Mom Fights Church on Behalf of Autistic Son

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:32:00 GMT

Autistic kids have faced a lot of discrimination lately - from the classroom to the church -- and one mother isn't taking it any longer.

Carol Race's Minneapolis church filed a restraining order against her son, barring him from attending Mass and now she's fighting back.

Ms. Race and her son attended Mass in violation of the order and will attend a hearing this week to defend their actions. Several parishoners are supportive of Ms. Race and her son and sit with her to show their disapproval of the church's actions.

Given the number of children who are autistic in this country, institutions are going to have to learn to be more accomodating and informed. Ms. Race rightly points out that parishoners feared rather than understood her son. Rather than file a restraining order, perhaps the church should have made more of an effort to understand one of their own.

Church Files Restraining Order Against Autistic Boy

Amy S.F. Lutz — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:26:00 GMT

In tough situations, I understand that devout Catholics are supposed to ask themselves, "What would Jesus do?"

Apparently, when an autistic thirteen-year-old was disrupting services, Father Dan Walz of Minnesota's St. Joseph's church decided that what Jesus would do is expel the child from the congregation, and legally ban him from entering the church.

Adam Race is severely autistic. He's also a big kid, standing more than six feet tall and weighing more than 235 pounds. His mother, Carol, acknowledges that Adam can be noisy during mass, and sometimes must be restrained. But she thought by sitting at the back of the church and leaving a few minutes before the service was concluded, she was minimizing the disruption. She was shocked to find out about the restraining order, and even more shocked to hear Father Walz's accusations: that Adam hit a child, that he's almost knocked elderly parishioners over while running from the church, that he spits and urinates during the service. Carol Race claims that Adam isn't aggressive, and that the accusations are either exaggerated or are completely false.

Look, this is tough. I have an autistic son, and I know children on the spectrum can be very loud and distracting, especially when forced to sit through something like a church service. But where's the compassion here? Adam has been going to St. Joseph's his entire life, which tells me the church is very important to this family, and I'm guessing they could really use the support of the community. Maybe the church could provide an aide to work with Adam while the rest of his family attends services, an aide who could break the week's lesson into pieces he might be able to understand through the use of visual aides or other learning supports. Or maybe Adam could be rewarded for sitting quietly with candy or other treats that typically aren't permitted in church. Of course it's hard to offer suggestions when it's not really clear how hard Father Walz and other church officials have tried to work with the Races. But I will say this: telling a family they'll be arrested if they take their autistic son to church is definitely NOT the answer.

kare11.com photo

Strollerderby : Carol Race

Mom Fights Church on Behalf of Autistic Son

Church Files Restraining Order Against Autistic Boy