A Gathering of Friends: Exploring the World of Special Religious Education/Development
The room is dim and soft music plays. Each participant enters as they arrive, peeling off layers and extending quiet greetings to those already seated and busy at task. There is a seat and table space for each person beside their partner: Catechist and friend. You approach the shelves that outline the space. They teem with color, smell, sound, and texture. You pick an activity that speaks to you, then settle in for a calm, centered, extended time dedicated to your task. It might be a tray of tiny bells, each with a different, crystal ring. It might be a loom of soft yarn with colors that blur and transform as you go. You can do something new each gathering, but I always return to my tried and true watercolors.
One by one, each participant takes a seat in the sacred space. There is an altar, atop which sits the Holy Book, candles, and flowers. We share time in prayer, motivated by a simple, spirit-filled theme. We share stories from our week that evoke this theme. We listen to music and readings that invoke God. Invocation and evocation: the core of accessible liturgy.
Finally, we share a meal. It’s always a smorgasbord: popcorn, cookies, fruit, chips, pumpkin bread, and tea. Questions about holiday travel, the weather, and, “do you know Nancy?” are passed and traded like the family-style platters. It always goes longer than planned.
Cleaning up is as sacred as anything else. With bowls and pitchers of warm, fresh water poured over another’s hands. You scrub with a nail brush to unearth dried finger paint, then slather on lavender lotion to fill in the cracks.
This is SPRED. SPRED is Special Religious Education/Development. It is a hallmark of the Archdiocese of Chicago where it was founded, but it can be found in parishes across the globe. What I’ve described is the general pattern of a biweekly SPRED session. The gaps are filled in with the habits of our friends. Some ask questions over and over and over. Some don’t speak at all. Some have mobility challenges and move a bit slower. Some want to give you a manicure from the moment they arrive. This is what we call our catechumens with disabilities: friends.
I once had a disability anthropologist from whom I was taking a course for my master’s degree scoff at this. “You call them friends?” I blushed, concerned and embarrassed within the context of our conversation about paternalism. Is it infantilizing? Is it demeaning? I think I shrugged in response. But, if I’d had a bit more time, and if the setting was a bit more kind, I think I know exactly how I would have responded: “Well yeah. They’re my friends.”
Because they are! I have come to know and treasure each of my SPRED friends. What’s more, each catechist is assigned a specific friend to accompany during the session, and to reach out to during our weeks apart to check in with. The catechist gets to know the family, sometimes offering a ride to and from the session. Cards and gifts are sent on holidays and birthdays. My friend likes to text, and does so….a lot. It has been a practice in boundaries and healthy conversation for us both. What is the right thing to say? How much is too much? What can I keep privately for myself? If this all seems like a lot of responsibility, I invite you to consider your preexisting beliefs about disabled persons. Is this not what we implicitly do for our friends?
Mary Williams, @creatingtolove.
SPRED is designed to make parishes more accessible and inclusive to people with disabilities at every age. Each parish group serves one of four age groups starting around age 7 and extending into adulthood. If a parish wishes to start a SPRED group, they don’t even need to have parishioners with disabilities! They will become a hub, a resource for their entire diocese which can refer families looking for programs. What a parish does need is time, space, and dedicated catechists.
SPRED is not an archive of resources. There are no books or worksheets. You could certainly take what SPRED does and, if you have a person with a disability who needs catechesis in your parish, utilize components to make religious education more accessible. But SPRED is meant to be a separate space and time, with activities that belong solely to SPRED. Handing someone preused leftovers, especially when that person is already experiencing exclusion, is not how you make a person feel sacred and welcomed. SPRED is a commitment.
You need a dedicated room, maybe even two. There are 14 persons maximum in each SPRED group, to keep attention focused and personalized. 6 friends and 6 catechists, plus one activity catechist who attends to the things on the shelves, and one lead catechist who organizes the group and facilitates reflection. One of the spaces needs to be taken straight from a Montessori classroom: Shelves filled to the brim with sensory activities, tables and chairs for work and mealtime, and space for clean-up ritual. The second space is the sacred space, a sanctuary with chairs facing around the altar.
SPRED is not formal sacramental preparation: friends do not receive the sacraments of initiation via SPRED. There is a special SPRED Reconciliation service in which a priest joins in, bedecked in his confessional stole, and absolves participants of the sins they reflect on within their hearts. SPRED provides an alternative mode of spiritual reflection and relationship with Christ and one another, to show friends that they are welcome at Church. Because Mass is really just a different way of doing SPRED! Mass has music that welcomes us in. Mass is full of faces we recognize. Mass is sensory: From its stained glass, statues, murals, and decorations to the incense, the sounds, the hardwood and soft fabrics. At Mass we listen to readings from the Word. At Mass we listen to reflections that invoke God. At Mass we share a special meal.
This is why I am so passionate about SPRED: its objectives and its methods are at the heart of the Gospel and at the heart of human needs. We all yearn for belonging in community. We are all brought to rest by designated time doing things that spark our creativity and enliven our senses. We can all be brought to God’s altar by being prompted to reflect on moments of beauty, of joy, of love, of family. We all need to laugh over a meal.
Christ knew this. These truths of human nature drove His ministry. He didn’t give the message people wanted or thought they deserved but the one they needed, and through stories! He dined with those who were excluded. He manipulated materials to perform miracles. The core of our faith is what SPRED returns us to.
—————
If you are interested in starting a SPRED group in your parish: You can! Even if SPRED is not in your diocese, it is completely sanctioned by the Church. The first thing you should do is sit down with your Pastor and familiarize all of the necessary movers and shakers with SPRED and its material needs. At our parish, the Knights of Columbus picked SPRED as the ministry it supports. You can do a series of collections at Mass, or a larger fundraiser. Then reach out to the SPRED Chicago organization, who will guide you through the proper preparation for catechists, how to recruit friends, and provide you with training. Yes: You do need to be trained! Even if SPRED sounds straightforward and common sense, working with people with disabilities requires training. Don’t just build your room and jump on in! Make sure you are equipped to be the best catechist you can be. You can learn more at www.spred-chicago.org.
Meet Madison Chastain
Depending on the availability of an evening Mass, you will find Madison in either a pew or a boxing gym on Sunday mornings. Having just graduated with her MA in theology and ethics from The University of Chicago, Madison works full-time introducing teens to the Catholic intellectual tradition, and part time in vocational support for those caring for adults with intellectual disabilities. She loves reading, oil pastels, talking about women's reproductive health, and she makes a mean beer bread. You can find Madison on Instagram @maddsienicole, and find more of her writing at her blog, theologyforeverybody.com.