I recently borrowed the phrase “strange vocations” in another essay. I had taken the term from Dr. Amy Richards’s book about inclusion of students with disabilities in classical schools, and she had discovered it in a treatise by St. Augustine. I adapted Dr. Richards’s use in that essay to support a recommendation from Notre Dame’s McGrath’s Center that men with autism and other developmental conditions be considered eligible for ordination. However, as Catholics know, ordination isn’t the only form of consecrated life in the Church, but unfortunately, there are few possibilities, if any, for men and women to serve the Church as religious sisters and brothers. I know a young woman who feels called to a life of prayer as a Carmelite nun, but she has been unsuccessful in finding a community that will consider her.
This term “strange vocations” may be troublesome for some when used in reference to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. However, St. Augustine used the term miris vocationibus in his treatise On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and the Baptism of Infants to develop an argument against the Pelagian denial of inherited sin and their reduction of infant baptism to a mere formality. In the course of his argument, he also dismisses the Platonist theory held by some of his contemporaries that souls exist before embodiment and receive bodies according to the merits of prior existence. But what does that have to do with disability and vocation?
Augustine gives an example of a man who was called a morio—a term we would now reject, equivalent to calling someone an idiot or simpleton. In his time, such a person would have been put on display for ridicule and amusement, but Augustine looked beyond the disability and recognized in him a deep Christian faith. In fact, Augustine’s point is that grace was given to this man more abundantly than to many of the sharpest minds he knew; he bore any injury to himself patiently, and he couldn’t tolerate anyone profaning the name of Christ.
Augustine’s point invites us to reflect on our own attitudes toward those with intellectual disabilities. Rather than faulting one for their impairments, shouldn’t we be asking how God is calling this person through their impairment as a witness to grace—and allow ourselves to perceive how God’s grace is being revealed in or through them? The question of how and to whom a vocation is given, recognized, received, and lived is where I want to go a bit further than Augustine in this topic of “strange vocations” and disability.
Actually, we don’t have to go any further than the witness of the saints to see how God’s grace acts within the lives of those with “strange vocations.” I’ll give three examples to illustrate the point, but there are far more than these in our Church’s rich history.
Did these individuals’ perceived impairments obstruct their ability to live out their vocations in community?
St. Joseph of Cupertino (1603–1663) was born in southeastern Italy into a very poor family. His mother had been widowed after his birth, and the two lived together in destitution. Joseph was said to have been a burden to his mother. He was clumsy and profoundly absent minded and incapable of many daily tasks. When he was twenty, he was taken in as a servant in a Franciscan convent and managed to do menial tasks for them with cheerfulness and humility. It is said of him that he wandered around with his mouth hanging open most of the time and was given the nickname, “the gaper.” In spite of his strangeness, his Franciscan superiors recognized his deep piety and suggested he petition for the priesthood. During his formation, there was only one passage of Scripture (Lk 11:27) that he was able to expound on, and fortunately for him, this passage became his test to qualify for ordination. Joseph was sought out as a healer and confessor and for his reputation for levitating during prayer. Word of his holiness spread, and crowds gathered around him. These caused so much disruption that he had to be moved from monastery to monastery to avoid them. He died in 1663 and was canonized by Pope Clement XIII in 1767.
St. André Bessette (1845-1937) was born near Montreal, Canada, and orphaned at twelve while still unable to read or write. He had numerous health issues and tried working at various jobs unsuccessfully. It is said that the bishop of Montreal intervened on his behalf with the Congregation of the Holy Cross. They admitted him and assigned him to answer the door—a position he retained for some forty years. He had a great devotion to St. Joseph and gave visitors who came to the door a medal and oil from the lamp that burned at St. Joseph’s altar in the church and encouraged them to pray. Stories of cures rapidly spread, and soon he came to be called the “miracle man,” with crowds gathering in long lines waiting to see him. He decided he wanted to build a small chapel to St. Joseph but had to agree to not accumulate any debt to do so. He began cutting the hair of boarding students at Notre-Dame College, charging five cents a head and keeping every nickel for St. Joseph. He also set out a small dish on the mountain beside a statue with a sign reading “Donations for St. Joseph” and took what pilgrims left. It took years to reach two hundred dollars, and, with the help of friends, he was able to purchase a small wooden shelter. That small shelter grew into a grand basilica that is still a pilgrimage site in Montreal. When André died, there were more than a million pilgrims who came to venerate his remains in the midst of a freezing Quebec winter.
St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin (1888–1922) offers another example of a vocation nearly lost because of other’s judgments. Born into a poor farming family in Italy, she was described as slow to learn and mocked as “the goose.” Some doubted that she was suited to religious life, but the Sisters of St. Dorothy in Vicenza accepted her, and she professed her vows in 1907. She went on to nurse children suffering from diphtheria and to care courageously for hospital patients during the First World War. At her canonization in 1961, Pope John XXIII praised the skill and quiet devotion she brought to her work. We can’t confirm that Maria Bertilla had an intellectual or developmental disability, but what her story teaches us is how the dismissive judgments and attitudes of others almost prohibited her from fulfilling her vocation as a religious sister. Her community’s willingness to receive her allowed a vocation to unfold that those judgments might otherwise have prevented.
Did these individuals’ perceived impairments obstruct their ability to live out their vocations in community? Hardly. The effectiveness of their prayers and the love they showed to others proved to their superiors their capacity for love and service. Can we not allow the witness of the saints to overcome our biases against men and women with disabilities serving the Church as consecrated religious?
Along with the example of the woman who feels strongly called to a vocation as a contemplative nun, I also know of a young man with Down syndrome who has successfully found a place in a Benedictine community—but only because some of the men of that community had previously served religious sisters with Down syndrome in a convent in France. Rather than seeing this young man’s disability as an obstacle, they saw an opportunity to give him a chance to fulfill his vocation. To my knowledge, Les Petites Sœurs Disciples de l’Agneau, the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb, is the only place in the world where a community founded for persons with a disability exists. Why aren’t there more?
This Latin word miris—as in Augustine’s miris vocationibus—can also be translated as wonderful, astonishing, or marvelous. Perhaps we need to allow ourselves to be astonished by deeply faithful men and women who believe they are called to religious life. Wouldn’t it be amazing if these vocations were no longer considered strange but wonderful instead?