How to Welcome, Include, and Catechize Children With Autism and Other Special Needs: A Parish-based Approach

Deacon Larry Sutton knows first-hand how important and rewarding catechizing children with developmental disabilities can be. In How to Welcome, Include, and Catechize Children with Autism and Other Special Needs, he provides bishops, pastors, DREs, and other diocesan and parish leaders with a guide for creating a program that addresses the needs of children with physical, developmental, and cognitive disabilities and welcomes them into the life of the parish.

How to Welcome, Include, and Catechize Children with Autism and Other Special Needs helps parishes:

• Understand disabilities—and abilities

• Build relationships with children with special needs?

• Provide one-on-one customized catechesis using existing resources

• Inspire teens to volunteer

• Revitalize, educate, and involve the entire parish

How to Welcome, Include, and Catechize Children with Autism and Other Special Needs provides the insights needed to build an effective faith formation program. By sharing stories of success and inspiration that affect everyone—pastor, parent, student, teenager, and teacher—he delivers the unexpected: that catechizing children with special needs actually nurtures the faith of the entire parish.

Lawrence R. Sutton, Ph.D., is an ordained deacon and a psychologist specializing in developmental disabilities, especially autism spectrum disorders. He is the former Manager of the Western Region Office of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Autism Services and is currently the Director of the Pre-Theologian Formation program and teacher at St. Vincent College. He is nationally recognized for developing his own methodology for providing religious education to children with special needs.