Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

189course of pastoral action that is applied to the situation. In the case of thisextended reflection the action assumes the form of a pastoral model. This modeldictates the pastoral carer’s future relationship with those who are the focus of thereflection. This action then becomes the basis for further reflection, discernmentand analysis, understanding and pastoral action.5.7 SummaryCentral to this extended reflection is the development of a model ofpastoral engagement with people with intellectual disability who live ininstitutional contexts which is based on authentically discerning the revealedidentity of these people. Therefore, it has been the principal aim of this chapter todetail a qualitatively-constructed design that gives best expression to that identity.It is an identity that cannot be described through quantitative research designs.They are not constructed to interpret and understand the nuances of non-empiricalhuman behaviour. These nuances are highlighted through those with major levelsof intellectual disability whose voice and behaviour require particularly stringentlevels of listening and observation and then, interpretation and understanding.The necessity is for a design that will be as responsive and adaptive aspossible to the pastoral theological and socio-politically situated circumstances ofthose in question. Through appropriate description and understanding thenarratives of these people can point towards the type of liberatory pastoral modelthat will most authentically engage with them.What has been called for is a means of pastoral relationship that dignifiespeople with intellectual disability as those who merit due recognition of theirunique life situation as well as their theological status as human beings created inthe image of God.As has been outlined earlier, the history of people who may have foundthemselves described as morons, idiots, feeble-minded or retarded is a historymarked by silence, both for embodied, institutional and wider socio-politicalreasons. Even today, such influences maintain a measure of silence overinstitutionalised people with intellectual disability.Such silence points emphatically to the need for this reflection to not seekto speak for or about people with disability. This is so even though this may seem