M. G. Hysell
Deaf Candidates to Holy Orders:Impediment or Opportunity?
2
Introduction
On 1 January 2008, Fr. Edward McNamara, professor of sacred liturgy at the Legion of Christ’s
Regina Apostolorum
University in Rome received the following question from a certain “M.D”in Belleville, Ontario: “Will there ever be a day when the deaf will be allowed to enter convents,monasteries, for the religious life? When all Catholic churches will have American SignLanguage and closed-captioning available for the Mass? I believe even the deaf are equal beforeGod and should be equal before the Church.”
1
In many ways, the question is an astonishing one. In Canada, the
Sisters of Our Lady of Seven Dolors
was founded in 1851 by the Sisters Providence as a vowed religious communityfor Deaf
2
Catholic women. Toward the end of the nineteenth century,
La Piccola Missione per iSordomuti
was founded by the Servant of God Fr. Guiseppe Gualdani; the congregation received papal approbation in 1913. In 1927, the Clerics of St. Viator founded an Oblate branch for Deaf men with a vocation to the religious brotherhood. Recently, in Spain, a group of Deaf monks,following the Rule of St. Benedict,
Monjes sordos de Effatha
.In 1997, H.Em. John Cardinal O’Connor, in consultation with the Congregation for Catholic Education (then presided by Pio Cardinal Laghi) formally established the
DePaul House of Studies for Deaf Seminarians
at 375 Park Avenue in Yonkers, New York, as a house of residence for Deaf candidates to ministerial orders. Common life, the celebration of the sacred
1
On the Web athttp://www.zenit.org/article-21400?l=english, accessed 11 January 2008.
2
The distinction between “
d
eaf” and “
D
eaf” is one of ‘handicap’ and ‘culture,’ respectively. A
d
eaf person issomeone who experiences a significant range of hearing loss (at the lower three levels—moderate, severe, and profound), distinguished from ‘hard-of-hearing,’ and may or may not know sign language. In other words,
d
eafnessis more or less a medical classification. The designation
D
eaf, on the other hand, refers to the culture of people whoshare the common experience of deafness either by parentage, personal hearing loss, or even enculturation into theDeaf community (e.g. sign language interpreters). While a deaf person may either be Oralist, use manually codedEnglish, ‘Total Communication’ (= speaking
and
signing at the same time), she may not necessarily identify withDeaf culture. On the other hand,
all
Deaf people are deaf. It is important to be aware that the Deaf culture, inaddition to its own language (which varies from country to country), has its own mores, forms of entertainment, andsocial milieu.
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