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.
[…]
If I were to comment about Father Martin’s book and Bergoglio’s endorsement I’d be having to march myself off to Confession. Therefore, I’ll refrain.
Should you post a comment I cannot believe it would be anything other than a spiritual work of mercy. Some truths go down hard but who can exist long without the truth?
Pope Francis is not making sense in this area with homosexualism and the other area with James Martin. Truth remains absent. The FS. The misrepresenting of Benedict. The mocking of seminary faggotry. The telling the expelled one to “follow your vocation”. The “legalize homosexual civil union”.
He could have any number of reasons for deliberately positioning those things.
Yet here we are sustained by the Spirit of God contrary to your assertion. This is the Catholic experience, I say, as when a Christian is thrown into a cell without explanation or recourse and endures the effacement in the love of God.
Your conceptions of belief and works are off. Maybe you’re like James Martin, you would just have them for simmering for their own sakes and your penchants’?
https://onepeterfive.com/francis-appoints-homosexualists-to-shape-doctrine/
(I posted this earlier but seems not to be coming through; so I try again, its’ worth it.)
Bergoglio is way, way wrong. Jesus isn’t resigned to sin. He doesn’t accept sin. He doesn’t surrender to sin.
And, because He loves us — infinitely, ecstatically, insanely — Jesus doesn’t abandon us to sin.
Because embracing sin is not “understanding,” or “walking with,” or “acceptance.”
Accepting sin results only and always in death and misery, destruction and despair.
And, trust me, I know what I’m talking about, being a sinner from way back.
yawn
The article: “Pope Francis said Jesus’ raising from the dead of his friend Lazarus, which is recounted in the Gospel of John, shows that “Jesus isn’t scared of coming close to sinners — to any sinner, even the most brazen and undaunted.”
It is risky to comment on something I have not read. I base my words on what is said in the article.
The words of the Pope “Jesus isn’t scared of coming close to sinners” registered with me as being out of a place. The word “scared” is the key here as somewhat inappropriate in this contact, if accessed by a heart. It makes Our Lord small. Also, the very Incarnation was dropping into the thicket of human sinfulness permeated with the evil which caused Christ constant suffering. If He was not “afraid” of that – He was eager to save us then He cannot be “afraid” of the proximity of sinners.
But well, supposedly the obvious fact that Christ did not see beneath Himself to deal sinners has to be stated. Would it not be appropriate then to pick up an example of yet unreformed sinners which are abundant in the Gospels like woman caught in adultery or tax collectors or others? In fact, Our Lord went around sinners (including Pharisees) non-stop!
However, Lazarus is not an unreformed sinner. First, he was a disciple who later was to become the Bishop of the Church in Cyprus, according to Church tradition. We do not know whether Lasarus was a thick sinner before meeting Jesus or not. It is quite clear though that he and his sisters were disciples of Jesus and that Jesus used to stay in their house quite often; unlike a mere dining with sinners, it was a place of respite for Him. How Martha and Mary relate to Jesus also shows the depth of their discipleship. Them and Lasarus were definitely not dead because of sins. And so, Lasarus’s death and resurrection is a very poor illustration of “sins which make us dead”. Noteworthy, just like in “Jesus was not afraid” Our Lord was made somewhat small Lazarus also was made small here, for the need of an analogy. This is an important and prominent feature of homilies given for the sake of “a current agenda” which subtly twists the Church’s teaching. To match the agenda, a speaker has to reduce or twist the character from the Scriptures he uses to back his point.
Second and very important, a poor empathy/understanding of human relationship/attachment is evident here. Gospels state that Our Lord loved Lasarus’s family dearly. When one loves someone, he is not “afraid” to approach him or his body after death. I am speaking here about a totally human reasoning which seems to be missing in the Pope’s and Fr Martin’s discourse. Speaking superhumanly, Our Lord went to resurrect Lasarus because he wanted to reveal to his disciples the power of God and strengthen them before His Passion. By definition, He could not be “scared” of his friend’s dead body because He loved him or of any body because He is the Creator of those bodies, God and Man together in one Person. Being Life Himself, He would be naturally repelled by death but not “afraid”.
And so, both dead in body Lazarus and Jesus Who came to resurrect him for the same of showing the glory of the Kingdom appear to be a very bad paradigm for “spiritual death of sin which the Lord is not afraid of” the Pope was talking about. In fact, the story of the resurrection of Lazarus is the exact opposite of that. Lazarus is alive in spirit because of his discipleship and he is dead in body. An unrepentant sinner is dead in spirit and alive in body, just like the pharisees were. Pharisees then would be a far better example – and it is very evident that Our Lord could hardly be around them because not only they were dead, they were proud of their own deadness = unrepentance (very narcissistic), just like many of those in the modern world who reject Christ and His Words.
It appears that an analogy “Lasarus – dead in sin” was caused not by contemplation of the Scriptures but by the need to back the agenda “You, faithful, must go to sinners (modern pharisees) and be with them as if they were not sinning, just like Our Lord went to dead Lazarus in the tomb”. I repeat, the problem is that Our Lord, the Truth and the Life, made Lasarus’ spirit permanently alive first when He met him via manifesting to him the Truth and then resurrected his body later. If we are to follow Our Lord here, we are to try to make sinners (modern Pharisees) alive via preaching/manifesting the truth to them – i.e. doing the exact opposite of what the Pope wants.
