Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

29norm of cleanliness. Such a purging can be located in specific ethnic, cultural andreligious contexts. 28 The language of purging resonates with the wider societalattitude to the institution. Society is relieved “when the deviant body andunhinged mind are consigned to an institution” 29 and its segregating services. 30The societal body finds a suitable repository for its waste.Indeed Clapton and Fitzgerald go so far as to assert that people withdisabilities can be viewed as ‘the Other’ of ‘the Other.’ They argue that amongstthose who can lay claim to being oppressed and silenced because of theirdifference from proscribed social norms people with intellectual disabilities arefurther from that norm than others. Not only is otherness imposed by dint ofdisability, but a further layer of otherness is added to those with an intellectualdisability because of the loss of the deeply-valued social function of reason.Sociologist Carolyn Thompson confirms this level of socio-political dislocationin asserting that disability concerns fail to even be recognised as forms of socialinjustice, instead being consigned to religious prayers and charitable appeals. 31As will be noted in the following chapter, when addressing the DisabilityRights model of disability, this sense of otherness has even been contributed to28 In a nationalistic, ethnic context, Miroslav Volf describes otherness as the “filth that mustbe washed away from the ethnic body ... " – that is, ethnic cleansing. See,Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness,and Reconciliation. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 57.This image bears some relation to the outworking of Old Testament purity laws – Leviticuschapters 13 & 14 – that see the leper purged from the local community and consigned to lifeoutside the city walls. See National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States ofAmerica Holy Bible, Old Testament, 98-102.David Tracy speaks of the teachings of the three great monotheistic religions, Christianity,Judaism and Islam, producing a projected other to their prophetic faith in the God of thecovenant: they have named this other the pagan. This projected other becomes a source ofcontempt. See,Tracy, David. Dialogue with the Other: The Inter-Religious Dialogue. Edited by RaymondCollins, Thomas Ivory, Joel Delobel, Lambert Leijssen and Terrence Merrigan, LouvainTheological & Pastoral Monographs. (Grand Rapids: Peeters Press/William B. EerdmansPublishing Company), 1991, 49.29 Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. "Harvie Krumpet: Narrating the Ethics ofDisability and Death." Interaction 18, no. 3 (2005): 24-28, 25.30 Cain, Paul. "Right Policy – a Critique of the Australian Government's Welfare to WorkPolicy for Australians with Intellectual Disability." Interaction 19, no. 2 (2005): 18-28, 20.Here, the author asserts that institutional services such as the sheltered workshop partly stemfrom the ‘false science’ of eugenics, which sought to breed out people with intellectualdisability from mainstream society through programs of segregation. More will be said ofeugenics in chapter 3.31 Thompson, Carolyn. "Ableism: The Face of Oppression as Experienced by People withDisabilities." In Injustice and the Care of Souls: Taking Oppression Seriously in PastoralCare, edited by Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen Montago, 211-26. (Minneapolis:Fortress Press, 2009), 212.