A priest is a man. It's a cliché by now. A reminder that alongside virtue we find vice, that alongside the likeable exist the unlikeable, alongside the big-hearted, the small. Even in this category. And yet the humanity of priests—the very thing we invoke to explain their limits or justify their failures—is a reality so vague, so hard to accept. Where does understandable human weakness end and unsuitability for priestly mission begin? When should forbearance give way to rebuke, if not to indignation?
Over a long conversation with Don David Maccarri, whom I had never met before, he did not answer these questions (he could not have), but he posed them with great intelligence. He opened his heart with courage and trust, and because of this, when I now think back on the remarks that troubled me or the ideas I disagreed with, I cannot help but also think of the reasons and lived experiences from which they arose. Understanding and disapproval exist side by side.
I asked Don David, pastor of Sant'Angela Merici in Rome, what his position was toward people with mental disabilities—how he welcomed them, and what he thought of the articles we had published on the subject in the previous issue. We focused especially on a letter to the Bishops, in which Tina Turrini, a mother, hoped that welcoming the small child would become the Church's "primary and defining objective," that the Christian community would learn to see the disturbance during celebrations as "a new form of prayer and glory to God," that the disabled child would be welcomed in catechesis and become within it a source of "discovery for others of the miracle of normalcy."
A single theme ran through all of Don David's answers—an undeniable cliché: the gap between saying and doing is vast. "The priest is alone, my dear," he said. So much is asked of him, so much is demanded, and he "cannot attend to everything—the prostitute, the handicapped person, the poor." Not everything can be a primary objective. Society has only recently begun to see and accept disability, and it still has a long way to go. "The Christian community is part of society; it is equally immature and unprepared. Schools have support teachers... why should the Church be able to do without them?" A parish can scarcely welcome people with handicaps unless there is a group, or at least someone "suitable and competent" who takes charge of them and begins a journey with priests and the faithful, educating and raising their awareness. A mother who wishes to bring her mentally disabled son into the parish without such support should honestly be told of the parish's inadequacy—and asked, if possible, for active help ("let us search for a solution together").
"Not everyone is Jean Vanier, and a priest may not feel capable of fighting on the front lines for the integration of children. We cannot make him feel guilty; he may lack the strength, and it is human to resist certain realities. In the Gospel, Jesus tells the apostles who are turning children away, 'Let them come to me'—not 'you stand there'... Some priests have difficulty relating to the Neocatechumenals, some to the Focolare, others to disability... We must accept it without scandal and continue to believe that things can change: the path to maturity is long and winding."
The only way to overcome our own limits is to encounter the passion of those who reach where we cannot. Faced with testimonies of faith and selflessness, I ask myself: would I be capable of doing this, my Lord? And the answer cannot always be: YES...
Silvia Gusmano, 2004