Franciscan at Home

Para la comprensión y la conversión: en servicio de los que tienen una discapacidad cognitiva

En esta columna, hemos estado platicando acerca de la catequesis para personas con discapacidades; y hasta aquí, hemos enfocado principalmente a las personas con discapacidades físicas. El siguiente artículo de esta serie tomará en consideración trastornos del espectro autista, mientras que en este artículo consideramos discapacidades de aprendizaje y retrasos en el desarrollo.

Es importante recalcar el siguiente punto: aunque algunas personas tengan discapacidades que puedan perjudicar su capacidad para comprender las enseñanzas de la Iglesia Católica, aun pueden tener un amor profundo para Jesucristo. De hecho, el Directorio nacional para la catequesis dice, "Los niños con discapacidades cognitivas a menudo tienen una comprensión intuitiva poco común de lo sagrado."

El Directorio nacional para la catequesis también declara, "Se deben de establecer metas y objetivos catequéticos para los estudiantes que tienen necesidades especiales y que forman parte de la catequesis parroquial. No se les debe de segregar para una catequesis especializada a menos que sus discapacidades les imposibilite para la participación en el programa básico catequético."

no es ninguna piedra de tropiezo para las personas con discapacidad física

La catequesis para las personas con alguna discapacidad física no es tan difícil. Solo en casos muy poco frecuentes deberán los catequistas de hacer algunas pequeñas adaptaciones al contenido de una clase, a diferencia de la preparación de clases para personas con discapacidad cognitiva. El mayor reto que enfrentarán los catequistas al preparar clases para personas con discapacidades físicas se relaciona con el asegurar que los materiales catequéticos y las instalaciones sean lo más accesibles posible.

La Conferencia de Obispos Católicos de los Estados Unidos escribe, en cuanto a la necesidad de darle la bienvenida a las personas con discapacidad:

"Ya que la parroquia es la puerta de entrada a la plena participación en la experiencia cristiana, es la responsabilidad tanto de los pastores como de los laicos asegurar que aquellas puertas siempre estén abiertas. Los costos nunca deben de ser la consideración controladora que limite la bienvenida que se ofrece a los de entre nosotros que tengamos una discapacidad, ya que el proporcionar el acceso a las eventos religiosos es un deber pastoral."

Aunque estemos de acuerdo en el concepto de accesibilidad a los eventos religiosos en nuestras parroquias, cada instalación catequética, escuela, o parroquia puede tener sus dificultades específicas en hacerse un lugar más accesible. El Directorio nacional para la catequesis dice, "En la medida de lo posible, las mismas personas con discapacidad deberían de guiar al personal catequético en hacer las adaptaciones curriculares según sus necesidades particulares." En el caso de la catequesis de niños, los padres de familia serán nuestro mejor recurso. Para que seamos verdaderamente acogedores, no obstante, tenemos que encontrar y reunirnos con las personas discapacitadas en nuestra comunidad. Muchas veces podemos creer que no hay gente con discapacidad en nuestra comunidad, simplemente porque no las vemos. Esto es muy poco probable. Al contrario, es muy factible que si investigamos, podamos descubrir que la parroquia es, de hecho, físicamente inaccesible.

Vayan, pues, y enseñen a todas las naciones: el mandato evangélico de catequizar a todas las personas

Como lo dice San Pablo, nuestra actitud tiene que ser la de Cristo. La Segunda persona de la Santísima Trinidad se hizo hombre para salvarnos de nuestros pecados. "Se despojó de sí mismo, tomando condición de servidor," y murió en una cruz (Filipenses 2: 7-8, Biblia de Jerusalén. Ed. Desclée de Brouwer, 2009). Durante su breve estancia en la Tierra, Jesús sanó a los leprosos, y también a los ciegos, los sordos, cojos y paralíticos. En los Evangelios, encontramos historias específicas de milagros, y podemos decir con seguridad que Jesús sanó a muchas otras personas cuyas historias nunca se hicieron públicas. Sin embargó, no curó a todos. Nos enseñó que ni los pecados de las mismas personas con discapacidad, ni los pecados de sus padres son la causa de sus discapacidades (cf. Juan 9: 1-41). Y con más importancia aún, nos enseñó a amarnos los unos a los otros. La catequesis siempre debe de ser un acto amoroso: no estamos enseñando simplemente sobre Jesús, sino que estamos conduciendo a nuestros estudiantes hacia una relación con Jesucristo, quien nos ama a todos.

