As a Disability Support Worker, my greatest fear is the support for the “Culture of death” within the Disability working community. Even though I work for a Catholic-branched institution, I have heard a number of working colleagues make comments that are enough to make one’s ears burn!

Pray also for all our vulnerable brothers and sisters that they will not become victims of the lies these perpetrators are spreading.

Do not generalize.

The National Socialist propaganda machine flooded Germany with “humor” at the expense of the Jews.

In an age when many Americans get their “news” from Comedy Central, we need to be very alert to what we let ourselves laugh at.

I have worked as a caregiver with the disabled….by the time 90% of them are about 25 years of age….they have been sexually abused.  They are so very vulnerable. They are also God’s special people, IMHO.

One more reason I do not have a TV set…so I do not hear people make fun of other people…..what a shame….a big shame.

Patricia in St. Louis, MO

My goddaughter has Down’s. She was adopted by a loving evangelical Christian family. The circumstances of her birth are not entirely known to anyone beyond her family (as should be the case), but it is certain that her circumstances are not entirely unrelated to the irresponsible behavior of her birth mother. My goddaughter is not always all sweetness and light, and she is quite high-functioning on the Down’s scale. She can be manipulative and trying, just like me. She is also loved by all who are privileged to know her. So now it is evangelicals, Catholics, and Down’s Syndrome persons who may be lambasted with impunity in our post-Christian culture, who may be caricatured and disenfranchised. And this is the fruit of a culture that considers itself to be the pinnacle of human achievement and enlightenment? The human condition will not be redeemed by progressive politics or scientific endeavor. It is redeemed in Jesus of Nazareth, or not at all.

Every disability reminds me of my own inability to control, to manage my own life as I would have it, and so I rebel against disability. I once lay on the floor of a hospital ER in respiratory failure, and realized that every power is a gift, including the power to know my own identity. I could claim absolutely nothing as my own power.
  Those even more disabled than I (I disdain the over used “challenged”)are no less gifted than I; they simply have different gifts. When man determines what gifts God ought to have given, he arrogates divinity to himself; when he mocks what God has done, he embraces the demonic.

It is duly noted Mr. Shea:
When Drewey dies, he shall go straight to Heaven.

Thanks Mark Shea for this article.  As someone with intellectual disabilities and involved in Catholic New Media (attended CNMC: MMX in Boston), this article was especially interesting and a reminder that those of us disability advocates need to continue to spread the message of respect and to respect all life, including those of of us who have different abilities.

-Daniel,
  Host/Producer, Special Chronicles Podcast: http://www.specialchronicles.com/

As a former teacher of special education and a parent of a child with Down Syndrome, I wil pray for this disturbed and angry man Frankie Boyle and for the executives and their flunkies who okayed and promoted and sustain this type of thinking and call it art or forgive me, “cutting edge.”  Cutting edge means it bleeds and it hurts—and this does.  It is wrong and cruel, mean spirited and intentionally offensive about a population people either pretend doesn’t exist and doesn’t matter, or actually ensure doesn’t exist except as citizens of God’s kingdom. 

My hope is Frankie experiences a Saul/Paul moment and turns to teach those who rewarded his zeal in persecuting the disabled for his own aggrandizement into an advocate. Perhaps the disabled (and those who love them), like my son when he is old enough and Drewey now, could pray for Frankie Boyle’s soul and conversion; it would be a story worthy of Heaven.