Whole And Holy 'My Daughter Has A Disability': Article Analysis

“Whole and Holy” My Daughter has a Disability In the article “Whole and Holy: My Daughter has a Disability,” author Heather Kirn Lanier extrapolates on the nature of disability and its common perception in society from a Catholic perspective. Lanier describes her experience following her daughter’s diagnosis with a rare chromosomal disorder; she is forced initially to confront her own ableist ideas, and concludes that her daughter is, as she is, “whole and holy.” However, Lanier is disturbed by the prevailing idea in society that her daughter is inherently less than, and even more so when she sees confirmation of this idea in the life of Christ as told by the Bible. In the Bible, Christ healed and thus “made whole” many people, which came …show more content…
From these points Catholics can learn about why Catholics and other religious people treat people with disabilities the way they do and why that should change. The first of the three main points is that people with disabilities are not “damaged goods.” In the article, Lanier questions her daughter’s future as she gets older because of her intellectual disability. “What will she do when she gets older?” Lanier asks, “Bag groceries?” (Lanier, 2017). After this statement, Lanier starts to wonder whether or not her daughter’s condition makes her “damaged goods.” At first she says it doesn’t, but then she starts to rethink herself. She hears two voices in her head telling her contradicting things about her daughter’s condition. One of the voices is telling her that her daughter is in fact damaged, because she is missing a part of a chromosome, which makes her intellectually delayed. The other voice inside Lanier’s head tells her that her daughter is not “damaged goods.” “She’s good and she’s whole and she’s holy” (Lanier, 2017). This is the voice which …show more content…
Lanier mentions that since her daughter’s diagnosis she has heard a cultural voice saying that her daughter was flawed, imperfect, and in need of fixing. She says that she sees when people describe a child’s features as birth defects and in our language how words that were once used in the same context as “intellectually impaired”, like moron and retarded, became insults. She hears it when people say that people with disabilities shouldn’t have children and can ethically be killed as babies. She says she saw it when Donald Trump when running for the office of the President made fun of a disabled reporter. The message she hears is that the disabled body is less than. She has heard about people with visible disabilities being asked by strangers in church if they can pray for them. Lanier has come to terms with the fact that her daughter’s disability will never be healed. She wants the people who want her and people like to be healed prayed for. It would be better for her daughter and people like her if they stopped trying to heal them and accept them for who they