C. S. Lewis was a conjurer, whose words evoke the magic of ordinary things, breach the ramparts of rationalism, awaken the appetite for the eternal, and evangelize through the medium of fiction.

Plato’s “allegory of the cave,” as related by Socrates, tells of a group of people imprisoned in a cave since childhood. They have never seen the light of day and so imagine that shadows projected on a wall compose the whole of reality.

The progressive narrowing of thought in the Western world since the Enlightenment has achieved a similar kind of effect, shrinking our horizons and restricting our vision of reality. We could say that this intellectual narrowing has dimmed the memory of our true homeland, or, as philosopher Peter Kreeft describes, it has screwed “down the manhole covers on us so we became squinting underground creatures” instead of eagles capable of soaring towards the sun. Like the cave dweller’s attraction to reality in Plato’s famous allegory, however, the longing for light (which is the desire for the infinite) cannot be fully extinguished. Though buried deeply, it lies dormant and waits for someone to bring it to life.

As with many of our metaphysical troubles, often the path of awakening passes through a baptism of the imagination, the faculty that acts like a router to the deepest recesses of the soul. The art of storytelling is an exquisitely appropriate means to the rehabilitation of our capacity to perceive reality. Stories pique our curiosity and sense of wonder, and they excite our spiritual taste buds. With our souls’ senses heightened, our vision begins to clear and sharpen, and we perceive the magic and mystery that lies beneath the surface of everyday things.

Jesus used stories, symbols, parables, and paradoxes to reveal the “mysteries of the Kingdom.” The Word Incarnate, whose story is “the most tremendous tale of all,” revealed the magic of ordinary things, like seeds, sowers, trees, food, and drink in order to unlock the portals of the imagination and awaken our longing for infinite love and joy.[i] He is the storyteller par excellence and the bearer of Good News from a far-off country, the “happy homeland of the Trinity,” which is our true origin and destiny.

Silence is an invitation to receive a gift. Our part is to receive, respond, and then collaborate more fully with the work of the Holy Spirit. By learning to appreciate silence, we make the time and space needed to allow our desire for God to grow. As our desire for God grows, we in turn, respond more readily to his next invitation to silence. An Ecosystem for Active Reflection God doesn’t impose silence on us, nor does he coerce it from us; instead he waits in silence for us to turn toward him. When we attempt to force silence on ourselves or others as a penance or punishment, or out of our own need for control, we risk associating silence with emptiness or privation. Granted, there is a self-emptying which accompanies our entry into silence, but privation is not silence’s end. The sole purpose of a self-emptying silence is to make room for God’s fullness. Consider the full active silence that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI encourages: “In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth... Deeper reflection helps us to discover the links between events that at first sight seem unconnected... For this to happen, it is necessary to develop an appropriate environment, a kind of ‘ecosystem’ that maintains a just equilibrium between silence and words, images and sounds.”

“Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!” (The Hound of Heaven, Francis Thompson)

