying church and parish leaders “have an opportunity to call forth people from the parish.”
In Katra’s view, candidates for confirmation, most often in their early teens, are at an ideal age and level of formation to be asked to be involved in parish ministry and to help them find where their gifts fit.
Parishes should ask young men and women to be a “buddy” for a parishioner and to help include them in systematic catechesis, retreats, Masses and other activities. The goal is to have someone to offer help as needed, but “not to do for someone what they can do for themselves.”
Young people who respond to serve often show compassion, empathy and patience and can go on to careers in social work, special education, pediatrics, or physical and occupational therapy.
“At the same time, every parish has those kinds of professionals in their community,” Katra said. She suggested inviting parishioners or others who are health care professionals to provide workshops.
If a parish announces that it is forming a ministry for people with severe disabilities or that it is looking for someone to help train catechists, Katra predicted, “many people would be happy to do it.”
“A special ed [teacher] could do that in their sleep, almost,” she said.
Accessibility to parish community events and meetings might include sign language interpreters and large print materials.
Some parishes are remiss in not providing ramps, assistive listening devices, or other assistance “because a need has not been presented.”
Parishes sometimes don’t provide training or resources to support catechists or educators teaching persons with disabilities or they don’t anticipate the need, Katra added.
Even when parishes make plans for persons with disabilities, they can neglect to make plans in consultation with them.
Katra warned not to use outdated or derogatory language, but also not to “exceptionalize” people with disabilities, like describing them as “angels” or “using them as a means of sanctification” rather than “realizing they are agents of evangelization in their own right.”
Every Catholic has the right to be educated in the faith, to be prepared for the sacraments and to receive the sacraments, and to “respond to God’s call,” she said. “All persons have gifts to share and all persons are capable of growth in holiness.”
From a Trinitarian perspective, God invites every person to be in communion, she added.
“We are all broken and our path to wholeness always includes community,” said Katra, who added that anyone could become a person with a disability, either through accident or age.
“We’re all one car accident away from rolling in a wheelchair,” said Katra. “We have no guarantee that our abilities will be with us in any given moment. Sometimes you’re born with something, sometimes you acquire it later in life. Some are temporary, some are permanent. Some are visible, some are invisible.”
“We all have strengths, we all have weaknesses. Hopefully we focus, as a Church, on our gifts and our abilities than other things,” she said.
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These people are nothing if not evil.
Perhaps grossly misinformed!
Sorry, that’s just not believable. They’ve both been pushing abortion for decades. They know what they are doing, even though they probably lie to themselves about it.
No, evil. Because killing an innocent, defenseless and vilnerable human person is a most heinous and evil act. Those who commit those acts or advocate for them are doing evil.
In total agreement with this insightful comment.
If immoral then good is evil. VP Harris and President Biden purveyors of death for the invasive ideology of death sickening humanity. Sharp increase of abortion in CA since the Roe overturn is by appearance hateful spite.
When moral truth is inverted, evil becomes dominant. Good becomes unjust in every conceivable instance. Reason is that evil perceives no possible ethical alternatives and consequently judge differences of judgment illegal as well as immoral. Yet one wonders how Biden considers himself Catholic, makes the sign of the cross in public when abortion enforcement is announced. Putatively there’s sufficient ambiguity even appearance of endorsement from the Vatican, supported by warm welcoming of Biden and antilife Nancy Pelosi.
Some commenters angrily denounce essayists as cowardly for not imputing heresy. Taken as it stands while not meeting the canonical requirements one might say the consistency of misleading words and actions press the red line. Although if the canons were shelved on the issue a multitude could be conceivably charged with so serious a violation of the faith. Even if a slip up occurred. Fear would hold sway stifling valid deliberation. It’s best for clergy to keep the rule, although it seems valid to apply the term error as morally applicable when incidents of error by offhand word or suggestion are consistent.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
Agreed, by his support for and enthusiastic promoting of the immoral act of abortion, Biden should be banned from receiving communion and excommunicated. He is not a good Catholic, and furthermore if what he is, is acceptable to the Church as evidenced by inaction, it is doubtful that the majority of Catholics in good standing are proud or tolerant to be associated with him. I further state that there is one who is very pleased with him, and his name is satan.
