Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

75challenges empirical notions of worth through the concept of human identitybeing shaped by God’s love for all in and through Christ.With the exception of the Christian Tradition model one of the commoncharacteristics of the models is that they describe what disability is or is not in auni-dimensional, reductionist form, with a tendency to be time and culturebound.183 Furthermore, a particular model of disability has often been observed asclaiming a position of universality or utmost primacy in terms of seeking todescribe what disability is. Distinctions based on alternative models have foundthemselves under-valued or ignored. For example, the Medical system construessickness from the perspective of functional impairment or the rehabilitativeperspective of the physician, 184 as opposed to having regard for disability as amore socio-politically constructed form of ailment bearing upon the individual orinstitutionalised community. A Social model of disability may define the dualisticnotion of ability/disability according to labour market principles that define suchterms according to the individual’s capacity to economically and socially supportoneself, 185 while ignoring the capacity of the Medical model and its embodiedperspective of people with a disability to define, at least in part, what disability is.The uni-dimensional approach to disability modelling excludes aspectsfrom other models which might lead to a more mature and inclusive definitionthat more adequately accounts for what disability is and how it interacts withindividuals and their duly constituted environments.Whereas the earlier decades of the twentieth century conceived of peoplewith a disability largely from a pathological and socially non-productiveperspective, the latter decades of the century saw the desire to redress whatbecame observed as a tragic, exclusivist emphasis on the Medical model.However, a Social model emerged with its own exclusivist tendencies and lack ofengagement with other models. As recently as 1993, British sociologist VicFinkelstein, a pioneering contributor to the Social model, defined disability inexclusivist terms when he stated that, “[d]isability is manufactured by attitudinal183 ibid., 88-89.184 Michailakis, Dimitris. "The Systems Theory Concept of Disability: One Is Not Born aDisabled Person, One Is Observed to Be One." Disability & Society 18, no. 2 (2003): 209-29,222.185 ibid.