In One Week, Forces Within Turn of Events Before Our Deaf Eyes

Many of us, Deaf America witnessed riveting forces in turn of events with the celebrity's deaf newborn son and unimaginable sex abuses against 200 deaf boys at the deaf school in just less than one week (March 21-27th 2010). Our reactions varied within the following events lately.

More than hundreds pluses of deaf people made the history of being involved in the public participation via comments regarding the celebrity's newborn deaf child. Deaf people finally could influence the public opinion in very direct way without any media filters and distortion what Joe and Barrett McIntyre ought to do for their newborn deaf son with 180 comments on People.com - http://celebritybabies.people.com/2010/03/26/joey-mcintyre-introduces-son-rhys-edward-and-opens-up-about-his-severe-hearing-loss/

The revelations of deep secrets against 200 deaf boys out in the open which led to the gutsy calls for the resignation of Pope Benedict around the entire world for his questionable handling of internal church affairs in concerns of "too many" sexual abuses within the Catholic churches and schools.

We finally get the whole world to see the real existence of audism affecting the lives of deaf people everywhere by the unseen forces. We know about audism pretty long before the society at large seen the extent of it.

We still see the troubling pattern of audism within posted comments by audiologists and pro-cochlear implant (CI) supporters and defenders on People.com web page with the high-spirited article on Pop Singer Joe and his wife's deaf newborn son, Rhys. Audiologists and pro-CI defenders surely refuse to quit their lucrative and greedy and selfish agendas of their own to instill the forced CI surgery on deaf babies and youngsters without the consents of involved deaf children.

Luckily, many of us, deaf people keeping fight for the best interest of deaf children everywhere with the solid foundation of language and intellectual development and ASL-centered education with Joe and Barrett McIntyre's deaf son, Rhys.

We, the Deaf America aren't quite surprised about the common attitudes within audism by the hearing people on the matter of "could be avoidable" sexual abuses against 200 deaf boys at the St. John School for the Deaf, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (WI) spanned more than fifty years (1950 til present include dismissive and prejudiced attitudes).

Sadly, the Vatican and Catholic Church chose to see deaf people as some kind of disposable and expendable human beings below the worthiness of humanity in the form of audism.

One of the anonymous commentator left hir own comment on another blog posting of mine about ONLY ONE DEAF PRIEST ORDINATED, Father Thomas Coughlin in the entire North America with the once largest body of religious followers around the world -http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14275a.htm. Father Thomas Coughlin often faced the problems of audism with the Catholic Church hierarchy regarding his pastorship and recruitment of new deaf priests in footsteps of Coughlin. He once quoted ""We are not the problem. We are the solution!" http://www.angelfire.com/blues/tissa/cardinal.html

Unknowingly how many number of ordinated deaf priests over centuries. The poor-kept records by the Catholic Church on numbers of deaf nuns except Teresa de Cartagena as philosopher and writer in the 1400s.

Ironically, the very first documented records of formal schooling of deaf youngsters were done at the Catholic church in Spain - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Ponce_de_Le%C3%B3n
It led to the creation of formal education of the deaf in other countries like France and England and America.

Both historically-based "The Devils" film and "The Godfathers" comic book are the sure things for endless bashing of the Catholic Church after the news reports of sex abuses against 200 deaf boys and unreported incidents among deaf victims -

http://www.answers.com/topic/the-devils-film

http://www.catholicleague.org/rer.php?topic=Miscellaneous&id=135

http://www.chick.com/catalog/comics/0114.asp

http://www.chick.com/reading/comics/0114/0114_allinone.asp

ASLize yours,

Robert L. Mason (RLM)

RLMDEAF blog