Search results for ""author m. broesterhuizen""

This book contains the proceedings of a conference on Deaf Liberation Theology that took place at the Catholic University of Leuven. Four Deaf persons, rooted in the Deaf community and professionally involved in Deaf pastoral ministry, Thomas Coughlin (USA), Cyril Axelrod (South Africa), Peter McDonough (UK), and Beth Lockard (USA), relate their views on and experiences with shepherding Deaf communities as social-cultural minority groups within the hearing Church, and their efforts to enculturate the Christian message, which often looks so typically hearing in Deaf eyes, in Deaf cultures. Marcel Broesterhuizen, hearing, puts their reports against the background of the paradigm shifts that have taken place in the field of deafness and Catholic views on the relationship between Church and culture. Jacques Haers, hearing, discusses the presentations in the light of liberation theologies. The book contains a verbatim transcript of the forum discussion led by Helga Stevens, Deaf, who is actually a member of the Flemish Parliament.

Read more less

In the past, pastoral care with the deaf generally took place from the care perspective of hearing pastors: deafness as a disability that deserved charity and a missionary effort towards integration of deaf people into a hearing society. This book proposes a liberatory pastoral model that starts from deaf people’s self-experience, Deaf Cultures, and Sign Language as deaf people’s most natural language: deafness as a way of life. In a deaf way of life, deafness is not an impairment or disability, but a world in its own worth. In this Deaf World deaf people are not passive receivers of pastoral ministry, but its primary agents. Topics treated in this book are: the history of deafness in Western culture, deaf people’s self-experience, a non-dichotomizing view on “impairment,” a theological view on language, the deaf community as locus theologicus, and Bible translation into Sign Language.

Read more less