“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes— and ships— and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages— and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”
From “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll
With all due respect to the songs of one Mr. J. W. O. Lennon, MBE, I shall be the Walrus this time as I begin to speak once again of many things!
Our verbal meanderings today begin with me attending Mass last Sunday and hearing someone else’s homily. This is an unusual privilege for any priest who has spent most of his ministry in parishes giving homilies of his own. I never got to hear what the other folk in other pulpits were saying. Being “retired” has given me the time and space to change that whenever I wish.
The homilist this past Sunday seemed to be focused on ministering to parishioners who didn’t want their consciences troubled before having their daily dose of caffeine. He explained that when Jesus said “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven”, He intended something that was clear to His listeners but not so clear to us. According to our homilist, there was a gate in the city walls of Jerusalem, a narrow gate, that was appropriately called “The Eye of the Needle”. A camel laden with goods could not pass through it until most of the goods had been removed. Accordingly, Jesus meant that we need to unburden ourselves before entering the Kingdom of Heaven. Eckhart Tolle couldn’t have said it better.
Unfortunately for our homilist, that is NOT what Jesus meant. (If you heard a version of this fairy tale that speaks of a narrow part of a road between Jericho and Jerusalem as the alleged “Eye of the Needle”, what I am about to say applies equally there.)
This account is wrong on several counts. First of all, there is no archaeological evidence – zero – that any gate in Jerusalem was so named. Secondly, the story betrays a lack of understanding of the nature of gates and city walls. City walls were intended to protect a city against invaders. Gates potentially weakened the walls and therefore were only added as necessary, to allow people and goods to go in and out. No one would have built a gate so narrow that it would have easily been clogged. Moreover, a small door would have been easier for an enemy to break in a siege. Thirdly – and most importantly – this fairy tale fails to account for the disciples’ reaction. If they all knew about this alleged gate, they would have understood completely. Instead, we are told, they were “exceedingly astonished and wondered who could be saved”. The disciples understood Jesus to be speaking of an actual needle and an actual camel. They understood that the image stressed the impossibility of this happening almost to the point of absurdity. The point was – a point Jesus clarified still further in His response to the disciples’ astonishment – that no one, not even the wealthy, can be saved by their efforts alone. “For God” – and only for God – “all things are possible”. To import this fairy tale of a city gate undermines the story and denies what Jesus is saying.
Yes, statements like this from Jesus make us feel uncomfortable. They should. We need His Word to be that double-edged sword that explores our actions and our intentions, our words and our thoughts, and exposes to us what is really there. We all fall short, but again, with God, all things are possible, But only with God. Yes, there are times when we are called to unburden ourselves. But even this happens only as a response to the Lord’s saving grace. Only with God are all things possible.
(And now for something completely different… but not so different after all.)
I was reminded of all this in a peculiar way the next day. I watched a webinar that was advertised as being about fostering vocations among autistic people. The webinar intended to do this from a Catholic perspective. The panelists were experts with impressive résumés, with one exception – a newly-ordained priest described as someone who “experiences autism”. He was the only autistic person on the panel, as far as we were told. He was also the only one without degrees beyond what he needed to be ordained a diocesan priest.
What to make of this webinar? To steal shamelessly from Dickens, “It was the best of webinars; it was the worst of webinars”!
How was it the “best”? For one thing, it is a still-rare example of anything being said about autism from a Catholic perspective. For another? Just as in last Sunday’s Mass, the Gospel was proclaimed – at least in part. The panel members affirmed what should be obvious to everyone – autistic Catholics, like all other Catholics, are fully members of the Body of Christ. The Lord and the Church welcome and love them. Autistic Catholics receive the Sacraments and each have their own vocation from the Lord. All well and good. But the “good” pretty much ends here.
How was it the “worst”? Oh, let me count the ways! To begin with, all of the wonderful truths the panel affirmed about autistic people in God’s eyes didn’t carry over into the attitudes the panel members displayed, time and time again. Two of the panelists had adult children who were, in the parents’ words, “profoundly autistic” and non-speaking. The panelists felt free to share embarrassing stories about their children, without the children’s consent or knowledge, that would have been totally unacceptable to do with “normal” adult children. One panelist stated categorically that his adult daughter would never have a job and was amazed to discover that she could read. Listen, folks. Being non-verbal does not make someone stupid! It means that you need to find another way to communicate with this person. One response from a panelist to the question of how a non-verbal autistic person might discover or have a vocation was to point out that her adult daughter smiles at people at Mass sometimes. She makes them feel better. She becomes a member of the Munchkin Lollipop Guild, wearing a mask to hide her pain while she makes others feel good. Is this really her vocation? Whenever there have been situations where “normal” people really strive to get to know autistic people, including profoundly autistic people, the “normal” people report that the experience transforms them and makes them much better people and much better Christians. But this can only happen when we let autistic people be themselves and not force masks on them in order that they be “acceptable” to what Thomas Reynolds calls “the cult of normalcy”.
Perhaps the nadir of it all was seeing how the young autistic priest was treated. One of the panelists, a psychologist at the young priest’s seminary and the priest’s mentor, told the priest that he owed his vocation to him (the panelist), thus declaring himself (the panelist) equal to God and treating the young priest like a pet who owed him big time. The priest himself gave a lengthy and moving witness, but it was also telling. He declared how his formation was “ideal”, but then let slip that there were difficulties. Even his friends gave him a hard time sometimes, but the friends were right. The priest mentioned needing to go to his room to stim. (For you who may not know, stimming is one way that autistic people express and deal with anxieties and pressures. It is usually necessary for health.) If his autism is a gift of God to the Church, why was he taught that he must hide anything that reveals his autism? Recent studies have shown that autistic masking is traumatizing. At one point, the priest told us, the Lord said to him, “You are not to hate what I have created”. Can we wonder at this? Suppose that any one of us were told that, in order to have and hold a certain job, we must hide everything that makes us who we are? Aren’t autistic Catholics also a city set on a hill, and not intended to be kept under a bushel basket? I felt so sorry for that young priest. (Yes, I know that, allegedly, autistic people lack empathy!!) He’s not allowed to acknowledge the contradiction, the cognitive dissonance, in everything he was taught, even though he must see it.
This idea that autistic people need to “mask” is the equivalent of that homilist’s assertion about the “eye of the needle”. If autistic people can be made to mask, then their “affliction” becomes invisible to others and won’t prick their consciences. On the other hand, masking prevents the autistic person from truly discovering and living out his or her vocation in the Church, as the autistic person can only do that AS an autistic person, not as something he or she is not.
There is much more that I could say, but perhaps I have made my point?
This is not rocket science. Treat autistic people as you would want to be treated, and see what happens. Trust that the Lord knows what He is doing, and doesn’t need you to control Him. Autistic people often have an unsettling, prophetic vocation for the rest of the Church. Let’s not gag them with masks.