St Joseph's Pastoral Centre gears up for Paralympics

St Joseph’s Pastoral Centre in Hendon, north London has been planning for the Paralympics with as much discipline and stamina as many of the athletes who will be participating in the spectacle. Three years ago they took the theme of seeds, growth and flowering in preparation for the Games, and in this Olympic year have combined them with the event’s goals of respect, excellence and friendship.

St Joseph’s has two main areas of work: an Activities Centre and an Outreach Service, the former offers therapeutic, vocational or leisure courses to, largely, adults with Learning Disabilities, of all faiths or none. In many of the courses the Centre runs the theme has centred on the Paralympics and Olympics. For example, Stage Right is a drama, mime and movement class, which is open to disabled and non-disabled students, and they have been working towards a performance of The Olympic Flame to coincide with the event. The flame is a metaphor for the human spirit that survives and endures various crises.

The Outreach service supports families in the parishes of the Catholic Diocese of Westminster in their spiritual and social life. The service has had a major involvement in More Than Gold, the ecumenical group, who are bringing all Churches together in the name of the Games. Their specific role has been as a member of the Paralympic Committee for prayer.

They have co-written The Paralympic Sunday pamphlet on the More Than Gold website, and their Symbols of Faith course (for anyone interested to learn how to prepare children with special needs for the sacraments and other liturgies) and Shine Your Light (a disability and theology course for Sixth Formers) are both listed on the organisation’s resources list.

In the run up, the Get Set Tour saw St Joseph’s as one of the agencies training Games Pastors, showing them how to make Churches more welcoming with prayers from the heart to those with a disability (basically disability awareness to enable Churches to reach out, where they were not necessarily doing this).

A solely Catholic response to More Than Gold is Catholic 2012 of which St Joseph’s is also on the Committee. One of the highlights of the Games for them will be a Conference on Disability on 2nd July at Westminster Methodist Halls. The Catholic Church in UK has experienced a major shift in its theology and practice surrounding intellectual disability - from inclusion to belonging.

They have recently produced a set of national guidelines which are theologically underpinned so as to ensure that people can have full participation in church. With the arrival of the Games it is possible to explore how this shift is being lived out.

St Joseph’s is taking a group of pilgrims to the National Disability Day at Aylesford. This year it has been agreed that the focus for the day will be the celebration of gifts and the arrival of the 2012 Games in England. The welcome will include a mention of the Games and there will be an exchange of gifts from person to person, these will be flags, some of which will be made by St Joseph’s, they will also be writing the bidding prayers and taking part in the Rosary Way drama.

Release for Peace is an initiative between St Josephs, Pield Heath Special School, Douay Martyrs Secondary School and St Bernadette’s Primary School in Hillingdon, as a bridge building exercise between people with Learning Disabilities and the rest of the community. In the Ancient Wars, 50 days before and 50 days after would be the equivalent of a ceasefire, before the Ancient Olympics, to allow participating athletes time to take part. In order to make the exercise a lasting legacy students are making 100 squares of material with the object of making an altar front – these will then be divided so that a quarter of each will go to each of the parties taking part, so that the four altar cloths are a joint enterprise.

Similarly, St Dominic’s Sixth Form are providing sports mentors for people with a learning disability, as a lasting legacy of the Games. St Joseph’s has also started a Unified Football Team in association with Tottenham Hotspurs Foundation, Middlesex University and the Special Olympics Association.

The culmination of all this vigorous activity of the Paralympics will coincide with a Celebration visual Mass at St George’s Cathedral, Southwark, at 6pm.

St Joseph’s is working on its own version of the Paralympic medals which will be distributed to students at the Centre’s Achievement Day in July as tangible evidence of their supreme performance in this very memorable year.

For more information see: www.stjoseph.org.uk/