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At Holy Angels, all deaf are welcomed | The-Tidings.com
Last October, Galluadet University in Washington, D.C., the "Harvard of the deaf," not only brought attention to deaf people but exposed what the New York Times, CNN and other news outlets called the debate over deaf culture.
After months of growing protests by students, faculty and alumni at the nation's only liberal arts college for deaf people, which was founded by an act of Congress in 1864 and chartered by President Abraham Lincoln, its board of trustees revoked the contract of Jane Fernandes, who was to become the institution's next president in 2007.
What was the reason for 1,800 deaf and hard-of-hearing students boycotting classes, raising a tent city on campus and blocking the main gates with their own locked bodies?
Many, including the 50-year-old Fernandes herself, who has been provost at Gallaudet since 2000, said the grassroots outcry arose because she simply wasn't "deaf enough." Even though the veteran educator has been deaf all her life, along with her mother and brother, she didn't learn American Sign Language (ASL) - the preferred means of communication at the 142-year-old college - until she was 23. So she grew up speaking and reading lips.
Moreover, she had argued that the university's very survival centered on recruiting all deaf students and making use of the latest technology in cochlear implants and hearing aids so that they could progress in the hearing as well as deaf world.
"The battle over Gallaudet's future erupted at a time of massive change in the deaf world, with technological advances like cochlear implants and more effective hearing aids being felt by many in the forefront of the deaf-rights movement as an assault on deaf culture and deaf identify," wrote Diana Jean Schemo in the New York Times. "The turnaround ends months of protests over the board's choice that had rippled from Galludet to polarize deaf communities across the United States."
'Deaf Militants'
One deaf community that hasn't been polarized by the ongoing deaf culture debate - in fact, it is more cohesive than ever - is located several miles south of downtown Los Angeles. And this year, it is celebrating two decades of serving all deaf and hard-of-hearing persons.
Holy Angels Church of the Deaf in the industrial city of Vernon is easy to mistake for some on-location movie set. The small stone structure, with its simple but striking front steeple, is dwarfed by warehouses, food processing plants and factories. Tractor-trailers and dump trucks rumble by on Santa Fe Avenue. The smell of diesel fuel lingers in the air.
Inside, however, is another world.
The small narrow church, adorned with side stained glass windows, is divided into two sections of upholstered seats and kneelers resting on a hardwood floor. Three illuminated glass etchings stand out in the sanctuary. On the left is a kneeling angel; to the right Our Lady of Perpetual Help holding a young Jesus; and in the center a striking 17th-century Bernini iconic cross. All three appear to float out from the back wall, which is a soothing burgundy.
During the two Sunday morning Masses - both celebrated in American Sign Language, with one interpreted in English, the other in Spanish for hearing parents, siblings and friends - ceiling spotlights shine on the altar, pulpit and presider's chair, illuminating a person's hands.
A video screen hangs from the ceiling above the altar, where colored paintings, photos and maps are projected by a PowerPoint presentation throughout the liturgy. A powerful acoustical sub-woofer amplifies low frequency sounds so parishioners can feel music through the floor.
The atmosphere, in short, is not only visually stimulating, but also sacred and very inviting to those who cannot hear.
"In some circles, there's still what we call 'deaf militants,' who feel that you have to be what they call 'royal blue-blood' deaf," said Tomas Garcia, chief of staff at Holy Angels Church. "That means you're born deaf, you have deaf parents, you went to a deaf school like Gallaudet, and you will marry someone who is also deaf and have deaf children. Your first language was American Sign Language.
"But that's just a small percentage of the deaf community," the 33-year-old deaf man, who is married to a hearing woman and has two children, pointed out. "The greater deaf community right now is going through a process of self analysis where we're feeling we need to be accepting of all people who have a hearing loss. Because we need to come together, and advocate and fight for each other."
A 'Personal Parish'
Recently, Garcia got together with Holy Angels' current pastor, Father Tom Schweitzer, and founding pastor, Father Brian Doran, to talk about the "personal parish" for the deaf that was established by Archbishop Roger Mahony in April 1987. All three wear cochlear implants and are medically deaf, though both clergymen gradually lost their hearing, while Garcia was born deaf.
"At the grassroots level, there's no split with the deaf," Father Doran said. "For people around here, there's no split."
