Forum für

Autisten und interessierte Zeitgenossen

Zum Weltautismustag hat sich der Präsident des päpstlichen Gesundheitsrates für mehr Solidarität mit Betroffenen ausgesprochen. Erzbischof Zygmunt Zimowski kritisiert in seiner Botschaft die Ausgrenzung aus der Gesellschaft. Besonders Kinder und Familien seien von der Stigmatisierung betroffen. Immer noch kennzeichneten Vorurteile die Begegnung mit Autisten - zum Beispiel, dass ein Autist unter einer „Glasglocke“ lebe. „Autismus“ sei ein Wort, das auch heute noch Angst mache und stigmatisiere, heißt es in der Botschaft des päpstlichen Gesundheitsrates zum Welt-Autismus-Tag, der weltweit am Dienstag begangen wird. Kirchliche Einrichtungen sollten ihren Blick auf das Thema richten und es in ihre Aktivitäten einbinden, so Zimowski. Sie sollten den Kindern und ihren Eltern eine Hilfe sein.

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Autism: this is a word that still generates fear today even though in very many cultures which traditionally excluded handicaps the ‘diversely able’ have begun to be accepted socially, and many of the prejudices that have surrounded people with disabilities and even their parents have begun to be dismantled. To define someone as autistic seems automatically to involve a negative judgement about those who are afflicted by it, and, implicitly, a sentence involving a definitive distancing from society. On the other hand, the person concerned seems to be unable to communicate in a productive way with other people, at times as though shut up in a ‘glass bell’, in his or her impenetrable, but for us wonderful, interior universe.

This is a ‘typical and stereotyped’ image of the autistic child which requires profound revision. Ever since her birth, as a guiding theme, the Church has always expressed her care for this aspect of medicine through practical testimonies at a universal level. Above all else, this is witness to Love beyond stigma, that social stigma that isolates a sick person and makes him or her feel an extraneous body. I am referring to that sense of loneliness that is often narrated within modern society but which becomes even more present in modern health care which is perfect in its ‘technical aspects’ but increasingly deprived of, and not attentive to, that affective dimension which should, instead, be the defining aspect of every therapeutic act or pathway.

Faced with the problems and the difficulties that these children and their parents encounter, the Church with humility proposes the way of service to the suffering brother, accompanying him with compassion and tenderness on his tortuous human and psycho-relational journey, and taking advantage of the help of parishes, of associations, of Church movements and of men and women of good will.

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