How many children and young people are pushed aside because they are deemed "unsuitable" for religious education? How many are never helped to discover the unconditional welcome of the One who came to seek us all out—especially the rejected, the despised, the poorest among us?
Who are we talking about?
Let's be specific with a few examples:
- those who struggle in school, or worse still—those more severely retarded who speak, read, and write little or not at all...
- children who seem locked inside themselves, trapped in an inner world with no way out...
- those who explode over nothing, who smash things with seemingly uncontrolled violence...
- children with unstable attention spans...
- physically handicapped children—paralyzed, mutilated, deaf or partially deaf, blind or with serious vision problems, chronically ill or in fragile health...
- children from broken, fractured families, children torn apart, starved of love...
- children from the third or fourth world, children of migrants, uprooted children who struggle to fit into a new environment...
- so-called "street children" who seem to have no support whatsoever...
- and others still, who bear all or nearly all of these burdens, in varying degrees, visible or hidden...
There are many—thousands of them. Everyone knows this. But what are we doing for them?
What We Are Doing
Each type of handicap creates particular challenges. A physically handicapped child, like a child deprived of a family home, may well have a normal or even above-average intelligence. But because he is "sick," he is forgotten in an institution or at home, with no one bothering to visit or finding a way to transport him (a neighbor's car, perhaps) so he can join the group.
How many children and young people are pushed aside because they are deemed "unsuitable" for religious education!
How many children and young people are pushed aside because they are deemed "unsuitable" for religious education!
We grow discouraged by the emotional reactions of a child who lacks parental love, or by his school difficulties, never thinking that these may stem from a lack of regard, encouragement, and above all, tenderness in his life.
We assume that a child with serious vision problems cannot do anything, since he cannot read a standard catechism. We forget that very often these children are not at fault—and that in our time considerable effort has been made to "integrate" such children into normal school settings, simply by providing them appropriate support and preparing teachers, classmates, and families to welcome them. We may claim that retarded children, and even more so those with "mental deficiency" or autism, require specialized personnel. We forget that there are textbooks by which any catechist of good will can effectively help them walk toward the Lord.
We may judge a child with behavioral or emotional troubles to be beyond help, unable to be integrated into the group. We forget that such children are often not to blame, but victims of their environment, of the suffering and especially the frustrations they have endured, and of a lack of self-control for which they are not responsible. Their reactions—distressing for themselves and those around them—are a cry for help, through which they seek to tell us of their anguish and their need to be led to the love of the One who came "to seek and to save what was lost."
Something Has Been Done
There is no shortage of books and journals aimed at priests, catechists, parents, educators, and friends of handicapped or maladjusted children and young people, to help them in their work and keep them informed about questions affecting these children and the solutions being proposed. We must make the effort to educate ourselves and, above all, to seek out these children—often silent and surrounded by silence, about whom almost nothing is said unless scandal breaks out.
Yet the picture is not entirely dark. Many priests and lay people have invested time and effort to open eyes to this situation and to understand both the challenges posed by the presence of these "forgotten" ones among us and the solutions offered by various methods presented through many channels of formation: books, journals, workshops, courses, study days. These priests and lay people deserve our admiration, if only for their persistence—for they often find themselves struggling against indifference, incomprehension, sometimes hostility from many quarters. Some come from parents so convinced of their children's incapacity that they don't even ask for catechesis or sacramental access for them. Others come from clergy who say they are overwhelmed, incompetent, bewildered.
We will need to confront certain "authorities" who show indifference or even revulsion toward handicapped children.
We will need to confront certain "authorities" who show indifference or even revulsion toward handicapped children. Yet many still believe there is nothing to be done, that nothing is being done, that nothing can be done. Many parents passively accept that their parish offers nothing to help their child. They do not push back against priests who resign themselves to denying handicapped children any capacity for Christian life, or who admit them to the sacraments with no preparation whatsoever, merely "to please the parents."What Can Be Done in Practice?
It is not possible here to detail all the means by which to catechize children affected by the various handicaps we have mentioned. The essential thing is not to forget them.
