Autism has been much on minds today.

We had another grumpy priest experience at church today. The priest was annoyed that Ian didn't hold his hands in the correct way to receive the host. This time, I went back to the church to talk about their intolerance, and I was told that they think other parishioners aren't treating the host with correct reverance, so they have had to become more militant.

These slights against autistic people is part of a larger problem as the Catholic church reacts to criticism by becoming more conservative and less inclusive. They are battening down the hatches and giving up being catholic with the small "c." 

Despite my many misgivings about the growing conservatism Church politics, marginalization of nuns, and obsession with sex, we've kept attending services, because it's good to escape our materialistic world for an hour per week. We went every week even when Ian was three, and it was major work to keep him quiet for an hour. He learned to tolerate the smell of incense and glare of light through the stained glass. We kept going, even after the Catholic pre-school tossed him out for not talking.

But the dirty looks might be the last straw. 

Other recent articles about autism were discussed today. We've been talking about this opinion piece that autism might be caused by a defective auto-immune system in the mother. (I don't have allergies, but everyone else in my family does.) These articles about the causes of autism always make me feel guilty. I shouldn't read them. 

I liked Tyler Cowen's article at the Chronicle, which railed against the dehumanizing languaged used by scientists who study autism. 

After all this, I feel like battening down our own hatches.