There are a lot of things I will probably never understand about Minnesota. Lutefisk would be one example. I’ve spent only about three days in the state of Minnesota in my whole life. Aside from the 3M plant that seemed to cover about half of the city of St. Paul, the thing I remember most is the stereotypical hospitality and courtesy afforded me by the people there, something that’s come to be known as “Minnesota nice.”

What I’m hearing in the news this morning is not so nice. It involves an autistic child, the Church of St. Joseph in Bertha, Minnesota, and its pastor, Reverend Daniel Walz. I will be dropping the title “Reverend” in the remainder of this piece because it is a title of courtesy, and I intend none. If I had been able to find a better photograph of this worthless human being, you’d be looking at it now. If anyone has one, please send it along and I’ll post it; for various reasons, people should know what someone this ignorant and heartless looks like.

Carol and John Race have a son named Adam. That’s him in the photo at right. Adam is thirteen years old and severely autistic. The Races are dedicated to their son’s well-being, as all parents are, and they understand his disability. They’ve been attending the Church of St. Joseph since 1996, and have always taken care to ensure that their son’s sometimes-disruptive behavior is controlled and its impact on the other parishioners is minimized. They say they’d never had a complaint about Adam until last summer.

Daniel Walz, who has led the church for the past three years, visited the Races last summer at their home, along with another church official.

“He said that we did not discipline our son. He said that our son was physically out of control and a danger to everyone at church,” says Carol Race. “I can’t discipline him out of his autism, and I think that’s what our priest is expecting.”

Some months later, Walz followed up with a letter explicitly asking the Races to stop bringing their son to church. I don’t remember every word of the Bible, but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in there like this:

“If thy autistic parishioner’s meltdown doth offend thee, and if his mother and his father cannot cure him, thou shalt drive him from thy church, verily, for blessed are the meek but not the autistic, and they shall inherit thy boot to thine ass.”

Daniel Walz seems to have worked that out for himself, though, without need of divine counsel. The Races, of course, dismissed the letter as having been written by a prejudicial moron (which is correct) and continued to bring their son to church. So, two weeks ago, Walz decided to up the ante and smote the Rices with a restraining order. When Adam accompanied his mother to church on Mother’s Day, the result was a citation, and a warning that if she brings Adam to the church again, she will be arrested.

If anything brings to light the problems caused by a complete lack of autism awareness in this country and probably worldwide, this is it. Autism is not a problem that you can fix through discipline. Autism is not misbehavior, it’s not recalcitrance and it’s not something to be locked away and hidden from everyone so that they’ll never understand it. Churches would never dream of turning away a man in a wheelchair or a woman who needs to be on oxygen, but a child with autism (and who reportedly is somewhat quieter in church than most of the babies in the room) is somehow a pariah and it’s okay to simply cast him out. Last time I checked, Christians didn’t deny people worship on the basis of their disabilities. It seems that no one told Daniel Walz.

The only good news here is that I’m fairly certain we’ll see a turnaround in this case soon. Daniel Walz might be stupid enough to turn an autistic child away from his church. The Catholic Church as a whole, on the other hand has just had a hard lesson in the dangers of bad press. Thanks to their coverup of the few priests who liked to play with young boys’ “rosary beads,” the church already has a black eye and has provided material for late-night comedians’ monologues for a year or more. I can’t believe they’d make the same mistake twice, and I might even expect something of a backlash. If Daniel Walz is left swinging in the wind by his superiors and winds up a disgraced layman, justice will be done.

I haven’t had time to talk about this with Allison, my fiancee’ and one of the area’s foremost authorities on the education of autistic children. I feel certain she’ll have input, and if you see a comment below from her, please give anything she might add a great deal more weight than anything you’ve read in this post.

Despite the few things I’ve managed to learn from her through osmosis, I still know nearly nothing about autism. I do know what makes me angry, and I would absolutely love to give Daniel Walz an opportunity to turn the other cheek.

[Edited 3-5-2013 to replace missing media and remove a dead link. –ksj]