4 Ways We Can Make the Church More Welcoming for Our Disabled Members
Disability has been a part of my life for almost all of my life. My younger brother Matthew has two rare genetic conditions: Cri du Chat Syndrome and DiGeorge Syndrome. He is nonverbal, but what he lacks in words he makes up for in tablet-based communication and rascally grins. Over the course of his 21 years of life, he has had over a dozen surgeries to attend to a host of symptoms.
If you meet Matthew, he’s probably in a wheelchair, but not for lack of mobility. His wheelchair is a security device, just one of many, that allows him to settle and feel safe. He is a wanderer at night – a phrase familiar to many (exhausted) parents of children with behavioral disabilities – and his cognition is limited regarding sensations of fear and unfamiliarity. What’s yours is his!
I’m used to reciting all these facts and more to everyone from doctors to teachers to waitresses and yes, also to ministers.
While my lifelong Catholic faith has been a crucial piece of sense-making as I’ve grown up being Matthew’s sister, the sacramental and communal life of the Church has often been out of reach for my family as a whole.
Matthew’s noise-making, music-loving, wheelchair-using self has not always been welcome within Church spaces, and no amount of good intentions can make up for physical inaccessibility. This is not only confusing for him, but painful for my faithful family.
Making Church welcoming to persons with disabilities has become the crux of my writing career thus far and a core part of my own personal faith life. In this piece, I’m going to give an overview of the ways Churches can respond to disability, none of them are large or controversial actions.
A Church that welcomes the disabled is possible because my family has lived it.
There have been seasons of our lives where we didn’t attend Mass for years solely for lack of access and acceptance. There have also been seasons, thanks to the committed inclusion of the people in our local parish, where we were going weekly and at Matthew’s relentless and excited behest!
Whether disability is visible in your parish community or not, it's important to make Church accessible for all in order to establish a truly Christian community.
Including persons with disabilities is not a work of charity or a “nice addition” to the community. This work is mandatory. Time and again, Jesus prioritized the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed, and the chronically ill.
It’s time to follow His lead.
Tayler Crabb, @taylercrabb.
Watch Your Words… and Your Message
Language is often the first thing that gets in most peoples’ way. Are you wondering, “What do I even say?”
Here is a quick primer:
Disabled is not a bad word. Disability is the medical and social term for people whose bodily experiences impact their ability to perform what society says are normative social and professional functions.
The words “impaired” and “handicapped” should be left to medical professionals and parking spaces. Don’t use these to describe people.
Don’t use the word “bound” to describe a person in a wheelchair. Wheelchairs are just one example of a mobility aid. I bet you’ve used an aid in your life! Crutches, walkers, canes, hearing aids, eyeglasses, and strollers are all types of aids. You wouldn’t say a baby is “stroller-bound” and you wouldn’t say a person with glasses is “lens-bound.”
The term “special needs” should be avoided. While it can be helpful, particularly for families, to use “special needs” as it pertains to cognitive and behavioral disabilities – especially since disability-inclusive schooling is still so commonly referred to as “special education” – the use of the word “special” is derogatory in many ways. Calling a person with a disability “special” participates in what’s known as “inspiration porn” or “inspirationalizing.” Inspirationalizing happens when someone elevates a person who experiences a life difficulty to a place of honor solely because watching them “overcome” that difficulty makes the observer feel good. The term “special needs” is a euphemism because it downplays the reality of disability for the comfort of someone else. It elevates an inherent quality of saintliness that is not fair to project onto someone else, especially without knowing them. Disabled people are just people.
Despite what some may say, “differently-abled” is not more polite either. Sure, at its core, there’s truth to it: Disability is an ultimately inaccurate social category because everyone is just different! But there are real-world difficulties that accompany life with a disability. “Differently-abled” suffers from the same problems as “special needs” in how it downplays those difficulties.
Never, ever use the word “retard.” In the early 1900’s, this word was used to describe people with disabilities (it comes from the French word for “slow”). It is no longer used by medical professionals, but it’s still used to describe something as stupid, unfair, ridiculous, upsetting, or foolish. Using a word, which formerly identified a group, as a negative descriptor is the definition of a slur.
Metaphors convey meaning that can be harmful. Even if you use all the right words, the stories and messages we convey can have just the same impact as using a directly insulting word. It’s important to know how these stories and their frequent interpretations can harm disabled persons, especially in Christian spaces where we constantly hear stories about healing miracles. For example: Using the blind and deaf as metaphors of ignorance is hurtful to the blind and the deaf.
