Are mentally retarded/autistic people evil and cursed by God?

[VeryConfused88]

I know this is an extremely controversial question to ask, but it has bothered me for quite some time now. I’m a Catholic and have been all my life, but I’ve never come to accept the Church’s position on mental disorders as not being some sort of curse.

My brother is highly funtioning autistic (age 27) and to be quite blunt----I do not like him. I can’t find it inside of me to care for him like I care about my 3 sisters and my 2 other brothers. He has absolutely no empathy for other people, goes about totally devoid of moral contemplation, and lives much like a wild animal—only eating, sleeping, and indulging in any simplistic vices he can (and he seriously can’t help it—seriously if you told him not to do something he would only do it because he thought others were watching, but he could never understand what it means for God to be watching).

I’d much prefer that my brother was a crazed lunatic who murdered people with a pick ax, but who at least understood right and wrong. It wouldn’t matter how much help he was given—my brother can never change—and that is not my opinion, that is a fact. He will always be a heartless zombie, who can never have a relationship with God or plot out his life, and that leaves me wondering why God would create this individual if he cared about him? That line of thinking has led me to believe that God cursed my parents by giving my brother autism and that he is going to hell. What bugs me even further is that my thinking this way is more like fringe Protestant than Catholic. What the heck can I do?

And look, I’m not saying I’m this great poster boy Catholic, but it tortures me to know that my own brother is not even fully human and can never be religious----unless playing infantile video games and viewing vile pornography counts as some sort of religion.

So let me kind of rephrase my question-----Is it okay for me as a Catholic to go on thinking that retarded/austistic people are evil?

And let me also say that I don’t want to wipe them out or abort them before they are born----but I would like them to be removed from society and sent to some sort of utopian facility where they are allowed to live their pathetic, vice-filled lives away from those of us who at least understand morality—whether we choose good or bad.

And btw I realize this is a harsh post, but please understand that this topic frustrates me.

Thanks.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Ordinarily, I do some editing to questions for clarity and length, but have decided to leave this one as is.

Since you have spoken so frankly about your brother, I will do the same for you. I think it is possible that you could have allowed natural frustration with your brother’s handicaps to fester to the point that you could have become incapable of feeling compassion or empathy for your brother – the very faults of which you accuse him. But, in his case, you have acknowledged that he is objectively incapable of compassion and empathy because of his medical condition. You apparently are not incapable and do not, so far as I know, have that medical condition. If you have indeed shut yourself off to feeling for your brother, then you must accept responsibility for that.

What is the solution? The first step may be confession. After that, perhaps you might try to treat your brother as would someone who does have compassion and empathy for him, whether or not you actually have those feelings right now. If you do it well enough, the feeling might follow (i.e., “fake it until you make it”). You might also strive to stop nurturing hatred for your brother, a hatred that apparently has you fantasizing about how much you would prefer to have a sociopathic murderer for a brother than the vulnerable soul God gave you who needs your love and protection. It is, frankly, the responsibility of the morally-functioning adults in your brother’s life to keep him from viewing pornography or playing inappropriate video games. If there is a sin to be counted, it is they, not your brother, who are the ones who sin by allowing him to do such things.

I personally believe that God allows some people to experience serious handicaps so that those who are physically healthy may achieve spiritual health by caring for them. People like your brother do not have the use of reason and so, if baptized, have perfect spiritual health and can only be vulnerable through their physical needs. People like you have perfect physical health and need to achieve spiritual health by caring for those in need, like your brother. In all this, the words of Jesus about why a man was born blind become clear:

As he [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him” (John 9:1-3).