Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

56sharing a God-given status of equal regard? To what extent do I seek to keepdistance from these figures out of fear of having personal security threatened? Towhat extent do these people threaten any personal sense of self-sufficiency oromnipotence? And amidst such questions I have cause to remember thequestioning, pastoral frailty expressed by 1960s’ American chaplain to the‘mentally retarded,’ Robert Perske, who, in the face of overwhelminginstitutional oppression, sorely questioned his own pastoral capabilities andtheological assumptions 96 .The answering of such issues will contribute significantly to understandinghow those who seek to engage in pastoral relationship with these oppressedpeople can best offer and develop liberating model relationships with them.2.3 Models of DisabilityAs a preface to such deliberation, it is noted that people who live with adisability, both intellectual and other, are the subject of much considereddiscourse as to how they and their lived environments ought to be best interpretedand understood. It is also noted that some disability models and critiques haveemerged from movements and discourses beyond that of disability, such as thatof the feminist movement. 97 These can bear application to people with a disabilityand their lived circumstances on the basis of discernibly similar socio-politically96 Perske, Robert. "The Gap between the Mentally Retarded and the Pastor: A Case Study ofthe Gap between Ministry and People." In The Pastoral Voice of Robert Perske, edited byWilliam Gaventa and David Coulter, 93-102. (New York: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 2003),94-96.97 See,Rothschild, Joan. The Dream of the Perfect Child. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,2005). Here, the male/female Western duality is described in terms of the superior male selfwhich represents mind, reason, culture, spirit and self, while the female self represents nature,body, matter and other. See 8.The stigmatized otherness of the female reinforces the perfectibility of man. See 38.This parallels the stigmatized institutional deviant who becomes the object of fear for widersociety and the focus of a eugenics agenda.See also,Chesters, Janice. "A Horror of the Asylum or of the Home: Women's Stories 1880-1910." In'Madness' in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum, edited by Catherine Coleborneand Dolly MacKinnon, 135-44. (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2003).Here, a feminist critique of Australian institutionalisation defines such facilities as beingcontrolled by male figures of oppression, such as clinicians, police and judges, whospecifically sought the incarceration of women.For example, see 136.