DISABLED WHEELCHAIR PRIESTS INSPIRE COURAGE.............

Several times since being thrust into residence at Mercy McMahon Terrace, a retirement community in East Sacramento, where now at 56 years old I am more than a few decades younger than most of the other residents, I have been told by the powers that be, that I cannot celebrate public Masses, preside at Sacraments or other Liturgical Rites, because I am in a wheelchair and cannot stand at the altar.  As a physically disabled person from birth, who has contended successfully for five decades plus with the reality of disability and having productively continued to minister as a Catholic priest and pastor, while being in a wheelchair for more than a third of the time during the past eleven and a half years; the attempt to make a negative case is a false argument.  I am no different from any other physically disabled person or priest, who retain the capability and are given the opportunity to work and serve with equal accessibility and inclusion in the interpersonal, professional. and pastoral, publics of the World, including the Catholic-Christian Church.  For sixty years or longer Catholic priests in the Sacramento Diocese, some in wheelchairs, others with less obvious diseases and disabilities, have continued to actively minister to and with the People of God.  Yet, for going on twenty months I have been treated as though I am incompetent or an invalid, unable to continue carrying out priestly ministry, when the opposite reality remains true.  In praying, pondering, and discerning, about how to make sense of my current status I have explored and discovered the stories of other Catholic priests with similar disabilities, who are continuing to proactively provide pastoral ministries.  One disabled  priest critically injured in a car accident and permanently caused to use a wheelchair has a disability ministry created around him and the effectiveness of his continued pastoral ministry which was established by the laity and parishioners he knows and serves.  Another Nigerian priest ministering in Arkansas following a serious accident that severed his spinal cord, is returned to parish ministry with no limitations placed upon as an associate pastor / parochial vicar. A Los Angeles Archdiocesan priest, suffered brain stem damage in an accident and continued his active ministry reaching out to the disabled and inspiring them as the presider over their Handicapable Ministry Masses. A priest in Brooklyn, New York who survived a stroke continued his priestly ministry for twelve years and longer, quite effectively.  A fifth example is even more affirming.  It is the ordination of a priest in the Philadelphia Archdiocese who is the first quadriplegic priest ordained in the Catholic Church nearly forty years ago, who has carried out a productive pastoral and teaching ministry.  These are five other Catholic priests whose courage and continuing commitment to serving the Lord Jesus and the People of God, inspire me and others to press forward in pursuing and fulfilling our vocations.  The National Catholic Partnership For Disabilities, (N.C.P.D.) concretizes the opportunity and inclusion priests, deacons, religious, and the laity, and the disabilities we mutually bear, to provide every person with full accessibility to their rightful place in the Catholic-Christian Community of Believers.  All in all, me, you, and  the inherent dignity of every human being, is a Gospel Value as one Church, and the one People of God, that integrates and incorporates us into, "One Faith, One Lord, One Baptism", as Disciples of Jesus and Members of the Body of Christ.............Fr.Troy David