«When my children were small, my wife and I insisted on bringing all five of them to Mass with us. (…) It was a way to bear witness, to say that having children, building a good family, is part of being Christian and enriches the community. To say that the community should have rejoiced at seeing so many children around. My children knew this, and they acted up. But one day the priest lost his patience and exploded from the pulpit, staring straight at me: "Now take the girl outside!" I didn't move. A deaf man refusing to hear. I kept my eyes fixed on the poor priest, who couldn't finish his homily because of one child.» So writes Alberto Porro at the opening of How to Survive the Catholic Church and Not Lose Your Faith (Bompiani 2019), a short and dense handbook by a believer still in love with the faith but deeply frustrated by an institution increasingly incapable of dialogue and encounter with its own members.
Although the author never mentions it, his observations apply perfectly to the relationship between the Catholic Church and disability. Because after years of field experience, we can say it plainly: the Church has a serious problem with disabled people. Despite all its rhetoric, it has rarely—and still rarely does—know how to welcome them.
And the starting point couldn't be better. For millennia, the Church has claimed to stand with the last and the lost—though, to be fair, Pope Francis deserves credit for making the courageous word "discarded" commonplace. The Church, for instance, with a commitment you won't find in other institutions, strongly opposes even therapeutic abortion, the abortion that prevents the birth of a child with disability.
Yet from the moment a disabled person enters the world, the Church does nothing to help that person or their family. The examples could go on forever. Schools and daycare centers run by religious men and women almost never accept them. Priests far too often pretend not to see them. Access to the sacraments becomes an obstacle course. How many Masses have we been asked to leave because disability was inconvenient, too loud? Because someone wanted to pray with the rhythmic hand movements of autism, with the off-key songs of someone calling to God with an imperfect voice, sitting cross-legged on the floor in worship too close to the altar? How many times have we been told not to come to a particular Mass—"Not the noon one; the whole parish will be there; the normal children might be upset"? How many parish pilgrimages have left us behind? It is no accident that the international movement Faith and Light was born from the rejection a couple with two disabled children faced when they tried to participate in their parish community.
How many Masses have we been asked to leave because disability was inconvenient? How many times have we been told not to come to a particular Mass?
How many Masses have we been asked to leave because disability was inconvenient? How many times have we been told not to come to a particular Mass?The difficulty of acceptance shows first of all in language. Count on one hand the priests who don't use the word "sick" when referring to disabled people—along with mountains of saccharine phrases. Sickness is a disruption of health. Disability is not the same thing.
Then there is the matter of how many Italian Faith and Light communities struggle to find a priest to accompany them on their journey. The few who come pass through like meteors: the world of disability is unknown to them, and what they don't know frightens them. They don't know what to do: paternalism, false charity, annoyance, embarrassment, an inability to listen. Is it possible that in their daily lives or in seminary, priests never met a disabled person or felt the need to? Is it possible that none of their teachers, spiritual directors, or anyone else ever thought to mention that these "discarded" people exist too?
Apparently not. In Life's Great Questions (Morcelliana 2018), Jean Vanier wrote: "I have rarely heard Church authorities say: 'Go to institutions, to nursing homes, to the margins of society, and become their friends. Bring them into your communities; help them discover how precious they are!' This is a matter of justice, of freedom for our human family. Yet the Church often seems indifferent to it. Maybe we congratulate L'Arche or certain individuals who have shown themselves to be particularly kind (…). But this is not about being kind; it is about doing what is right."
And it is deeply wrong that thousands of people with physical or intellectual disabilities do not feel welcomed in the Lord's house. I'm not asking for them to be understood, only to be welcomed.
In The Night Has My Voice (Einaudi 2017), the atheist writer Alessandra Sarchi asks: "Wasn't a new law established at the end of antiquity, at the beginning of our era, that said the last should be protected, loved, and supported?" It hurts to say it, but it is clear that this new law still struggles to find a place in the daily life of our parishes. In flagrant violation of the Gospel itself.