|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|||
|
COMMITTEE FOR THE JUBILEE DAY PREPARATION PART FIVE THE PERSON WITH DISABILITIES:
The richness of a person with disability is a constant challenge to the Church and society to open to the mystery such persons present. The person with disabilities has rights and duties like every other individual. Disability is not a punishment, it is a place where normality and stereotypes are challenged and the Church and society are moved to search for that crucial point at which the human person is fully himself. This
paper aims to help discover that the person with disability is a privileged
interlocutor of society and the Church. It is in
this spirit that we entrust this preparation to all of you, in view of the
full integration and inclusion of persons with disabilities in the life of the
Church and society, to valorise the gifts they bring, to reconcile ourselves
with them for failings in their regard in the spirit of the Great Jubilee and
to encourage an attitude of caring, assistance and solidarity. The
Preparatory Committee Rome 17 July 2000 I. DISABILITY IN INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTS
– IN BRIEF
The General Assembly of the United Nations took the initiative of establishing December 3 as World Day for Persons with Disabilities, (resolution 47/3 taken on December 14, 1992). In 1998 the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission declared, with resolution 1998/31 taken in April, that:
· The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, · The International Agreement on Civil and Political Rights, · The International Agreement on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, · By the International Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women · By the International Convention on the rights of the child ·
By the Convention on “professional
rehabilitation and work (persons with disabilities)” number 159 of the
International Labour Organisation. Moving from
the international corpus of human rights, applicable – as we have said – to
all persons with disability, the United Nations adopted in 1993 “Standard
United Nation rules for attaining equal opportunities for persons with
disabilities (resolution 48/96 of the General Assembly December 20, 1993). Therefore any violation of the
fundamental principle of equality, any discrimination or negatively
differentiated treatment of persons with disabilities …is a violation of this
person’s human rights. Formal guidelines indicate – through
laws – principles and means for removing every obstacle, which impedes the
full personal realisation of these persons. The community, to which an individual with disabilities belongs, can and must work to attain the following goals: a) To state that to render every environment of society accessible to everyone is a fundamental objective of socio-economic development; b) To identify the essential aspects of social policies in the field of disability; c) To supply models for adopting the necessary policies to attain equal opportunities in the different cultural contexts valorising the essential role of persons with a disability; d)
To propose mechanisms of close cooperation between governments, bodies of
the United Nations’ system, other inter-governmental bodies and associations
of persons with disabilities, through which States will be effectively able to
attain equal opportunity for the person with disabilities.
II.
INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE COMMITMENT It is commonly accepted by all countries with a well-developed juridical order that the person with disabilities belongs, in parity, to social communities in their legal, associative, ecclesial or spontaneous expressions, since such a person possesses fully the inviolable rights of every human person. State regulations indicate – through laws - principles and means for removing all obstacles preventing a person with disabilities from reaching full personal realisation. Nevertheless communities must become the main agent in the effective concretization of this parity. We intend to indicate the means through which the community with a person with disabilities can and must work to attain these finalities. Individually or as a community,
commitment should develop along the following lines.
Conscious
acceptance Recognition of the person with disabilities as a bearer of the Christian message of the relationship with God is the essential point of departure for a relation of parity between persons. Disability challenges normality and its stereotypes to search for the crucial point in which the human being may be fully human. This
viewpoint reshuffles egoism and material security (racism, cult of esthetical
perfection, wealth) putting more emphasis on the meaning of human life, its
questions and its limits. At the
private level, the family faces the problem with its various aspects; affective,
economic, educational, while the circle of friends, relatives and neighbours
support, directly or indirectly, the family in difficulty. At the public level, general
sensitisation leads society to express a desire to compensate “unfair”
difficulties provoked by a situation of disability, recognising that the person
with disabilities has the right to take part in every form of collective life,
including the time of leisure, vacation and culture.
Personal
solidarity Sharing is
born from a level of fraternal parity, it does not come down from on high like a
donation, and it suggests living as brothers and sisters. By recognising the
difficulties of the weaker members, society seeks to attain a system, which is
more generous towards its components. Every form of active commitment to help the person with disabilities and his/her family context helps to improve the quality of life. Today a privileged modality of this
commitment could be the individual adhesion to one of the various forms of
associations of voluntary work or organised solidarity, which are in perfect
harmony with the Gospel message of the Good Samaritan.