Christian history is awash with the affirmation that human beings have been created to desire God, like the beautiful “cor inquietum” of St. Augustine: “You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Since the sixteenth century, however, many academic philosophers have disputed this and have claimed that there is no evidence that human beings are “made for God.” I have no intention of entering into this controversy. Instead, I would like to draw attention to the insights of the saints and the teaching of the Church through the centuries. St. Thomas Aquinas expressed the same thought when he wrote, “Wherefore God alone can satisfy the will of man, according to the words of Ps 102… Therefore God alone constitutes man’s happiness;” and St. Francis de Sales wrote, “Thou hast made me, O Lord, for Thyself, to the end that I may eternally enjoy the immensity of Thy glory.” St. Alphonsus Ligouri had the same idea and worded it thus: “Eternal salvation… is the one and sovereign good of man, seeing that it is the one end for which he was created.” In our own time, the Catechism insists: “The desire for God is written in the human heart because man is created by God and for God… Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.” We can therefore rely on this desire to draw our students to God. My experience also tells me we can. Before I say how, I need to offer some caveats: first, it is God, who draws his children to himself at his appointed time; second, the individual human being is always free to reject God’s invitation; moreover, the relationship between God and the individual soul can never be reduced to an automated mechanical response: love can only be love if it is freely given and freely accepted.

The values of secular society are increasingly divergent from those of our Catholic Faith. We live in a time that seems to fit St. Paul’s description of a people who are “ingenious in their wickedness” (Rom 1:30). The task of forming Catholic conscience in children and youth might at times seem impossible in today’s world, and we might be tempted to despair. Indeed, no human methodology could accomplish this task. “For human beings this is impossible, but for God, all things are possible” (Mt 19:26).

Catechesis, in the mind of the Church, however, is not rooted in human methodology, but in the pedagogy of God. It is the Church’s mission to be a “visible and actual continuation of the pedagogy of the Father and of the Son.” How can we as catechists use the divine pedagogy, the way God teaches, to form the consciences of our learners? Here are five ways, corresponding to five aspects of the pedagogy of God.

Invite the learners to be their best selves

The pedagogy of God is invitational and person-centered. Jesus invited his followers into relationship with him (and continues to do so today). He often saw potential in people that they did not see in themselves. Consider St. Peter, for example, who tells Jesus to go away, saying he, Peter, is “a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). But Jesus sees what Peter could be, what he was made to be. While we might think many different things will make us happy, the only true and lasting happiness is found in each becoming the person God created that person to be.

Noëlle Le Duc, while looking for ways to awaken the faith in young children, identified two important aspects of catechetical pedagogy. We shall use the terms, “fidelity to man and fidelity to God.”[1] Fidelity to Man The first aspect, fidelity to man, leads us to ask, how do we address children? In order to answer this question, we must take several points into consideration. First, we must remember that the human capacities of the children are still limited; in order to receive and adhere to the Word of God, they need to learn self-control, silence, how to listen, and so on. Young children, moreover, are still close to God, who is their origin and their Creator. Children are also innocent, although, like all of us, they are still marked by original sin. Finally, religious education must also consider that every child is unique and free. Noëlle Le Duc was not a scholar, but she was given a strong pedagogical and catechetical charism. Her practical pedagogy is not a result of academic research but is the fruit of her personal experience, enriched by the efforts of a group of educators and elementary school teachers. Her experience aligns with the research done by specialists in psychology, pedagogy, and children’s catechesis. These specialists helped her take into account all the aspects of the child’s education and to elucidate the particular aspects of her own pedagogy. For example, Noëlle Le Duc would refer to Maria Montessori, who described the great receptivity of children aged three to six years old as the “the absorbent mind.” Children are also able to remain in silence and to recollect themselves in the presence of God, as Hélène Lubienska de Lenwal explained in her writings. This Montessori educator said that young children could be compared to contemplatives: [My] observations obliged me to recognize that lots of children are naturally contemplative. If their capacity for attention is not developed, it is because they lacked the favorable conditions. It must be the same in the order of grace.[2]

How can we make Sacred Scripture come alive for the children we teach? Is simply reading the verse or parable to the students enough? St. Jerome wrote, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” How can we help our students not to be ignorant of Sacred Scripture and instead come to appreciate and be immersed in it?
Scripture may be used in prayer, as a means of meditation or guided imagery with younger students. Begin with a short, familiar parable or Scripture reading. In our example we will be using the passage in which Jesus blesses the children, Matthew 19:13-15. To help the children who are visual learners, we can show a picture of Jesus with the children. Slowly read the Scripture passage to the children. Ask the children to close their eyes and imagine they are there with the children in the passage.