Our instructions about prayer can be harmful too. Telling the physically and mentally ill that they should just pray more maintains the fundamentally false belief that physical and mental experiences can be eliminated by having “enough faith” or by simply “doing the right things.” Health is not permanent, guaranteed, or even particularly “normal.” Everyone experiences sickness, injury, and – if we are fortunate – aging. All of these experiences can be disabling. Avoiding sickness, injury, and aging is not a sign of moral strength or depth of faith. Sickness, injury, and aging are signs of being human. Period.
Physical Access is an Important Beginning
If I had a dollar for every time I inquired with a Church about ramps, lifts, or widths of doors and aisles, I would have enough money to fund the renovation myself. The answer I’m always met with? “If disabled parishioners were attending, we would obviously make the space accessible to them!” This is putting the cart before the horse: How are disabled persons going to show up and make their needs known if they can’t get inside the building!?
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of ability and requires buildings to be accessible. Religious spaces are exempt from this requirement due to the separation of church and state.
As a result, many churches view making their building physically accessible as a generous act of charity towards disabled persons rather than the bare minimum beginnings of disability inclusion. If we are going to stop viewing disabled persons as special receptacles of charity and start treating them the way we treat anyone else, then physical access is a great place to begin.
Wondering where to start with physical accessibility? The doors, walkways, and aisles must be wide enough for a large wheelchair to fit through. Stairs must be accompanied by ramps, lifts, or elevators. Auditory and visual aids are helpful. Print or display readings and music in words big enough to read, and consider utilizing a sign language interpreter. (Pro tip: Ask your local community college if there are students in a sign language class that may be interested in volunteer hours or course credit!)
Spaces aren’t the only thing that need accessing. Religious education and ministry activities need to be accessible also. While there is no universally agreed upon catechetical program that serves the disabled community, one good option is SPRED, highlighted in this post.
Commit to the Sacraments
For so long, many believed that, in order to receive the sacraments, a person had to display faculties of reason. In other words, in order to receive the Eucharist and Confirmation, a person had to show they had cognition enough to verbally profess belief.
This is not the teaching of the Church. The Catholic Church has an amazing document called, “Guidelines for the Celebration of the Sacraments with Persons with Disabilities.” It outlines the theology behind the accessibility of the sacraments and defends the right to these sacraments by disabled persons.
You wouldn’t believe how many disabled Catholics don’t have their sacraments of initiation. My brother Matthew didn’t, until fellow parishioners who knew Matthew from Mass and school saw him reaching for the paten during communion and asked my mom if they could help him receive the Eucharist. We were so moved by their commitment and, with lots of work and practice, Matthew received the Eucharist and Confirmation when he was 18.
All persons have the right to receive the sacraments if they have sincere desire and there is more than one way to recognize this sincerity besides hearing a verbal “I do.”
Unfortunately, this will take a lot of work. Consider introducing your priest and Bishop to this document and advocate on behalf of your disabled brothers and sisters in Christ.
Commitment to the sacraments for all faithful requires real disability advocacy. Knowing one’s rights and having community support is crucial. It might seem daunting, but the everlasting rewards are worth it!
Prioritize Relationship Over “Expertise”
Many comments come from well-meaning places of recognizing the difficulties that come with disability and the desire to handle disability with thoughtful care. Unfortunately, these comments can appear to make disability “someone else’s problem.”
The single most common response from ministry professionals in church spaces when confronted with disability is, “I’m not trained to do that.”
Similar statements are made to parents of disabled children, “It takes a special kind of person.”
There is no such thing as a disability expert who understands all forms and nuances of disability. A person can spend their entire life studying one particular diagnosis and then meet a person whose symptoms and experiences don’t match up to what they already know.
A parent can know the ins and outs of their child and then meet a different child with the same diagnosis and not have a clue what to do. A doctor can treat a dozen patients with disabilities and not have two treatment plans alike. The only person who knows perfectly well the experience of a particular disability is the particular disabled person who is living it.
Relationship helps us move beyond keeping disability at arm's length as we hide behind a shield of lack of experience or knowledge.
Being in relationship with disabled persons and their families will teach you more than any professional program. Get to know the disabled persons in your community authentically, as persons. This is how you start to see needs and wants, likes and dislikes… just like any other person you befriend.
We can transform our Church spaces into joyfully inclusive places for all people in all seasons of human life.
Like Jesus, we center around those with different bodily experiences and in doing so, make manifest the call to diversity around God’s table.
Meet Madison Chastain
Madison Chastain is a former military brat living and writing in Chicago. She works full-time in marketing and communications for a graduate school of theology and ministry, and she volunteers for a variety of organizations serving persons with disabilities and their families.
Madison primarily writes about the body, faith, ethics, and culture, but you would also want her on your trivia team if the questions involved gothic literary monsters, niche perfumery, Northern California geography, or children's books. You can find Madison on Instagram @maddsienicole, and find more of her writing at her blog, theologyforeverybody.com.