But the men agree that deaf culture, spearheaded by American Sign Language, is alive and well at their urban parish and across the nation. Garcia explains that, like any culture, the deaf have their own community of people who come together to share stories, experiences and values. Father Schweitzer says there is definitely a "deaf way," but it's hard to put your finger on it.
For Father Doran, sign language is what really binds the deaf world together. He explains that ASL is not putting a specific sign to a specific word, rather it constitutes its own specific language with its own sentence structure. The language, in fact, linguistically is closer to Navajo than English because it's based on concepts not words.
"ASL is a natural language for deaf people," said Father Schweitzer. "It was invented by deaf people and introduced in America in the early 19th century. It came from their experiences, their world. So they made the language. Regular 'Sign English,' which is a word by word thing, was invented by hearing people so that the deaf could learn English. But ASL is a natural thing."
Father Doran was nodding and smiled in agreement.
"When you discover ASL and the deaf community - and the joy of the ease of communication and looking at the world the same way - it's like a gay person coming out of the closet," the 64-year-old priest said. "There's no going back. For us, there's no going back. Once you've discovered the language, once you've discovered people who are like you, you're very, very happy."
He says when the three go out to eat together they don't use their voices. Sometimes they even remove their cochlear implants, which allow them to hear sounds and read lips better. "Because communication is so smooth using ASL," Father Doran explained. "Even though Tom and I were not born deaf, signing is easier for us to communicate."
Deaf empowerment
The staff of Holy Angels tries hard to foster deaf culture. The visual is stressed at the two Sunday morning Masses through the church's furnishings, lighting and background colors, which make signs easy to pick up. The PowerPoint presentation on the altar screen flashes some 35 images during the liturgies. Vibrations of hymns and songs come through the wood floor. And the Gospel is often acted out in animated skits.
"Everything that we do here is driven by the deaf culture," Garcia acknowledged. "I mean, we make decisions based on what's best for the deaf. Most of the leadership positions, liturgical decisions are assigned to lay people. We have changed the way we worship because we think this was most effective for us in terms of becoming closer to God."
Father Schweitzer reports that he often gets complaints about how ear-piercing the sub-woofer is that amplifies low frequency sounds to over 100 vibrations per second. "If it's so loud, just don't sit in front of the speaker," he quipped, shaking his head. "We're not going to change it for the hearing people. This is a deaf church, and this works for deaf people."
Father Doran said, "At church on a Sunday, we don't speak. When we have our parish meetings, we don't speak. Because we have our own language, and it's connected with our history, the culture, how we grew up --- deaf ways."
"We believe here in deaf empowerment," added Garcia. "We believe that the deaf should lead the deaf community."
Holy Angels' 51-year-old pastor points out that the deaf are used to accepting only what they see, which makes understanding abstract spiritual and mystical concepts like the Mystical Body of Christ, or even the sacraments, a real challenge.
Garcia concurs. He notes that most religions are based on oral traditions, and their liturgies, including the Catholic Mass, are largely spoken. The religious education staff has found that when deaf children come to the parish for the first time many have a hard time taking in the whole concept of an almighty God who watches over them, or even the idea of conscience and being able to tell right from wrong.
So Holy Angels does a lot of outreach with parents, stressing that spirituality is a lifelong journey of development and nurturing within the community. There are extra religious education classes for hearing and non-hearing moms and dads as well their sons and daughters.
A process of acceptance
Garcia observes that while most deaf parents "rejoice" when they have a deaf child, for hearing parents there's a whole process of acceptance. They go through the same steps involved in death and dying. Many experience denial at first and later blame themselves for their son or daughter not being perfect. And this is no small societal problem today, since 90 percent of deaf kids are born to hearing parents.
"One of the reasons we have a deaf church is because we go out of our way to encourage parents to be involved in their child's deafness," Father Doran said. "We want them to see it's OK that there's a deaf world, and you're now part of that world. So it's not a tragedy."
During the last two decades, the number of deaf families across the three-county archdiocese who come to the little stone church in Vernon has risen from 35 to 300. Many stay not only for breakfast but also lunch in the parish hall.
"Deaf people don't want to be integrated in mainstream churches," Father Schweitzer said. "Because they always had their deaf bowling leagues, their deaf clubs, but they never had their own deaf church. So most deaf didn't go to church because it was a hearing thing.
"But when we opened, we had people coming from all sorts of denominations and staying all day because it was a deaf church," he reported. "The deaf could identify with Holy Angels: 'Oh, it's my church.'"