Hence, I think it would be far better for Fr Martin and the Pope to draw on Our Lords’ dealing with Pharisees who refused to acknowledge the Truth when they beheld Him.
Sin is not love. Sin is death.
And I don’t think love is enabling friends to live in sin and confusion. What sort of friend does that?
Yes, “none are deprived of the possibility of feeling the loving embrace of his Father…” But, on the one hand and on Calvary Christ promised paradise to one robber (actually an insurrectionist), but not to the other. So, why is that?…
Well, clearly, Jesus Christ hadn’t read the new book (all genuflect, a book!) by guru James Martin! Problem solved!
Anna above – Thanks for your patient analysis of what is wrong with Pope Francis’ reading of the story of Lazarus.
Even when we reek of death after three days, that is the death of sin as made clear by Fr Martin and Pope Francis that is proffered as analogous to Lazarus being raised from the grave by Christ, a miracle to demonstrate his divinity. What the drift of the book says, as analyzed by Francis, is the suggestion that whatever our sins [our door to reconciliation locked with a double bolt] Christ will save us.
That then is what dead Lazarus encourages us to believe, that whatever the sin, even an unrepentant death will not prevent Christ from absolving us. This is consistent in context of a favorite Francis religious homoerotic artifact, a naked Christ carrying a naked Judas over his shoulder. There aren’t many, perhaps any clergy who accommodate homosexuality who hold belief in Christ’s judgment and the prospect of eternal punishment [that’s usually consistent with condoning, or remaining silent on contraception and abortion]. It would be wonderful if we could rest assured that we’ll all be saved. Reality, what’s revealed by Christ and conveyed by the Apostles assures us that’s a false hope.
As a postscript to my initial comment, “false hope” regards salvation for all has varied perspectives, one being that we may hope that all from this given point all will be saved. Some say that’s what von Balthasar, Bishop Barron, including my own perspective on the theological virtue of hope. Then there’s the looming questing of the dead prior to that given point in time. Here the Church in its wisdom offers no judgment, although as many point the words of Christ regarding Judas ‘better he had not been born’. Then there’s the possibility, for some at least, that prayer and intercession after the fact [of death] may possess real value regarding judgment, that based on the timeless dimension in which God is, who is pure act, a reality beyond our complete comprehension.
Is Pope Francis referring to a form of judgment beyond the limits of time? Or is he saying that whatever our sins, God’s mercy is greater than ourselves? Judgment requires an either or decision to be definitive as judgment. We do know that Angels were condemned and remain so. Fr Martin’s book, insofar as its commentary by Francis does not deny that judgment can be favorably affected by post death intercession – after all Judas Maccabeus ordered his troops pray for the fallen, all of whom wore condemnable talismans. However neither Martin nor Francis speak of intercessory prayer. They paint a picture of a dead Lazarus as one who died in his sins, reeking of the stench of sin that doesn’t prevent an all merciful God from forgiveness. This is the anomaly that would interpret the crucifixion as a universal act of salvation regardless of whether we repent of our sins. A prescription to do as we wish, the justice due to the effect of sin removed.
First it’s several private meetings at the Vatican, then public endorsement of his book. What’s Francis’ end game with Martin here? Is the pope preparing the way for promoting this homosexualist priest to a higher office in the church? What’s the agenda here?
Who would read anything from either of these gents…
Jesuits are doing themselves in…poor things need pity (& prayer)
That there is something of Christian value in a homosexual “relationship” so long as it is acknowledged “it is not marriage”, is a spurious non-correlation on more than one level.
First it remains homosexual, it does not derive a “relationship” of Christian or natural merit.
Second, it does not address the a priori issues or precedent problems, that apart from the question of marriage and irrespective of such a question, the homosexualism is abhorrent both in itself and to society in general. Which is where the real matter lies.
The “resolving of the question of marriage” is a total irrelevance, not just “non-resolving”; yet that also sets up serious prejudice against true teaching and method (pedagogy) while impugning the sincerity of the protagonist.
And it doesn’t matter who does the acknowledging of the non-marriage aspect of the “relationship” or of the “relationship”.
Philosophy is taught in seminary to help the priesthood guard itself. It isn’t taught because it is “something Catholic and traditional how to remain in a lag” and “to restrain acting on difficulties by holding them inside complexity”.
Some of what we are hearing about being accommodating of everyone, can come under the heading “Rogerian”. See in the WIKIPEDIA link. Whatever the merits might be in Rogerianism, many things can conform to Christian charity but Christian charity is not limited by them nor is it defined and determined by them.
“Even the non-believers can be Rogerian” -it doesn’t just so equate with Christianity or find an equivalence.
The priest is called to let homosexuals know they must separate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogerian_argument
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause
Life and eternal life are precious gifts. Lazarus is an inspiration to the living and to the dead.