For years we asked ourselves whether OMBRE e LUCI should tackle the subject of affection and sexuality among people with intellectual disabilities. We put it off because it is not easy to enter this territory with the respect and care it demands.
Why do we now offer our small contribution on this theme? — Because we are prompted by questions from parents and friends of their children alike...
- Because today's culture is different from fifty years ago. We have come to understand that now, since many of them no longer live in segregation as before, we need clear thinking on this: how do we act in their best interest?
- Because mass media, especially television, burst into our homes with programs that are sometimes excessive and too explicit not to disturb and perplex those who are vulnerable and defenseless.
- Because, finally, we believe firmly that they too deserve to express their affection fully, their right to love. We know our answers cannot be complete. For this reason we encourage everyone not to fear asking, seeking information, taking time with this search.
Parents of children with intellectual disabilities have always known that marriage is almost closed to them, as is a university degree. It hurts to grasp this limit, and terrible is the suffering each parent carries, with struggle and resistance, at the news of their child's intellectual disability.
A great writer, C.S. Lewis, distinguishes love into four kinds: affection, friendship, eros, and charity.
For those who know our friends with intellectual limitations of varying degrees, it is easy to see that their capacity to love is often far stronger than in us so-called normal people. Precisely in this, we have often discovered them to be "teachers" to us. And not only in outward expression. Parents know how capable their children with mental disabilities are of affection, tenderness, altruistic gestures, forgiveness, genuine sorrow, and deep dismay at wrongdoing and those who commit it. And so: they live affection, friendship, and charity well. All these capacities within them must be developed, encouraged, and supported. Precisely because a necessary and difficult limit is imposed on their needs and expressions concerning eros. For the most severely affected, this limit will not even be questioned. For others, the more mildly affected, it will be the subject of careful consideration, case by case: it will be helpful, with the aid of trained and skilled "educators," to seek the best path forward. It will not always be an easy path, but our young people will walk it accompanied, understood, guided, and never alone.
It falls to all of us to look upon these friends of ours with renewed respect and gentle attention: always ready to take them seriously, never indulging their "childlike" ways, protecting them from risky situations, understanding them in their suffering—often hidden and unspoken—recognizing their wholeness as men and women, and promoting and receiving their greatest gift, which remains that of Love.
Only in this way can we join the conviction of Jean Vanier:
"I believe Jesus wishes to help in a very special way those who live celibacy by necessity."
- Mariangela Bettolini, 1995
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