The feast of St Francis de Sales is celebrated on 24 January. He was an outstanding bishop, theologian, a Doctor of the Church, that is, someone recognised as having brought us to a deeper understanding of the teaching that Christ gave to St Peter and the Apostles to be passed on to each generation. This great saint is a patron saint of journalists and writers - and of the Deaf and hearing impaired. Below is something I posted originally on 24 January 2009 and again four years later. This time I've added [some comments].
I originally posted the following on 24 January 2009.
Today is the feast of St Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Bishop and Doctor of the Church, patron of journalists and of the Deaf. So he is my patron on both counts, since I edit Misyon [phased out in 2018] and have been working with the Deaf on a part-time basis since 1992 and frequently celebrate Mass in Sign Language. Above all, he was a man who lived the fulness of the priesthood as a bishop faithfully. Maybe he would be a blogger if he were around today. [My Sign Language was never fluent.]
The following information, which I found here, is from the National Catholic Office for the Deaf, located in Washington, DC.
St Francis De Sales: Patron of the Deaf and Hearing-impaired
In 1605, an indigent young man named Martin, a deaf-mute from birth, came almost daily to a house in Roche, France, where Bishop de Sales was staying, to ask for alms. He was a strong young man fit for all kinds of work, and the Bishop's housekeeper often allowed him to help her in payment for the Bishop's generosity. One day a servant introduced Martin to the Bishop.
As a result of his handicap, Martin, who was about 25 years old, had never received any kind of education -- or instruction in the Catholic faith. (It was presumed by all of the educated people of that age, the 17th century, that a deaf-mute was a mentally handicapped person and that trying to educate or trying to communicate religious truths to such a person would be a waste of time.)
At the time of their meeting, St Francis de Sales was visibly disturbed and touched with pity for the unfortunate Martin. St Francis realized that the poor man would remain forever ignorant of God and the rich mysteries of the Faith and that his lack of instruction would forever keep him from receiving the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist.
After considering young Martin's deprived condition for a time, St Francis determined that he would undertake the instruction of the young man.
By using signs that he formed with his hands and fingers, St Francis personally began to teach Martin about the Catholic Faith. Martin, as was soon clear, was highly intelligent and a very good pupil. After a period of time, through his gentle patience and persistence and with the signs and gestures he had invented for the purpose, St Francis succeeded in instructing Martin about God and His love for all men. All went so well that eventually Martin was able to receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time in 1606. Two years later, Martin was confirmed.
St Francis eventually hired Martin as his gardener and brought him along with him when he returned to his episcopal household in Annecy, France.
Martin's devotion to the Bishop of Geneva was second only to his devotion to God. Martin prayed fervently, examining his conscience every evening before retiring, regularly confessed his sins to the Bishop, and assisted devoutly at the Bishop's Mass whenever he could.
Sixteen years later, no one would be more affected by the death of St Francis de Sales than his faithful servant Martin, who would visit his master's last resting place almost every day until the day he himself died.
The above account uses a term that is not used anymore: 'deaf-mute'. As a literal matter of fact, people who are deaf aren't mute, since they have voices and many can learn to speak.
Neither is the word 'handicap' used much now but rather 'disability'. I don't like the term 'differently-abled'. It cannot hide the reality that a person who is deaf or blind, for example, does have a disability that creates difficulties for that person in some situations. Deaf people prefer the word 'Deaf', with a capital 'D' to describe themselves as a group. Being profoundly deaf from birth is different from becoming hearing-impaired from old age, for example. [I now fit into that category and use hearing aids, as do many of my companions here where I now live in Ireland.]
Those of us who can see and hear tend to think that blindness is a greater disability than deafness. But deafness, whether from birth or coming with old age, is a disability that isolates in a way that blindness doesn't. Most deaf people here in the Philippines don't share a language even with their own family. And the only 'native signers' I know here are the hearing children of deaf parents.
St Francis saw how isolated Martin was and broke through that isolation.
+++
I added this on 24 January 2013. Here is the only deaf-blind priest, Fr Cyril Axelrod CSsR, speaking to seminarians and priests.
Fr Cyril Axelrod CSsR CBE
You can read Father Cyril's extraordinary story here. He was born profoundly deaf and began to go blind when he was already a priest due to Usher syndrome.
The needs of those who are profoundly deaf are widely recognised now in many countries. Here in Ireland, for example, Irish Sign Language became an official language of the State in 2017. However, I think that the Catholic Church needs to respond much more to the needs of the profoundly deaf as did St Francis de Sales to Martin.
Part of a Tutorial on Celebrating Mass in American Sign Language.
(Archdiocese of Washington)
3 comments:
Dearest Father Seán,
As I've often said since 1990 while living and working in Indonesia and meeting with deaf children from the boarding school for girls and one for boys—I learned to LISTEN from the DEAF!
Contrary to most other countries, the Dutch solved the problem for the deaf by teaching them to read lips. With a teacher beside them, in front of a mirror, they are taught the alphabet. By placing index and middle finger on the throat of the teacher to feel the specific vibration for each vowel. Then they mimic and feel by themselves and vise versa.
Most of them learned to speak near perfect and were able to read people's lips.
That way they are NOT being singled out from society!
I learned so much from those children that came to our home for a substitute Parent. They only went home for Christmas...
Some of them could read my lips from the side. Also being a positve person myself I always said I'm feeling fine. But I could not fake that for the deaf!
They were taught to observe the other person from head to toe for the numerous body signs they give.
I've adopted that into my training, measuring how much of my teaching got absorbed.
Yes, I learned to listen from the deaf and am forever grateful!
Hugs,
Mariette
Thank you, Mariette, for your comment sharing your experience with young deaf young people in Indonesia. When I got involved around 1990 in the Philippines there was an ongoing debate in many countries about the ways deaf people should communicate. Some hearing people thought it wrong to use sign language. I know that in some places young deaf people were prevented from using or learning sign language, even though that is what comes naturally to them. And all of us use or understand forms of sign language in a broad sense. In sports we understand what the signs used by referees/umpires mean, for example. We call people with our hands when they are out of hearing.
‘Total communication’ was the term used when I got involved. People sign and speak/lip read at the same time. And, where possible, as you described, children who are profoundly deaf can be taught how to speak.
As an Irish person any attempt to prevent people from using their own language appalls me, since that is what the British did to Irish children in schools in the 19th century. They were punished for speaking Irish Gaelic, a language that is far older than English, with the result that the majority gradually stopped speaking their own language and switched to English. A similar approach was used in schools among the Scots Gaelic-speaking communities in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. I met native Gaelic speakers there in 2019. And the American authorities imposed English on students in the Philippines, using it as the medium of instruction, a policy still followed nearly 80 years after independence.
The word ‘dumb’ has come to have its present meaning because profoundly deaf persons were seen as being stupid. The expression ‘deaf and dumb’ is very inaccurate. The only profoundly deaf person whom I know that has no voice is that way because of surgery, nothing whatever to do with her deafness.
Dear Father Seán,
Guess we were some kind of 'neighbors' back in 1990...
Using only sign language for the hearing impaired indeed seems wrong as they get singled out.
Any forceful form of using or not using a native tongue, our mother tongue (something almost sacred, passed on from our Mothers) is wrong.
In this world it often goes about power and control and that seldom is positive.
Profoundly deaf people certainly are not stupid. Our foster daughter Anita managed college and university with reading lips and she graduate with one point above average!
Hugs,
Mariette
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