Thursday, August 14, 2008
What Would You Do?
MMI links to a story out of Minnesota about a Catholic Church that has obtained a TRO against a severely autistic boy.
On the surface, if the church moved from problem to TRO without all sorts and months and months of negotiations and concerns and discussions, then the church really should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. But in my experience, whenever these situations hit the press, it is because the family affected goes to them and all the prior intervention is conveniently excluded from the story. But again, we cannot know in this circumstances because there simply is no in-depth reporting whatsoever.
So, If I am going to get exercised here, I am going to aim my derisive tendencies at the press. They seem clearly intent on making the church look bad; something the press is often wont to do.
Which brings to mind some real wisdom. The church should not appeal its business to secular authority save when it is a clearly secular matter. So, for example, on taxation matters the church has little choice. But on matters like this, there really is no reason to reach out to secular authority. I have personally been involved in situations where people were barred from the church - the church had not obtained a TRO but a member thereof had against a non-member. The church was confronted with either relying on the police to enforce the TRO, or its own membership. We simply saw to it that the usher crew for this period were people "in the know" and when the affected individual showed their face, they were very quietly and covertly escorted out. Simultaneously, people were dispatched to the other party to make sure that an inadvertent confrontation did not happen.
Even without a TRO, there is no reason this church could not have acted similarly. They could have assigned this women people to help control her son's behavior. If that failed, they could have enforced the banishment without the need for invoking civil authority.
I am also fairly confident that this women is extremely difficult to deal with - a "problem" personality to say the least. So there is enough mess in all this to smear everyone.
All the more reason to behave like the children of God, not the children of the parent superior court.
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St. Joseph's, a Catholic church in Bertha, Minnesota, has filed a temporary restraining order against Adam. In a statement, Father Dan Walz said he filed the petition as a last resort out of "...a growing concern for the safety of parishioners..."I am both appalled and sympathetic - emotions I feel towards both sides of this debate, which tells me that we know much less than the full story.
Adam is severely autistic, according to his mother. He is home-schooled, and has attended St. Joseph's his whole life.
Adam is more than six feet tall and weighs more than 235 pounds. In court documents, Fr. Walz said Adam's growing size makes it harder for his parents to manage his behavior during mass.
[...]
Adam's mother, Carol, said those allegations are either exaggerated or false. She said Adam is not angry or violent. She said he has never spit in church, and that on rare occasions, he has been incontinent.
Carol blames Adam's worst behavior, revving a church member's running car after mass, on a lack of accommodation from the church.
"They don't understand how the mechanisms of autism are working at the moment of these disruptions and so forth," Carol Race said. "And I want to point out that in the last couple of months Adam has been perfectly well-behaved. So that's what's shocking to me."
On the surface, if the church moved from problem to TRO without all sorts and months and months of negotiations and concerns and discussions, then the church really should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. But in my experience, whenever these situations hit the press, it is because the family affected goes to them and all the prior intervention is conveniently excluded from the story. But again, we cannot know in this circumstances because there simply is no in-depth reporting whatsoever.
So, If I am going to get exercised here, I am going to aim my derisive tendencies at the press. They seem clearly intent on making the church look bad; something the press is often wont to do.
Which brings to mind some real wisdom. The church should not appeal its business to secular authority save when it is a clearly secular matter. So, for example, on taxation matters the church has little choice. But on matters like this, there really is no reason to reach out to secular authority. I have personally been involved in situations where people were barred from the church - the church had not obtained a TRO but a member thereof had against a non-member. The church was confronted with either relying on the police to enforce the TRO, or its own membership. We simply saw to it that the usher crew for this period were people "in the know" and when the affected individual showed their face, they were very quietly and covertly escorted out. Simultaneously, people were dispatched to the other party to make sure that an inadvertent confrontation did not happen.
Even without a TRO, there is no reason this church could not have acted similarly. They could have assigned this women people to help control her son's behavior. If that failed, they could have enforced the banishment without the need for invoking civil authority.
I am also fairly confident that this women is extremely difficult to deal with - a "problem" personality to say the least. So there is enough mess in all this to smear everyone.
All the more reason to behave like the children of God, not the children of the parent superior court.
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