This story reported in the Strib today will have you scratching your head.
The Rev. Daniel Walz, disturbed by what he said is Adam’s dangerous behavior, filed court papers to bar him from the Church of St. Joseph with a temporary restraining order against his parents. The Races are ignoring the order, which they see as discriminatory, and getting support from advocates for the disabled.
But before you come down hard on Rev. Walz, consider what he has to say about the boy, who is 6 feet tall and 225 pounds:
Walz, the church’s pastor for three years, said in an affidavit that as Adam has grown, the situation has worsened, and the boy has been "extremely disruptive and dangerous" since last summer.
Walz alleges that Adam struck a child during mass and has nearly knocked elderly people over when he abruptly bolts from church. He also spits and sometimes urinates in church and fights efforts to restrain him, Walz wrote.
The pastor wrote that Adam’s parents often sit on him during mass to restrain him, and sometimes bind his hands and feet, pulling a rope under the pew so his father can control the line from behind.
Walz wrote that Adam once pulled an adolescent girl — an exchange student staying with the family — on top of him, grabbing her thighs and buttocks. And, at Easter, Walz alleged, Adam ran from the church, got into the family van and started it, then got into someone else’s car, started it and revved up the engine.
If you read on, you will find that the mother does not contest these claims much, although she uses different words to describe them. According to the mother, for example, Adam pulled the foreign exchange student onto his lap because his parents often sit on him to comfort him.
What an awful situation for everyone involved.
"Disruptive" — noisy, very distracting, interrupting, etc. — is one thing. ‘Tis a fact of life that small children can be disruptive through no fault of their own — even if their parents scramble them out of the room as fast as they can climb out of the pew. And yes, disabled youth and adults can be noisy, interrupting, and distracting too, through no fault of their own. This is all just a fact of life. Some people just happen to come with more obvious problems than the rest of us. We still have to welcome them to the sacraments.
"Dangerous" is another matter. The mother admits that the boy climbed into the driver’s seat of a stranger’s car in the parking lot and that it was running? One word: LIABILITY. It is pretty hard not to see that there is a problem here.
The article claims that the church offered the family certain unnamed accommodations, and the family refused; and that the family asked for certain accommodations — one is mentioned, it’s ambiguous, but I think it means that they asked to have all the other parishioners get out of the aisles while the family leaves the church — and the church has not provided them. It is hard to judge the situation without knowing what the suggested sets of accommodations were. Certainly the parents, their son, the parish priest, and the other parishioners all have rights under Canon Law that must be respected. I’m also wondering if the bishop has been involved at all in the decision to ask for a restraining order against the family.
Note that this takes place in rural Bertha, MN, where it’s not quite so easy to shop around for an accommodating parish as it might be in the Cities. (There are only 2 parishes within 10 miles and 14 within 25 miles). I think if my family was struggling with a family member who, because of a disability, was making other people reasonably frightened, I might be inclined to look for a Mass offered at a hospital chapel, or find a priest willing to celebrate Mass at least sometimes for my family in my home.
bearing blog 