Expert: God is 'strongly connected' to disability community, access to Eucharist is essential

INDIANAPOLIS (OSV News) -- God is "strongly connected with the disability community," whose members can "move hearts" as missionary disciples -- and access to the Eucharist for people with disabilities is essential, said a pastoral expert.

Charleen Katra, executive director of the National Catholic Partnership on Disability, shared her thoughts during a July 18 breakout session she led at the 10th National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis.

Her presentation, titled "The Eucharist: Ensuring Access for All," focused specifically on sacramental preparation and reception of the Eucharist, although the underlying principles of pastoral inclusion apply to all the sacraments, said Katra.

She began the session by noting that the U.S. Catholic bishops first issued what she called a "foundational" pastoral statement on pastoral ministry to the disability community back in 1978 -- some 12 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, became federal law. The National Catholic Partnership on Disability was established in 1982.

Katra quoted from the pastoral statement, in which the bishops stressed, "It is essential that all forms of the liturgy be completely accessible to persons with disabilities, since these forms are the essence of the spiritual tie that binds the Christian community together. To exclude members of the parish from these celebrations in the life of the Church, even by passive omission, is to deny the reality of the community."

"I feel that the bishops were very astute in writing this (pastoral statement) for the church," said Katra, noting that the document "basically said very similar things for the church" as what the ADA later required in a broader social context.

"And that was really that the doors of the church be open to people with disabilities," said Katra. "But even more importantly, or I would say equally important, were that the hearts of the people inside the church be open to receive persons with disabilities."

The bishops' 1995 "Guidelines for the Celebration of the Sacraments with Persons with Disabilities," revised in 2017, provides specific instruction on the preparation and administration of all the sacraments, serving as a key resource for "pastoral, ecclesiastical (and) catechetical ministry in particular," Katra said.

She noted that "every baptized Catholic has three rights: to be educated in your faith, to celebrate the sacraments and to respond to God's call," as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states (1269).

Yet obstacles still prevent full inclusion of people with disabilities in the life of the church, as well as society, said Katra.

"We know all this, the bishops have spoken, NCPD exists, (so) why still are there so many barriers seemingly in our lives and in our world, even in the church in 2024?" she asked, pointing to news headlines in the past decade describing how people with disabilities were denied the Eucharist.

In April 2011, then-11-year-old Kevin Castro was reportedly denied his first holy Communion at a Texas church due to his cerebral palsy. Three years earlier, then 13-year-old Adam Race had been prevented from attending Mass at his parish church by a court restraining order, due to behavior resulting from severe autism.

"These headlines were taken from not that long ago," said Katra. "We always have to question: Is something that we're doing … helpful or is it hurtful?"

Citing the bishops' sacramental guidelines, Katra said that both people with and without disabilities, having received appropriate sacramental preparation, need to be able to "distinguish the body of Christ from ordinary food" and to "discern between right and wrong."

Those guidelines also state that "cases of doubt should be resolved in favor of the right of the Catholic to receive the sacrament" and that "the existence of a disability is not considered in and of itself as disqualifying a person from receiving Holy Communion."

Katra said her office had assisted the U.S. bishops in their 2017 update to the guidelines, which included what she called "three major changes" -- gluten-free options for receiving holy Communion for those with celiac disease and similar conditions; clarification that holy Communion under either species is not to be administered through a feeding tube; and instructions on administering the sacrament to those with dementia.

Those with dementia walk "a painful path," said Katra. "They knew and believed in the Real Presence all their lives. And now … our brain is not working as efficiently as it used to."

The guidelines call for "a presumption in favor of the individual's ability to distinguish between Holy Communion and regular food," specifying that "Holy Communion should continue to be offered as long as possible" while exhorting ministers to "carry out their ministry with a special patience."

"We never discount catechesis just because someone has a disability or someone else maybe has dementia now," said Katra. "And you always err in favor of the person once you prepare (the individual) or once we know that they once believed."

In terms of sacramental preparation, Katra urged session attendees to "adapt, adapt, adapt."
She highlighted several strategies that adopt a multisensory, pastorally sensitive approach to catechesis -- among them, the use of social narratives, or personalized stories in text and graphics that explain common interactions and skills; practice for holy Communion at home with unconsecrated hosts; and appropriate reliance on visuals and gestures in place of the spoken word.

"If someone cannot say 'amen' aloud like you and I might be able to do, this would be another option -- just to teach someone to put their hands together to be able to say 'amen,'" said Katra. "And then we need to let clergy know, so … if someone's coming up (for holy Communion) and that's their form of saying 'amen,' especially for an initial celebration … they have their best pastoral hat on as well."

"The community that is able to discover the beauty and joy of faith of which persons with disabilities are capable, becomes richer," she said, adding that the very notion of "ability" can be upended from a spiritual perspective.

Katra cited the remarks of a participant at a recent symposium she had attended: "She has a child with a disability, and she said, 'My child struggles with abstract concepts. I struggle with forgiveness. Who has the weakness?'"

Years earlier, while working in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Katra received an email from a parishioner who found his "best sermon ever" at a Mass while watching a parent "lovingly care for their adult son … wiping drool, fixing glasses, smiling (and) hugging" him in his wheelchair.

"I truly believe if you get people with disabilities and their families involved in the full life of the church, God uses them to move hearts," said Katra. "God is very … strongly connected with the disability community. And I think he speaks to them, and they speak to him in ways … that might even be stronger than how we think we (do)."