Dismembering babies alive is not a human right.
It’s an inhuman wrong.
Thank you brineyman.
There are anti vivisection groups around the world today but sadly their efforts are only to protect defenseless animals from vivisection, not defenseless infants in the womb. Perhaps we could erect a statue for the human victims to stir the public conscience such as was done in memory of a dog in the early 1900’s :
“In memory of the Brown Terrier Dog done to death in the laboratories of University College in February 1903, after having endured vivisection extending over more than two months and having been handed from one vivisector to another until death came to his release. Also in memory of the 232 dogs vivisected at the same place during the year 1902. Men and women of England, how long shall these things be?”
Yeah that is horrible, it’s no wonder we moved from animals to babies so easily, if we don’t respect all life we soon lose respect for any life✝️🙏🏻😔
Unbelieving pagans .
“Reproductive freedom” for me but not for thee.
George Orwell.
This is just another example of the current twisted thinking being fanned out from Washington; quite recently NPR was outed as an extreme leftist organization (employees’ political makeup) by one of their own managers.
This is the same organization that broadcast the sounds of a MI organization to help Whitmer get her Prop 3 passed.
Outing NPR as an extreme leftist organization is about as shocking as outing the South Pole as a cold and uncomfortable place to live. We kinda knew that already.
Yup, we used to say NPR stood for “National Propaganda Radio” and that’s been decades ago.
obviously, but no one from within their hallowed walls ever said that (in my recent memory) and their broadcasting of a MI abortion to propel Prop 3 is directly related to the anti family message coming out of Washington/the elite and the above article (isn’t NPR headquarters in Washington as well?). I used to listen to their stories on the way home from work but couldn’t take them anymore starting about 15 years ago. any human interest story is very interesting to me but let me listen to them not to the commentator
(don’t forget, we have people who are not from the US reading this – we’re headed to thinking like they do across the pond like where if you breathe in front of an abortion clinic you’ll be thrown in the clink)
“Women are dying”??? In point of fact, pregnancy and giving birth is a normal biological function of women and not an illness or disease. I would like to know if there are statistics about how many women die each year giving birth. Unquestionably, on rare occasion seemingly healthy people die suddenly for no obvious reason. But for someone to conflate the idea “women are dying” with a lack of extreme abortion access, is an outright lie. What this administration is interested in is encouraging women to sleep around no matter the moral damage to themselves and society, and then suggesting the murder of their baby is a “solution” when they end up pregnant. How about not sleeping around to start with?
“I would like to know if there are statistics about how many women die each year giving birth.”
Yes, that’s easy. The number is basically zero. The whole “women are dying” trope is just a dishonest, manipulative lie parroted by progressives.
I was listening to an interview with a nurse midwife who has studied the history of childbirth practices & she said the rates of maternal death following delivery actually rose when childbirth was first medicalized & attended by physicians. The reason being that before the protocols of sanitation & understanding of the spread of infection, doctors would deliver babies right after coming from dissecting a body, amputating a limb, etc. without washing their hands or sterilizing their instruments. And they’d pass on any pathogens present on to the mother.
Thankfully we know better now & pregnancy & delivery are far safer. And as you say, normal processes & not diseases. Fertility’s not a disease either but you’d never know that from the pharmaceutical companies.
100% of women will die. Same with men. We are all of us like the grass of the field.
However, we need not soil our short lives with murder.
And the woman married to the First Gentleman who claims that “women are dying” is Vice President Kamala Harris, who will ascend to the Presidency should, God forbid, Pres. Biden pass away or become incapacitated and unable to fulfil his elected office. God have mercy on our current President and grant him a long life and time to repent of his sin of supporting abortion. And God preserve us from a Harris presidency, or any POTUS who pushes abortion as “women’s health care.”
