Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

63Amongst the wide range of disability theologians who inform the Christiandisability tradition today Jean Vanier is particularly significant. As withBonhoeffer, his theology emerges from practical experience with the poor. In1964 he established the first of his faith-based L’Arche community homes foradults with intellectual disability. Today these homes are spread across much ofthe world. His theology has been described as “theological realism,” signifyingthe Christian understanding that emerges from the outworking of God in ourlives, which in the case of L’Arche concerns its members being informed by ‘thepoor’ who guide them in becoming friends with God, 133 by being the face ofChrist. As Vanier states,‘Jesus calls his disciples not only to serve the poor but to discoverin them his real presence, a meeting with the Father. Jesus tells usthat he is hidden in the face of the poor, that he is in fact thepoor… Jesus is the starving, the thirsty, the prisoner, the stranger,the naked the homeless, the sick, the dying…’ 134In the early twenty-first century this ‘theology from below’ is one of thestrong threads informing the ongoing and ever-developing Christian disabilitytradition. 135133 Reinders, Hans. "Being with the Disabled: Jean Vanier's Theological Realism." InDisability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, edited by Brian Brock and John Swinton,467-511. Michigan & Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012, 472.Here, the author is citing Vanier in Community and Growth.134 ibid., 486135 Alongside this theological discourse there was, in Western, pre-Enlightenment society, aprevailing interpretation and application of Judeo-Christian values which could determinehow people with an intellectual disability, or those thought to be so on the basis ofmisunderstood behaviours, were understood. For example, bodily characteristics that felloutside of such normatively held values could denote ‘the insane’ as evil. The apparentlyirrational rantings and writhings of those confined in asylums were viewed as signs of demonpossession, causing such persons to be regarded by mainstream society as objects of fear.See,Foucault, Madness and Civilization. 189-209.However, such people were also viewed by others as denoting the ‘suffering Christ,’ andperceived to be of transcendent status, and a blessing to others. See,Clapton, Jayne, and Jennifer Fitzgerald. The History of Disability: A History of 'Otherness'Renaissance Universal, 1997 [cited 1/04/2005].With the onset of the Age of Enlightenment religious stigmatization was challenged by morescientific forms of categorization, and yet religious labelling, such as that of the ‘HolyInnocent,’ persisted. See,Wolfensberger, Wolf. The Origin and Nature of Our Institutional Models. (New York:Human Policy Press, 1975), 14-15.The residual effect could also be evidenced through people with an intellectual disabilitybeing regarded in charitable tones. Amongst Australia’s disability institutions, that which isnow known as Minda Incorporated but which at the time of inauguration in 1898 wasreferred to as Minda – The Home for Weak-Minded Children, referred to their caring task as,“.... this beneficient and Christian work.” See,