We must be convinced of the importance of this work.
Our true motivations matter fundamentally. If we do something merely to "please the parents" or because "we ought to make some effort for these poor little ones," we will not go far—neither in duration nor in the quality of our work.
But if we are convinced that every child, even the most handicapped and the most miserable, is a human person in full right, a true son or daughter of God in act or in potential, then we will go to him with all our love, all our attention, all our esteem, all our respect. We will recall in particular that Jesus showed special love for children like these, to whom God's plan always grants a special priority. Only on this condition will the Church be fully, truly, the Church of Christ.
We must then equip ourselves with concrete means to act effectively.
Here too, good intentions are not enough. We must go to these children and seek them out actively, as we seek the lost lamb in the Gospel, even if it means leaving the rest of the flock for a time. They hide and are hidden, as we have said. I knew a parish priest who one day discovered, to his great surprise, that there were many handicapped people in his parish territory about whom no one knew anything—people whose very existence he had never suspected. I have seen the same surprise in a teacher who discovered, by chance, the moral and material misery in which lived a child who sat in front of him every day in class, and with whom he grew impatient over poor school performance. And we could go on.
We must ensure that these children are welcomed well, so that from the very first moment they receive the most concrete possible testimony of God our Father's love, through the attitude of Christ's Church toward them. At the same time, we must educate ourselves and prepare ourselves using the resources we mentioned earlier. These require, as is natural, a certain commitment, but they are not so difficult as to be out of reach. It would be excessive to exaggerate their difficulty; but it would be equally lamentable to pretend we can do without them, relying only on our own pedagogical and pastoral intuitions.
We are convinced that every child, even the most handicapped, is a human person in full right, a true son or daughter of God in act or in potential
We are convinced that every child, even the most handicapped, is a human person in full right, a true son or daughter of God in act or in potential. Finally, let us say it once more: we must not be content to give "those children" a room or catechists that no one else wants. "Those children," more than many others, need to be treated in the best way possible and placed in the situation most suited to mitigate the consequences of their handicap. More than many others, they need catechists who are dynamic and as competent as possible.Finally, We Must Raise Awareness and Call the Responsible Parties to Account
In general, it is difficult at first to bring a parish, school, or catechetical setting to adopt an adequate attitude. Many of these children (who suffer more from this than we realize) are "looked at," sometimes rejected, and sometimes treated with excessive protection that keeps them apart, that "marginalizes" them almost as much as the opposite attitude does. Above all, those responsible for pastoral care and catechesis must adopt the right attitude and share it with others: an attitude rooted fundamentally in respect for every child, for his worth, for his capacities however limited, for his dignity. Rushing to give candy to a child because he wears a brace or seems a bit "retarded" can hurt him and above all humiliate him—just as much as making fun of him, even though the first action may come from good intent. We will seek, then—first of all by example—to treat these children and young people as much as possible like all the others, while taking account of their particular difficulties. In some cases we will also need to intervene forcefully with certain "authorities" who show indifference or even revulsion toward handicapped children, or who are indifferent, if not openly hostile, to their religious education and Christian life. In such cases, those responsible for catechesis will not hesitate, with necessary firmness and with the "sacred fire" that must be none other than that of the Spirit, to step in and hold their ground until they have won their battle.
They must receive a concrete testimony of God's love, through the attitude of the Church toward them.
Finally, we are all responsible. Let us not shift our responsibility onto the shoulders of a few specialists, most often hypothetical and in any case too few in number to effectively address a problem so vast and so varied. And let us say again that in very many cases these "too-forgotten" children need simply to be able to join, sooner or later, in catechesis with everyone else. They must be able to join the community of all Christians, which is theirs, and which must welcome them all, integrate them all—conscious that it needs them, perhaps even more than they need us.
These "too-forgotten" children must be able to join the community of all Christians, which is theirs and which must welcome them all.
- Henri Bissonier, 1992
(From "Pedagogia della fede," E.D.P, pp. 153–162)