Catholic Teaching and Disability
As far as I know, there is no organized collocation of Catholic teaching on disability. We really need one. Not only a collection of ecclesial documents, but a few good essays on:
-healing, supernatural and natural, and its place in the lives of ordinary people
-theology of suffering, including a discussion of when to embrace suffering and when to reject it
-the responsibilities of people with disabilities as members of the community of faith
These are all matters I spend a lot of time considering, but especially the last. So much of what has been written tends to frame people with disabilities as the objects of righteous deeds, and not the subjects; yet if we are to serve as well as to be served, we face particular sets of challenges.
I’ll give a specific example in a later post.
Have you ever read anything by Fr. Henri Nouwen? He lived in a community with disabled people and wrote numerous books on suffering and faith, etc. You might find those interesting.
February 11th, 2007 at 9:58 pm