Catholic Males with Physical Disabilities on Disability Concepts in the Context of Religious Practices: Secondary Qualitative Data Analysis

Abstract

Summary: The article presents a report on the secondary analysis of raw qualitative data regarding the concept of disability from the perspective of 16 males with congenital physical disability (spina bifida, cerebral palsy) and acquired disabilities after an accident. The project was performed as a secondary qualitative data analysis based on analytical induction, a methodological construct called the conceptual framework according to Imenda (2014) and was data-driven research according to Wolcott (1992) and Spradley (2016; 2016). The analysis was grounded in the context of religious practices undertaken by the participants (prayer, pilgrimage, retreat). The main research question in the secondary data analysis was: what concept of one’s own disability do males have in the context of religious practices? The detailed research questions concerned the presence in the theoretical content of models of disability, the location of the field of one’s own disability, its value and significance for Catholic males, participants of the religious practices. Secondly, raw data were analysed from primary reports and Polish ethnographic research devoted to pilgrimage, prayer and Catholic volunteering conducted by three researchers, Paulina Łyczbińska in 2012, Agnieszka Karpińska in 2014 and Magdalena Łazik in 2013. The authors performed primary research with a total of 28 adults, both females and males with physical and/or multiple disabilities participating in religious practices, including prayer, pilgrimages to Jasna Góra, meetings and retreats of the integration groups of Caritas. The secondary data analysis focused on data from 16 males aged 19–55 (including 15 males of normal intellect and 1 male with a mild intellectual disability) with physical (inheritable) (13 males) or acquired (3 males) disabilities, 12 of whom used a wheelchair, and 4 used crutches. The research findings indicated the understanding of disability by 16 males in the following models: medical (disability as a disease, illness), religious (disability as a cross, suffering, gift, God’s will), social (disability as a situation, etc.), as well as its variant, the human rights model (disability as dependence and independence, barriers to overcome, etc.). In addition, the results indicated the location of disability in the context of participation in religious practices, its’ value, significance and characteristic rhetoric in the context of implemented practices.