This is a testimony and the fruit of collaboration among three authors whose different expertise all centers on the mentally handicapped: José Davin, a Jesuit priest who works on their active integration into Church life; Esther Delvin, a child psychiatrist and family psychotherapist who supports them within institutions; and Viviane Le Polain De Waroux, mother of a severely mentally handicapped child and national director in Belgium of the Faith and Light association.
Their combined experience fills these pages with tenderness and moving sensitivity. The book offers practical guidance and counsel for the various stages of a handicapped person's life—and for the many challenges each stage presents, not only to the person themselves but to families, educators, and specialists alike. It addresses the discovery of handicap, its impact on family life, participation in the Church, schooling, possible institutional placement, illness, aging, and death.
What are our goals? How do we use our particular skills? What values should guide us? We cannot work alone. We must collaborate closely with those in the Church, in associations, and in institutional structures who dedicate themselves to the handicapped. This collaboration is essential, but it must spring from choices suited to the real needs of the person being helped and their family. Help must be personal, because every handicapped person has their own particularity, their own uniqueness—as does every human being.
Questions about affective and sexual life, and the ethical values connected to them, are particularly complex and delicate. Some of what the authors say may give pause. It will be wise, then, to seek counsel from an enlightened and knowledgeable priest. Awareness of our limits when facing problems that sometimes seem insurmountable will make us humble enough to listen.
The goal is always the good of the handicapped person, in respect of the kinship and likeness that unite us all: the right to live with the dignity that belongs to every human being, and to live as peaceful a life as possible—a life of personal growth, full of relationships, friendship, and genuine exchange.
This life "is possible" for all of us. And we are all called to make it so.