Disability Awareness

I've discovered a new website and journal: A Ragged Edge.  It is a disability rights organization that has information about employment, education, transportation, the law, and, perhaps most importantly, essays and poetry on the disability experience from the inside. 

The disability rights movement is important, not just for those with physical disabilities, but so that all in our society will feel included and valued.  Awareness of what individuals with physical and mental disabilities face every day is important for enhanced compassion and understanding among all of humanity.

To assume that everyone can walk, see, hear, drive, or work in a fast-paced and highly pressured  environment is to alienate a good portion of our population to the "ragged edge" of society and to lose their valuable skills and talents.

As human beings, as Christians and as Catholics, we need to recognize the humanity of everyone and champion that humanity no matter what the cost.

Note:  I also have a new category on my lower sidebar: Disability Awareness.  

Archdiocesan Mass for/with Persons with Disabilities

As someone interested in the inherent dignity of persons with disabilities, I was happy to see the post below on Fr. Joe's blog.

Archdiocesan Mass for/with Persons with Disabilities

Archbishop Donald Wuerl will celebrate a Mass with and for persons who have disabilities on Sunday, November 30, 2:00 p.m. at St. Mary of the Mills Church, 114 St. Mary’s Place, Laurel, MD 20707. The liturgy will honor the 30th anniversary of the Pastoral Statement of U.S. Catholic Bishops on Persons with Disabilities, which created a blueprint for a welcoming and inclusive Church. A reception and awards ceremony will follow. For more information, contact the Archdiocesan Office of Ministry for Persons with Disabilities at 301-853-4560. Sign language interpreted. St. Mary of the Mills is a fully accessible parish.

Hat tip to Father Joe.

Holy See's Objection to UN Convention on Disabled

The Vatican continued to stand up for the disabled and the unborn yesterday by refusing to sign the UN's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities because of its guarantee of the "right" of abortion, which is often offered to pregnant women if their unborn child is found to have a disability prior to birth.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore, papal nuncio and permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations said, "It is surely tragic that, wherever fetal defect is a precondition for offering or employing abortion, the same convention created to protect persons with disabilities from all discrimination in the exercise of their rights, may be used to deny the very basic right to life of disabled unborn persons."