Readers share their views

Church Communicating with Government

The letter from Heather Kelly in the May issue of Touchstone raised queries about whether or not the church communicates with the government and what happened to the Public Questions Committee.

In response to the first question, the Presidential team meets annually with the Prime Minister. In addition, Church leaders from different denominations put together a briefing paper for the government prior to an annual meeting. David Hanna is the Methodist Church representative who facilitates the gathering of this briefing from the churches.

The Public Questions Committee of the church was replaced some years ago by the Public Issues Network. This network has a Co-Ordinating Group chaired by the General Secretary that reports annually to Conference. The Group oversees the work of two Working Groups – Climate Justice and Anti-Racism in the Church and in Aotearoa. At each bi-monthly meeting of the Co-ordinating Group we receive reports from the two Working Groups. We also consider what legislative changes and public issues require the prophetic voice of the church to be sounded.

Nga mihi

Marion Hines, Secretary, Public Issues Network

Disabled Does not Equate to Differently Abled

In May I sent out Parish Puzzles for June. As the 3rd Sunday in June is Disability Sunday, and neglected by a majority of churches, I reminded the receivers that …

No less than half your congregation is likely to be disabled in some way by loss of sight, hearing, mobility or hidden physical problems. Various others will have stopped attending as they do not want to draw attention to the fact they now have difficulty accessing the entrance, toilets, or lectern. This is the time to do a health check of your parish buildings and to invite a disabled person to share their faith journey.

One clergyperson responded, with this question: What do you think about the language Disability Sunday versus Access Sunday?

I would like to share my reply.

Interesting question …my view is this. Both words are important and although they overlap, they are not fully interchangeable. Not all impairments prevent access. But it is important that they are discussed with the affected, and understood by the non-affected.

Like any community not all within the disability community agree. My personal position is that ‘pc do-gooders’ use words that make them feel good and ‘the other’ feel patronised. I particularly dislike ‘differently abled’. Having any disability does not suddenly gift the bearer with some increased ability withheld from the fully able. Any extra ability is gained only by hard work and near impossible to gain late in life. To be called ‘differently abled’ doubly penalises the impaired person who missed out on (isn’t good enough to deserve?) the magic gift.

Living with any disability is difficult. This needs to be accepted and not mitigated by smarmy politically correct avoidance words. For example, why has the word ‘cripple’ become a do-not-use word? It is acceptable to refer to someone as ‘blind’ or ‘deaf’ but only the multi-syllabled mouthful ‘mobility impaired’ is considered acceptable for the cripple. How does the crippled person feel? Well, this one feels, what is so wrong about being a cripple compared to other handicaps? Taking a lead from the queer community I use the not-acceptable word and, if not ‘proud’ am at the least ‘comfortable’ with it. Regardless of blatant Old Testament discrimination, no one should be humiliated for being who they are. Lame excuses are not acceptable.

Rosalie Sugrue, Paraparaumu.