The Democratic Party is a death cult.
Democrats favor killing children in utero. At any time. For any reason.
And so, entire generations of individuals are canceled from existence.
Roughly one-third of all our offspring.
Think about that.
And for the lucky children who escape that horrific death? Democrats are in favor of sterilizing them.
Again, more generations of human beings erased. Denied by the “choice” of their mothers the chance to exist.
Legalizing drugs; gay “marriage”; the sexualization of children; the green new poverty; the open border fentanyl conduit; the denial of the biologically determined sexes; the racist, divisive CRT curriculum — everything the Democratic Party advocates is aimed at denying life and promoting death.
Death is the Democratic Party’s central tenet.
And the American Catholic Church is wholly responsible for it. One hundred percent.
Because if Catholics had voted the Church’s teachings even once in the past 50 years in a national election, no candidate would ever again advocate for abortion for fear of being swept away by a twenty percent landslide.
Our bishops, our priests, our entire community — we have the blood of more than a Billion innocent children on our souls.
We deserve whatever we get.
Spot on, Brineyman.
We can thank our bishops for Biden. They gave the green light for Catholics to vote for Biden. The likes of McElroy, Cupich, Tobin and others intimidated pro-life bishops to shut up about abortion. And Bergoglio had their backs through it all.
What you say is true, but if you think the corollary is that the Republican Party is on the side of the (good) angels, you are mistaken. The GOP has rushed to reassure Americans that they favor and want to protect and even celebrate IVF, and their opposition to the abortion of more fully-developed babies is both spotty (depending largely on where the politician’s supporters live) and contingent (usually, as with their inevitable nominee, coming with lots of exceptions). A pox on both their houses.
Except that the GOP doesn’t bar pro-lifers from running for office.
Keep in mind, though, that the Republican Party Platform is pro-life, and many Republican Senators, Representatives, GOVERNORS (very important, since the repeal of Roe v. Wade returns the issue to the STATES to decide!), State Senators and Representatives, and Mayors, along with many other local elected officials, are solidly pro-life. Sadly, any Democrats who are pro-life end up blacklisted and driven out of office by their Party (e.g., Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois). Think really hard about voting for an obscure 3rd party just to keep your conscience clear”–they won’t win and chances are good that the votes lost by Republicans will end up resulting in a pro-abortion Democrat winning. But be careful and do your research!–there are Republicans who embrace the basic tenant of the Republican Party, which is less government interference in daily lives of Americans, and therefore almost always support abortion as a right of people to freely choose.
Its a fact that “catholics” vote for legal abortion in the same number as non-catholics or non-believers. That being said, its also a fact that issues other than abortion are hanging in the balance at election time. These are important issues which impact everyday life. Lets say fighting the push to allow transgender surgeries for minor age children,promoting gay and abnormal sexual orientation to minor children in school,inflation which is impacting family life, open borders which present a real mortal danger to our citizens. These and more. Staying home or voting Democrat for ANY office will put the blood of the country on that voter’s hands. We are running out of time, as the march of Marxist agitators on our campuses should tell you.
The most notorious tag team since Sartoro and Michael/Michelle
I remember a book about 30 years ago by a Catholic writer named, if memory serves, Bud McFarlane. In the book there was an imaginary scene of a man who had either performed or promoted abortions trying to get into heaven, only to find his way blocked by all the babies he had killed, and he had to explain to EACH one of them – individually – why he had done what he had done and EACH of them had to be satisfied by what he told him or her before he could get into heaven.
This was 30 years ago and sometimes the memory gets a tad hazy, so – does anyone out there recall his books? I can’t remember the names of the books.
Women are dying?
The same “argument” as the coat hanger “never again” sloganism.
No perceptible evidence of logic, rational thinking.
Canon law specifies that procuring direct abortion or support of the same incurs the penalty of automatic excommunication.
Well, Catholics now know also that JB declared the most important day in Christianity, The Resurrection of the Lord, “Transgender visibility day.”