Last October, Galluadet University in Washington, D.C., the "Harvard of the deaf," not only brought attention to deaf people but exposed what the New York Times, CNN and other news outlets called the debate over deaf culture.
After months of growing protests by students, faculty and alumni at the nation's only liberal arts college for deaf people, which was founded by an act of Congress in 1864 and chartered by President Abraham Lincoln, its board of trustees revoked the contract of Jane Fernandes, who was to become the institution's next president in 2007.
What was the reason for 1,800 deaf and hard-of-hearing students boycotting classes, raising a tent city on campus and blocking the main gates with their own locked bodies?
Many, including the 50-year-old Fernandes herself, who has been provost at Gallaudet since 2000, said the grassroots outcry arose because she simply wasn't "deaf enough." Even though the veteran educator has been deaf all her life, along with her mother and brother, she didn't learn American Sign Language (ASL) - the preferred means of communication at the 142-year-old college - until she was 23. So she grew up speaking and reading lips.
Moreover, she had argued that the university's very survival centered on recruiting all deaf students and making use of the latest technology in cochlear implants and hearing aids so that they could progress in the hearing as well as deaf world.
"The battle over Gallaudet's future erupted at a time of massive change in the deaf world, with technological advances like cochlear implants and more effective hearing aids being felt by many in the forefront of the deaf-rights movement as an assault on deaf culture and deaf identify," wrote Diana Jean Schemo in the New York Times. "The turnaround ends months of protests over the board's choice that had rippled from Galludet to polarize deaf communities across the United States."
'Deaf Militants'
One deaf community that hasn't been polarized by the ongoing deaf culture debate - in fact, it is more cohesive than ever - is located several miles south of downtown Los Angeles. And this year, it is celebrating two decades of serving all deaf and hard-of-hearing persons.
Holy Angels Church of the Deaf in the industrial city of Vernon is easy to mistake for some on-location movie set. The small stone structure, with its simple but striking front steeple, is dwarfed by warehouses, food processing plants and factories. Tractor-trailers and dump trucks rumble by on Santa Fe Avenue. The smell of diesel fuel lingers in the air.
Inside, however, is another world.
The small narrow church, adorned with side stained glass windows, is divided into two sections of upholstered seats and kneelers resting on a hardwood floor. Three illuminated glass etchings stand out in the sanctuary. On the left is a kneeling angel; to the right Our Lady of Perpetual Help holding a young Jesus; and in the center a striking 17th-century Bernini iconic cross. All three appear to float out from the back wall, which is a soothing burgundy.
During the two Sunday morning Masses - both celebrated in American Sign Language, with one interpreted in English, the other in Spanish for hearing parents, siblings and friends - ceiling spotlights shine on the altar, pulpit and presider's chair, illuminating a person's hands.
A video screen hangs from the ceiling above the altar, where colored paintings, photos and maps are projected by a PowerPoint presentation throughout the liturgy. A powerful acoustical sub-woofer amplifies low frequency sounds so parishioners can feel music through the floor.
The atmosphere, in short, is not only visually stimulating, but also sacred and very inviting to those who cannot hear.
"In some circles, there's still what we call 'deaf militants,' who feel that you have to be what they call 'royal blue-blood' deaf," said Tomas Garcia, chief of staff at Holy Angels Church. "That means you're born deaf, you have deaf parents, you went to a deaf school like Gallaudet, and you will marry someone who is also deaf and have deaf children. Your first language was American Sign Language.
"But that's just a small percentage of the deaf community," the 33-year-old deaf man, who is married to a hearing woman and has two children, pointed out. "The greater deaf community right now is going through a process of self analysis where we're feeling we need to be accepting of all people who have a hearing loss. Because we need to come together, and advocate and fight for each other."
A 'Personal Parish'
Recently, Garcia got together with Holy Angels' current pastor, Father Tom Schweitzer, and founding pastor, Father Brian Doran, to talk about the "personal parish" for the deaf that was established by Archbishop Roger Mahony in April 1987. All three wear cochlear implants and are medically deaf, though both clergymen gradually lost their hearing, while Garcia was born deaf.
"At the grassroots level, there's no split with the deaf," Father Doran said. "For people around here, there's no split."