Promoting
assistance services The United Nations’ Standard Rules indicate the various fields in which States can intervene with laws and measures: health care, rehabilitation, service of support, accessibility, education, work, maintaining income and social security, culture, leisure time, training of assistance personnel. The line, connecting policies of government bodies and their acceptance on the part of citizens, must stimulate direct assumption of responsibility by individuals in all forms, from the protection of rights, to fiscal contribution to support assistance services, to adhering to programmes of prevention, to the promotion of legislative measures which indicate in every field of social life the collective will to respect parity of rights for persons with disabilities. If this is a criterion, which cannot be avoided for the Christian, it can in any case be a criterion of choice for every type of society. The community is called to its moral and
political duties by standard rule number 9 “Family life and personal
integrity”, by rule number 12 “Religious life”, and by rule number 18
“Organisations of persons with disabilities”. III. THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH From a reading of the Standard Rules we
can draw the following commitments for the Church: 1. The Church should work to propose – in all her activity of formation, liturgy and solidarity – a positive image of the person with disabilities. The concept of charity must be lived to the full, remembering that the person with disabilities must be an active subject in a relationship of love and not only the object of charitable actions. 2. The Church must be on guard to protect the guarantee of health-assistance, in particular she must work to ensure that investments in the field of prevention are respectful of the right to life of every person with a disability. 3. Often rehabilitation services have been activated at the initiative of church groups. It is important for the Church, despite the state’s tendency to reduce investment in this field of health-care, to continue to support the need to assign adequate resources to this sector. 4. The Church should promote a large scale social movement to remove all physical barriers and obstacles which impede access to communication and information beginning from within the Church herself: this entails not only removing architectonic barriers in churches, but also the diffusion of suitable means to allow every person with disabilities to live the life of the Church (translations in Braille; handbooks special prepared for persons with learning difficulties; celebrations accompanied by interpreters for the deaf; the use of a suitable terminology in the ambit of ecclesial information bodies…). In particular the Church should ensure maximum accessibility to her immense artistic heritage and numerous structures of accommodation for pilgrims including the people with disabilities. 5. The Church should be in front line in protecting the rights of child or adult with disabilities to education in all the formation environments run by church realities, from infant school to universities. 6. The Church must take action above all in those countries and circumstances in which the State does not guarantee persons with disabilities and their families the means for living a dignified life. 7. The Church has a great responsibility regarding the family, both to recognise and protect the right of every person with disabilities to live to the full the sacrament of matrimony, to have a family and bring up the children; and to support materially but particularly on the spiritual level, families where there is a person with disabilities - giving particular attention when the family faces this reality for the first time and needs special care and guidance to recognise nevertheless the signs of God’s goodness. 8. The Church must assume an active role to guarantee all these spaces of participation and must not wait for the civil authorities present in the different countries to act in this direction! It is particularly important to encourage persons with disabilities anxious to consecrate their lives to God and to stimulate the various religious Congregations to be ready to welcome in their midst persons with disabilities 9. Legislation, economic policies, national co-ordination are ambits in which the civil authorities act, and where the faithful – as individuals and in church organisations – have a responsibility of active sensitisation regarding the rights of every person with disabilities in every country. The Church has the possibility of carrying out fundamental action of capillary monitoring of the situation of persons with disabilities in all the outlying areas in which a community is present, so as to suggest suitable measures to those who have the responsibility of directing national and/or local policies. In particular the Church must assume the task of representing in all political areas the interests of those persons unable to defend their rights in their own; she must give priority to protecting what the Rules call ‘the need to protect the private life of individuals and the integrity of the person” from all interference which might be connected with activities of research. Above all the Magisterium should stimulate and encourage all those who direct services or activities or provide information in society to assume the responsibility of putting their programme at the disposal of persons with a disability. 10.
Missionary Congregations, Catholic NGOs, Diocesan Mission Offices must be
attentive to the needs of persons with disabilities in all the activities they
promote, whether specifically for the struggle against the handicap, or other
more general finalities. The Church must work not only
to encourage the formation of these organisations but also to involve their
representatives in her central and outlying bodies, so as to valorise the
experience of person with disabilities in every ambit of church activity. A
fundamental commitment for the Church will be to form all pastoral agents –
not only those concerned explicitly with persons with disabilities – to be
conscious agents for the full integration of the person with disabilities in
every church ambit.
Testimony “CHIARA HAS A HANDICAP, WE HAVE
ADOPTED HER” I remember
clearly when she arrived. She lived in symbiosis with me for the whole of that
first month, I could not leave her. Now that she is four and goes to
kindergarten, it is almost unbelievable. This is how Anna tells the story of her
daughter Chiara, adopted when she was not even a year old: “She had suffered
the trauma of separation from an almost adoptive mother, who after ten months
realised the little one had a serious problem and felt she could not keep
her”. Yes, because Chiara has a handicap and so has her little bother Michele,
he too adopted. Anna and Massimo have two more adopted children, who are older,
Sofia and Leonardo who come from Brazil. Four all together. Anna and Massimo had
first to struggle with a lack of understanding on the part of their families
regarding their decision, judged to be rash rather than courageous. And today
they live with the malicious criticism of people who, perhaps challenged by such
evangelical radicalness, finding it difficult to explain, accuse them of
‘wanting to open an orphanage’ and living off their children. But in actual
fact Chiara is the only one with a disability allowance: 780,000 lire a month.
INQUIRING It is a sad
fact that persons with disabilities are vulnerable to the change in social,
political and economic movements. For example, it is foreseen that the present
social transformation will result in an economic order in the 21st
century, in which knowledge will be the main resource, rather than manpower,
natural resources or capital; a social order in which inequality based on
knowledge will be the greatest challenge; in public policies in which the
government is unable to solve social and economic problems. What general
principle will have to underline this transformation especially as far as it
affects person with a mental disability and with connected disabilities? I would
suggest that the concept of quality of life should provide a fundamental
principle, oriented towards growth, which could be the basis on which to develop
national and international policies regarding disability. Although the concept
may be used for the wrong reasons, it pushes us in the right direction: towards
programming and towards support centred on the person. To conclude, since the principle of the quality of life has emerged in social programmes, interest for the concept has increased. There has been an increase in testing its consensual critical dimensions, using multidimensional means of measurement and in the application of findings in practice and in efforts to evaluate. Despite these efforts there are still many blanks in our knowledge. Public policies and organisations for training and rehabilitation find it hard to adjust to a paradigm of quality of life reflecting the revolution of quality. Those responsible for policies and directors of programmes need the most updated thought regarding the quality of life and its measuring in order to improve services and promote rational public policies.
|
 |