The National Catholic Register carried a piece on autistic priests. I think it was good but imperfect. I think it is important to see how autistic men can be Catholic priests, but we will have certain struggles.
I did an interview a few weeks ago about this piece. Some quotes of mine ended up in the final version:
“I knew I wasn’t the best socially, but I wasn’t someone who couldn’t do social interactions at all,” Father Schneider, now in his mid-40s, told the Register. “And so I didn’t really necessarily see it as that big of an issue as some others might.”
[…]
Father Schneider acknowledged that an autism diagnosis warrants further investigation but argued that it shouldn’t lead to automatic rejection.
“That’s reasonable to say — ‘Hey, let’s look at this. Let’s see if this is an obstacle.’ But to automatically put it as an obstacle, which a small percentage of bishops did, I think that is not fair to a good number of men who could be good priests, who are autistic,” said Father Schneider, referring to the CARA survey.
The rest of the article is also worth reading.
This article is not perfect. There was a better way to talk about an autistic seminarian’s mode of liturgical action than “like a toy soldier.” Fr. Mark Nolette, who also has quotes int he article, took serious issue with this and posted online critiquing this article for that point.
Fr. Mark also critiqued Deacon Larry Sutton’s modality more generally: “When we read that seminary formation for autistic seminarians involves making their autism ‘invisible.'” I don’t think we are looking at invisibility. As priests are ordained for the whole people of God, so some conformity is good. This should not be full-on 24-7 masking, which would be unsustainable. However, noting things that can bother God’s people and finding healthy ways to change a bit is part of formation for every seminarian. In summary, while I think the things Fr. Mark points out make this imperfect, I do not critique it as significantly for this as he does. I think this article can be helpful more than harmful.
