More accessible worship in Chicago
I received good news in my e-mail. A foundation has given a grant to increase the accessibility of houses of worship in Chicago.
This is of course terrific news. As our population ages, provided that we don’t decide old people are too much trouble, we should see more of these types of initiatives. Many of my average friends have been surprised at how often the decisions about choosing place of worship had less to do with my agreement with the doctrine, and more to do with the accessibility of the facility, especially the restrooms and the social areas.
After I began the RCIA process, are parishes were consolidated, and my classes were moved to a parish on the far side of town. (There were still Masses at mile parish, but no programs) I could not go to the classes independently. The church restrooms were not accessible, and unlike the church where I attended Mass, there was no public restroom nearby. Those classes were real trial to me, and I didn’t feel comfortable explaining why couldn’t stay and socialize I was terrified of having a bladder accident in my sponsor’s car.
And yet, I so much wanted to be Catholic that I put up with all of that. And I so wanted to be like everybody else but I didn’t tell anyone what problems I was having. Some people would just give up. Some people just don’t go to worship anymore.
[This is my first blog post using Windows voice recognition. I now have immense respect for anyone who uses this as their primary way to communicate. I still hope to install Dragon Naturallyspeaking, but I'm having system problems with that. Cutting and pasting from Wordpad will have to do for now.]
