Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

78social normality. The raising of this issue invites the question, ‘What is normal?’A more prescriptive answer could, for example, pedantically arbitrate on anextensive list of collective and individual social functions and expectations, alongwith issues related to collective and individual identity. Apart from framingnormality in terms of sameness this perspective mirrors the traditional medicalapproach inasmuch as it all but quantifies and defines its terms of referencewithin an empirical and legalistic construct.Stanley Hauerwas, speaking from under the broad umbrella of theChristian Tradition model, proposes an alternative response to the issue ofnormality by advocating for what he terms “the gift of differentness.” 194 Heasserts that:… the demand to be normal can be tyrannical unless weunderstand that the normal condition of our being together is thatwe are different. If we are to be a good community we must beone that has convictions substantive enough to not fear ourdifferences and, indeed, to see that we would not be whole withoutthe other being different than us. 195The issue of difference raises the spectre of a society no longer assumingthe form of an organism with clearly defined boundaries. However, David Tracy,speaking from a liberationist perspective, asserts:A fact seldom admitted by the moderns, the antimoderns, and thepostmoderns alike – even with all the talk of otherness anddifference – is that there is no longer a centre with margins. Thereare many centres ... There is a price to be paid for any genuinepluralism – that price many pluralists seem finally either unwillingto pay or unable to see. It is that there is no longer a centre. 196While this concept pleads for a more fluid and changeable societalperspective and understanding of normality it does allow for minority andoppressed social groupings, such as those with intellectual disabilities, to come infrom the margins of societal habitation and claim a place within the broad andvaried parameters of a pluralist society. Such a perspective is crucial to theframing of a disability model that is inclusive in social orientation. At this point194 Hauerwas, "Community and Diversity,” 37. Hauerwas’ concern with social tyrannypertains to the more legalistic interpretation of normality.195 ibid., 40.196 Tracy, David. On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics, and Church. Edited by TheCatholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll), Concilium Series. (New York &London: Orbis Books/SCM Press, 1994), 4. Word has been italicized by the author.