Churches and Disability

Chuch of England

As of July 2010, the Church of England will refer to 'people with disabilities' rather than 'disabled people'. The Equality Act 2010, and information on the government's website, still uses the term 'disabled people'.

The Committee for Ministry of and among Deaf and Disabled People (CMDDP) carried out a survey in 2006 to initiate an informed debate on the quality of life of disabled Clergy. These were the results:

• 45% of respondents were registered disabled before training, 8% became disabled during training, and 47% became disabled after ordination
• Analysis was done to see if it is easier for people with disabilities to become ministers. Before 1999, 30% of those with disabilities were disabled when ordained; after 1999, 88% were ordained after becoming disabled. This suggests it is now much easier to enter ordained ministry if you have a disability
• The most common form of impairment is “Walking and Mobility” (44% of the sample) followed by “Hearing” (19% of the sample). “Depression” is the least common impairment with only 2% of the sample being affected by it.
• A large number of those who responded reported negative experiences as people with disabilities

The Rev John Naude, vicar at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Hampshire and another member of Through the Roof, is one of a few full-time wheelchair-using English clergy within the Church of England.

“Historically,” he says, “the Church has primarily seen disabled people as people who you do things for, in the sense of the old charity image. I think through disabled people and the disability movement, disabled people are saying, ‘I don’t want to be pew-fodder any more. I have a part to play within the Church.’”

He says the Church’s attitude to disabled people in the 1980s was “awful”, but he pursued a life in the Church because it was “a calling from God”.

The Disability Discrimination Act has helped to change attitudes, he says. “I have noticed a huge amount of change in the 10 years that I have been ordained. People are less inclined to be working on the medical model of disability and are moving much more towards the social model.”

Methodist Church

Most Methodist Districts now have an appointed District Disability Adviser who helps to raise disability issues within the local church communities.

Roman Catholic Church

From 'Religion, the final frontier', Disability Now:

The idea of prayer and pilgrimage to “relieve pain and suffering” has traditionally been an important part of the Catholic faith. The water from the spring of the grotto at Lourdes is said to have “healing and cleansing properties”. And after Holy Masses and his Wednesday Audiences in Rome, sick and disabled people have a spot reserved for them that allows them to be closer to the Pope, and he stops to greet them.

The modern Catholic Church still sees disabled people as different, “suffering” and “special” and in need of cures and charity.

Dr Lina Petri, press secretary to the Vatican, says: “Suffering has always had a special place in the attentions of the charity of the Church. Therefore, obviously, both the sick and the disabled who have less apparent possibilities than so-called normal people, they are always in the centre of the attentions of the Church, the Popes, and of course the various institutions run by them.”

Cristina Gangemi, disability adviser to the Roman Catholic Archdicese of Southwark, and to the wider Church in the UK, says: “The whole idea of Lourdes is that there is a sense of healing within it. What we have been trying to do is create a shift in culture whereby we do not see it as healing the body, but that a disabled person can experience inner healing; nothing to do with being cured of a disability.

“There is no doctrine in the Catholic Church that compels disabled people to go on pilgrimages. Pilgrimages are not just for disabled people. Pilgrimages are something that are part and parcel of Catholic life.

“Lourdes is a place for all Catholics, lots of people go to Lourdes. But they go for inner healing.”

But John McCorkell, a disabled Catholic who is involved in a project to promote greater inclusion in the Church, says he has not encountered any issues arising from his impairment that have infringed his independence.

“In my experience as a disabled Catholic, I have not had any negative perceptions sent in my direction. I am physically disabled, though very independent, and I don’t allow this to stop me from doing many things. I received the sacrament of Baptism, First Holy Communion and Confirmation at the same age as someone who does not have a disability.”

Ms Gangemi insists that the atmosphere within the Catholic Church in this country is changing. "The medical model prevailed in the church up until eight years ago, and a disabled person would have been linked to suffering,” she says. “We [the disability advisers for England and Wales] have managed to get right to the centre of the hierarchy, so much so that the bishops’ conference (the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales) produced a website that spoke of equality and the fact that a disabled person has something to teach the whole Church.

“The Disability Discrimination Act has been my best friend in the work that I have been doing. We have got a long way to go but I would say that within the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the medical model is becoming a thing of the past.”