On November 3, the annual Pyne Lecture on Ministry with Persons with Disabilities event was held virtually via Zoom, hosted by Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry. The presenter was Dr. Elizabeth Antus, Assistant Professor of Theology at BC, who has research interests in “feminist theology and theological approaches to disability and health, especially mental health,” as described by the event moderator.
Entitled “Ableism as an Affront to the Gospel,” the lecture continued the endowed series of annual speakers donated by Margaret Pyne in 1991. Pyne was a “lifelong advocate for persons with disabilities” and “saw the need to educate theological students about ministry for and with persons with disabilities,” the event moderator explained.
Antus began by mentioning her motivation for studying theological approaches to disability, which comes from her love for her brother, who has schizoaffective disorder. She explained the goal of her talk as, “How can we help inaugurate a culture shift towards disability justice, full inclusion, and celebrating bodily and neurological difference? And if we do this, what does it require of those of us who worship as Christians, given that many Christians with disabilities report that Churches can be some of the most ableist contexts that they experience?”
“Disability affects approximately 25% of the US population and 15% of the global population,” explained Antus. Reflecting on the 30-year legacy of The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Antus described how in the late 1980s, “Churches lobbied to be exempt [from the ADA] on the grounds that mandatory ADA compliance would be a violation of the First Amendment and would impose heavy financial burdens.”
Ableism is “a system that places value on people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, excellence, and productivity,” Antus said, citing this definition from the “disability writer, activist, and wheelchair user” Amy Kenny, specifically from her 2022 book My Body Is Not A Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church.
Antus proceeded to cite additional passages from Kenny’s book to demonstrate ableist rhetoric, practices, and conditions in the Church.
Kenny talked of her body being seen as a target for God’s saving work, a sign of “divine disapproval,” portraying her disability as “her fault and [that] she needs to be fixed,” said Antus.
Kenny was told by a woman at her church “that [she] would be healed (i.e., have her disability eradicated) if she stopped resisting God’s saving work,”Antus described. Kenny was also told “[i]f you just believed, God would heal you” and that “Jesus wants to see you running.”
Other comments included “What sin in your life is preventing you from getting up and walking?”, “Adam and Eve weren’t disabled, so that’s not God’s plan for humanity,” “You need to hope for more from life than disability,” “There are no wheelchairs in heaven,” “Everything happens for a reason,” “Jesus didn’t die for you to be in a wheelchair,” “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle so you must be able to handle this,” and “God doesn’t see you as disabled.”
“Plenty of people with disabilities do not want their disabilities cured,” said Antus, “and instead they want society to be structured in such a way that allows them to flourish and to be proud of their bodies.”
Antus proceeded to identify “a kind of hermeneutical or interpretative violence here; people with disabilities are denied the benefit of being understood to be capable of thinking, leading, and creating; everyone else knows what’s best.”
Antus then quoted Kenny once more, who described the situation as follows: “Many people at church avoid the discomfort of a messy lived experience by constantly promising a completeness yet to come … as though I’m not already a new creation with the mind of Christ, as if the Holy Spirit doesn’t already dwell in my disabled body.”
Antus also cited Erin Murphy, a Catholic laywoman and lifelong wheelchair user who is a clinical social worker. Murphy wrote in the National Catholic Reporter in 2021 about a “lack of wheelchair ramps, of pew cutouts, and of curb cuts, the inaccessibly small confessionals, and the impatience of the Eucharistic ministers when she needed an extra moment to position her wheelchair so she could receive the Eucharist by hand,” described Antus.
Murphy wrote in particular about hearing a homily, in which she says “disability was equated to sin” and “a woman with a disability was described as a burden to her parents … the priest added, ‘She would never have a full life.’” Murphy described this moment as a “dehumanizing experience” for her.
“It is all too common for Christians to view disability somehow as the result of sin,” said Antus, “whether it be the personal sin of the disabled person or the inheritance of Original Sin at the Fall … [i]n this mindset then, healing must be the answer… as eradication of the disability, a cure.”
Antus followed with a line from Boston College theologian Fr. James Keenan, S.J.: “I think the Christian urge to translate or interpret another’s suffering can also be as violent as the act of silencing. Worse still is the insistence of Christians to speak about another’s suffering, especially when they were the cause of that suffering.”
Antus described Keenan’s insight as reflecting both “the violence of being interpreted against [one’s] will and the violence of being silenced, dismissed,” which is “especially pronounced within Christian contexts because so many Christians need to cleave to their own sanitizing ideas about eradicating whatever suffering they think is necessarily symbolized by the people with disabilities who cross their path… to make our own lives easier, less messy, less complicated, less sad, supposedly.”
Presenting a way forward, Antus outlined three elements.
First is “Learning to listen to people with disabilities and to view them, or ourselves, as subjects with the authority to interpret their lives and needs rather than as objects upon which temporarily able-bodied people may project their anxieties and fears,” with “[l]istening as a consistent habit rather than an afterthought.”
Second is “Redefining, or reclaiming, sin not as something contained within and manifested in disabled bodies as such, but rather as the exclusionary and marginalizing systems that demean people with disabilities.”
Third is “Cultivating an understanding of people with disabilities as prophetically bearing the Good News, the Gospel, that we are all loved in all our various vulnerabilities by God.”
Antus closed by describing “instances throughout Scripture where disability is seen not only as not evil, but also as a positive, a way that God’s work may be shown.” For example, Antus explained that “Jacob acquires a limp after wrestling with the angel not as a punishment but as a sign of his new engagement with God,” and “In the post-Resurrection appearances, Jesus retains his wounds.”
Antus encouraged all to move past “attitudinal defensiveness” when talking about our own shortcomings and participation in ableism, which is “something we just all need to interrogate in ourselves… it’s something we’re all socialized into.”
“I think it’s about showing up consistently but then also being creative and seeing what the needs are for the specific people in each context,” Antus said. She offered the examples of priests’ attention to preaching respectfully, forming children early against ableism in religious education, parishioners helping with rides to medical appointments, and churches creating a fund to help people with disabilities pay what is known as “crip tax,” the thousands of dollars spent beyond insurance “just to get the basic medical care that they need.”
Lastly, Antus declared, “If those of us who are Christians stop trying to locate sin within disabled bodies we may actually be able to see that people with disabilities lead sacred lives, not despite their disabilities, but in part because of them.” She mentioned to “avoid a language that equates disability from the outset with loss and suffering.”
“Sin involves our refusal to extend ourselves in acts of love for God and neighbor,” said Antus, with “nothing here about a normative body.”
Thomas is a student in BC’s Carroll School of Management, who fittingly serves as the current Business Manager of The Torch in addition to his position as Campus News Editor. Thomas can be found around campus singing at Masses with the Liturgy Arts Group, tabling for the BC Pro-Life Club, deep in conversation while enjoying BC Dining cuisine, or gazing in awe at Gasson Hall and its Collegiate Gothic style architectural neighbors.
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