But the men agree that deaf culture, spearheaded by American Sign Language, is alive and well at their urban parish and across the nation. Garcia explains that, like any culture, the deaf have their own community of people who come together to share stories, experiences and values. Father Schweitzer says there is definitely a "deaf way," but it's hard to put your finger on it.
For Father Doran, sign language is what really binds the deaf world together. He explains that ASL is not putting a specific sign to a specific word, rather it constitutes its own specific language with its own sentence structure. The language, in fact, linguistically is closer to Navajo than English because it's based on concepts not words.
"ASL is a natural language for deaf people," said Father Schweitzer. "It was invented by deaf people and introduced in America in the early 19th century. It came from their experiences, their world. So they made the language. Regular 'Sign English,' which is a word by word thing, was invented by hearing people so that the deaf could learn English. But ASL is a natural thing."
Father Doran was nodding and smiled in agreement.
"When you discover ASL and the deaf community - and the joy of the ease of communication and looking at the world the same way - it's like a gay person coming out of the closet," the 64-year-old priest said. "There's no going back. For us, there's no going back. Once you've discovered the language, once you've discovered people who are like you, you're very, very happy."
He says when the three go out to eat together they don't use their voices. Sometimes they even remove their cochlear implants, which allow them to hear sounds and read lips better. "Because communication is so smooth using ASL," Father Doran explained. "Even though Tom and I were not born deaf, signing is easier for us to communicate."
Deaf empowerment
The staff of Holy Angels tries hard to foster deaf culture. The visual is stressed at the two Sunday morning Masses through the church's furnishings, lighting and background colors, which make signs easy to pick up. The PowerPoint presentation on the altar screen flashes some 35 images during the liturgies. Vibrations of hymns and songs come through the wood floor. And the Gospel is often acted out in animated skits.
"Everything that we do here is driven by the deaf culture," Garcia acknowledged. "I mean, we make decisions based on what's best for the deaf. Most of the leadership positions, liturgical decisions are assigned to lay people. We have changed the way we worship because we think this was most effective for us in terms of becoming closer to God."
Father Schweitzer reports that he often gets complaints about how ear-piercing the sub-woofer is that amplifies low frequency sounds to over 100 vibrations per second. "If it's so loud, just don't sit in front of the speaker," he quipped, shaking his head. "We're not going to change it for the hearing people. This is a deaf church, and this works for deaf people."
Father Doran said, "At church on a Sunday, we don't speak. When we have our parish meetings, we don't speak. Because we have our own language, and it's connected with our history, the culture, how we grew up --- deaf ways."
"We believe here in deaf empowerment," added Garcia. "We believe that the deaf should lead the deaf community."
Holy Angels' 51-year-old pastor points out that the deaf are used to accepting only what they see, which makes understanding abstract spiritual and mystical concepts like the Mystical Body of Christ, or even the sacraments, a real challenge.
Garcia concurs. He notes that most religions are based on oral traditions, and their liturgies, including the Catholic Mass, are largely spoken. The religious education staff has found that when deaf children come to the parish for the first time many have a hard time taking in the whole concept of an almighty God who watches over them, or even the idea of conscience and being able to tell right from wrong.
So Holy Angels does a lot of outreach with parents, stressing that spirituality is a lifelong journey of development and nurturing within the community. There are extra religious education classes for hearing and non-hearing moms and dads as well their sons and daughters.
A process of acceptance
Garcia observes that while most deaf parents "rejoice" when they have a deaf child, for hearing parents there's a whole process of acceptance. They go through the same steps involved in death and dying. Many experience denial at first and later blame themselves for their son or daughter not being perfect. And this is no small societal problem today, since 90 percent of deaf kids are born to hearing parents.
"One of the reasons we have a deaf church is because we go out of our way to encourage parents to be involved in their child's deafness," Father Doran said. "We want them to see it's OK that there's a deaf world, and you're now part of that world. So it's not a tragedy."
During the last two decades, the number of deaf families across the three-county archdiocese who come to the little stone church in Vernon has risen from 35 to 300. Many stay not only for breakfast but also lunch in the parish hall.
"Deaf people don't want to be integrated in mainstream churches," Father Schweitzer said. "Because they always had their deaf bowling leagues, their deaf clubs, but they never had their own deaf church. So most deaf didn't go to church because it was a hearing thing.
"But when we opened, we had people coming from all sorts of denominations and staying all day because it was a deaf church," he reported. "The deaf could identify with Holy Angels: 'Oh, it's my church.'"