Helena Mary Cole

Mr. Cole and I definitely have our stories about taking autistic kids to mass, but all the best ones have one thing in common: Clark, our eleven-year-old non-speaking autistic son.

We had a bit of culture shock coming from an evangelical Protestant background to the Catholic Church because of the different philosophy about kids being present during mass. Most evangelical churches will have a nursery in the building where parents can drop off their young children and attend the service without them. But Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, which means Jesus is really and literally there, and so, the Bible verse where Jesus says “let the children come to me” means (among other things) that children should not be sent away from mass. While evangelical Protestants may think, “Jesus is present in the nursery, too,” Catholics counter with, “Yes, but not in the same way.” And so children attend mass. They just do.

Friendly caution: sometimes, sending children away during worship services can backfire. I once heard one young man say that being sent out of the service taught him that “the service isn’t for me,” and so when he got too old for the nursery and children’s church, he put a lot of energy into trying to get out of it in other ways. I used to wonder at the number of teenage boys volunteering for nursery duty, back when we used to bring Clark to evangelical services. Teenage boys are not generally known to be interested in babies and young children. But that could be it: anything is better than sitting through the service, they think. They’re looking for ways to avoid it.

The good news is, while evangelical Protestant services tend to go for an hour and a half, sometimes two hours, mass (with some exceptions like Easter Vigil) is very consistently one hour long. So at least it’s not as long for kids. By communion time, our children have usually reached the end of what they can take, but then it’s not long until it’s time to go home anyway. And I find Catholics are very understanding of restless kids in mass. The younger ones remember when they were the restless kids, and other older ones remember what it was like trying to keep their young kids in line during mass… We don’t get complaints. Ever. Even if autistic kids have a much harder time keeping still and quiet and are more disruptive than their non-autistic counterparts.

Sometimes, at our parish, Clark will sing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” all through the homily. Not quietly, either. And yet, if Mr. Cole and I ever decided we were all worn out chasing him during mass, and attended separately so that Clark could stay home, I’d get people coming up to me after mass, saying, “Where’s Clark? I miss Clark. I love the way he praises God in his own joyful way.”

Just last Sunday, Clark brought his new pizza blanket to mass. His birthday was the day before, and because he’s developed a bit of an obsession with blankets (he gets that from me), and practically lives on pepperoni pizza, we gave him a round blanket that looks like a giant pizza. It was a big hit with him. He wouldn’t go to mass the next day without it. And I’m not sure if Father noticed that halfway through his homily, Clark had one of his characteristic joyful outbursts, and sent a five-foot-diameter pizza spinning into the air. If Father didn’t notice, almost everyone else probably did. He likes to sit near the front, not far from the tabernacle.

Again, he is young, and people still find him cute. I’m not sure how long that’s going to last.

But my all-time favourite Clark-at-mass story is this one:

We used to never miss our diocese chrism mass on the Monday of Holy Week, at the big cathedral in a neighbouring city. I’m pretty sure Clark was still our only child at the time of this story, though Lance might have been on the way. In any case, we went that year as usual, and Clark always seemed to enjoy going. The music at the chrism mass is always better than usual, and they have an enormous pipe organ. Clark loves music.

Anyway, that year, I remember being handed the order of mass at the door and noticing that the entire second scripture reading had been printed in it, which was very odd. Catholics are encouraged to read the reading at home before coming, but then listen to them being proclaimed during mass. You don’t ten to have the text printed right in front of you. But I didn’t think too much of it at first.

When the time for the second reading came, I can remember being confused about a silence that seemed to have come over the entire crowd. If you’re Catholic, you know how it is: you are so familiar with the mass, all you need is to keep an ear on it while simultaneously keeping an eye on your kids. But then I looked up and saw that the second scripture reading was being proclaimed by a hearing-impaired woman using sign language. That was why it was printed in the booklet. It took me a couple of minutes to catch on.

Just as I was thinking, “Wow – that’s so beautiful – the proclamation of God’s word should be accessible to everyone, even the hearing impaired,” Clark found his opening. The silent nature of sign language inspired him to fill the silence (maybe it was too quiet for him, I’m not sure. There are times when he needs auditory stimulation): he began to sing “Do You Know the Muffin Man” over and over again, loudly, in his usual monotone.

This was a slightly different animal from singing during the homily back home. He was singing into the complete silence and not only that, but every priest in the diocese was seated at the front of the cathedral, listening. They do that for the chrism mass – all the priests get together and have dinner and then attend the mass. The opening procession is long and magnificent. Anyway, if they’re all there, they can all bring some of the blessed chrism back to their own parishes themselves, I guess. So they all heard our son’s little performance.

What can you do? I guess we could have taken Clark out, where he could have asked the statues outside the cathedral if they knew the muffin man, but in the end, I just held him on my lap and tried not to laugh. It was THE BEST. We were laughing about it later with some others from our parish who were also there. Even our parish music director, who had been seated way up in the loft overhead heard Clark’s solo.

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Including all the kids like our Clark.