Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Lyn Burr BrignoliOctober 07, 2012

Peter J. Smith's article in the May 24 issue describes how parishes can incorporate children with disabilities into their celebrations of the liturgy and the sacraments. In 2008 America awarded its "Case for God" essay prize to Lyn Burr Brignoli for her powerful account of teaching religious education to a young boy with Down Syndrome named Dragen:

I had come to faith as an adult in a time of intense emotional pain. My childhood was also intensely painful. And I began to see that a lifetime of spiritual and emotional suffering had prepared me for this encounter with Dragen. From my own childhood I knew how “otherness” felt. Somehow I knew what it was like to be a child with Down syndrome in a culture that all too often regards people like Dragen with withering glances, that tosses out careless, unkind remarks, which are not lost on someone as sensitive as he is.

My own pain, transformed, was now a gift. It enabled me to see something in the core of Dragen’s being that was so magnificent I wanted to shout it out to a mostly deaf and blind world. My own pain had enabled me to draw closer to Dragen, to transcend the boundaries of doctrine and enter into the heart of God, where I had had to let go of the question of suffering and simply live out the tough day-to-day reality of it.

Read "Dragen, Here Is Your Letter."

 

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

President Donald Trump meets South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Trump offered a vibrant demonstration of the kind of worst-case scenario Pope Leo may have had in mind about the collapse of critical thinking.
Kevin ClarkeMay 22, 2025
In his first appointment of a top-level official of the Roman Curia, Pope Leo XIV named Sister Tiziana Merletti, a canon lawyer, to be secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
“We were once leaders in petroleum and gas research; now we’re becoming leaders in green hydrogen and carbon capture. This isn’t just a technological shift; it’s a spiritual one.”
Gerard O’ConnellMay 22, 2025
A cardinal reflects on his experience of the conclave