May 3, 2008
Deaf Catholics find a welcoming home at
Sacramento’s
Newman Center
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
Isabel Gomez, a member of the Newman Catholic Community in Sacramento, makes her parents laugh at a recent second Sunday social after the 10:30 a.m. Mass. From left, Ernie Gibbs, Kathleen Anderson, Isabella Gomez, Miguel Gomez and Carmela Gomez. Luis Gris Elizarraras/Herald photo
The New Testament is written in Greek and translated for the faithful around the world.
“Blessed are the meek” (Mark 5:5), for example, is an English translation of “Μακαριοι οι πραεισ.” That sentence translated into French becomes “Heureax les debonnaires” (Happy are the debonnaire). In Spanish, it’s “Felices los pacientes” (Happy are the patient).
In American Sign Language (ASL), such a translation involves hand shapes and movements depicting blessing, humility and joy, according to Peggy Walrath, coordinator of the Diocese of Sacramento’s ministry to the deaf.
Just as English translations are used to make the liturgy accessible to hearing Americans, ASL, the sign language used by deaf people throughout the United States, translates the liturgy to make it accessible to the deaf, Walrath said in an interview with The Herald.
The ASL interpretation is essential for deaf Catholics in the diocese and across the nation. Since December, members of the Catholic deaf community in the Sacramento area have gathered at the Newman Catholic Center near the campus of California State University, Sacramento for the Sunday 10:30 a.m. Mass translated by an interpreter.
“When I was a little girl, there was no access for deaf people at Mass,” recalled Barbara Ramos, a parishioner at the Newman Center. “My father had to teach me everything about the Mass.”
Other deaf parishioners told similar stories through interpreter Katherine Keller.
“We watch the interpreters and watch what they have to tell us and finally we have access to the word of God.”
Barbara Ramos, a parishioner at the Newman Center
“When I was a little girl, all of my family went to Mass,” recounted Newman Center parishioner Susie Gibbs. “I was baptized when I was five, but there was no access at Mass for deaf people. There was no access at school either. I was forced to read lips, but I couldn’t understand anything. I couldn’t understand what was going on.
“My family wanted me to grow up oral,” she continued, “so I didn’t learn sign language until I met my husband and went to college. Before then, I missed so much of what was going on in the world.”
Gibbs’s story is a familiar tale to “99.9 percent of the adult Catholic deaf community” according to Walrath. Though baptized, many deaf Catholics had no access to religious instruction or to the Mass, so grew up excluded from instruction on the liturgy and the sacraments.
Walrath said the situation began to change in the Sacramento Diocese in the 1970s when the parents of five deaf children requested catechetical instruction for their children. Presentation Sister Anne Lucey, who was director of religious education at Presentation Parish in Sacramento at the time, invited Walrath and interpreter Kathy Campbell to interpret catechists’ instruction for deaf children in the diocese. Both Walrath and Campbell are still interpreting for the deaf in the diocese today.
Members of the deaf community at the Newman Center commented on the change from those days to the present.
“Now we have full access with the hearing,” Ramos said. “We watch the interpreters and watch what they have to tell us and finally we have access to the word of God.”
Parishioner Ernie Gibbs said that he and his wife Susie enjoy attending Mass each week at the Newman Center.
“Our priest, (Jesuit) Father George Wanser, is a very good priest,” he said. “He’s enthusiastic and is actually learning some signs. After Mass, we have a social meeting and even a few hearing people join in. Then the hearing people want to learn some signs. We really feel their friendliness and how much they are welcoming us to our church.”
Parishioner Donna Simonet agreed that Father Wanser and the Newman community are welcoming. She travels 45 minutes by two buses to attend Mass at the Newman Center each week, but she willingly makes the effort because she enjoys the pastor and the conversations with other parishioners after Mass. “We learn so much about Mass and our faith, and just general news,” she said.
Stanley Simonet, the diocese’s pastoral worker for the deaf, explained that the deaf community is growing at the Newman Center. He sees new faces almost every week and he is thrilled to see them.
Several deaf parishioners are already trained to be eucharistic ministers and more of the deaf community will soon be signing readings during the Liturgy of the Word, Simonet said. A social gathering is held after Mass on the second Sunday of each month. On Tuesdays in May from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., the Newman Center will offer religious education classes in sign language classes to deaf children.
“Many of the children need to prepare for first Communion and confirmation and to understand Jesus and the sacraments,” he said. “Some of the hearing parishioners have said that they’d like to learn some signs, too. We will have a class for them, too.”
Father Wanser, director of the Newman Center, is one of the hearing members of the community who loves to learn ASL signs. During his tenure as director of liturgical music at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, he worked with the dance department to choreograph ASL to coordinate with the liturgical music for a baccalaureate Mass.
The choir’s signed “Alleluia,” with its initial clap, its spiraling of both hands upward, and its open arms held up to heaven, was so inspiring that Father Wanser has made a point of teaching the signed “Alleluia” to the young men at Jesuit High School in Carmichael, where he is director of liturgical music and teaches a senior workshop on the liturgy.
In fact, the young men at Jesuit High School sign the Alleluja and the Glory to God, and occasionally sign the responsorial psalm between the first and second readings. Father Wanser explained that he teaches a holistic participation in the liturgy, involving “mind, voice and body.”
The Second Vatican Council called for “full, complete, and active participation in the liturgy,” he said, and signing does that by involving the students’ bodies and emotions as well as their voices.
Simply observing signing at Mass adds another dimension of understanding for the entire community, he noted, just as reading the Bible in another language increases people’s understanding of the Scriptures. Father Wanser, who speaks Spanish and reads Greek, said that reading the Gospel in Greek “really opens it up.” Reading the Gospel translated into Spanish also helps him, he said, in opening up new dimensions of nuance.
The same principle applies to ASL Masses, he said. Seeing the Mass signed brings the congregation another level of scriptural understanding by engaging more of people’s senses in its interpretation.
“I love having signers at Mass,” he said, beaming.
