Hello, from an Openly Autistic Priest

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Joined: 11 Mar 2020
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Location: DC Metro Area

14 Mar 2020, 7:49 am

Hello, I am a Roman Catholic Priest diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder after I was ordained. Obviously, I was pretty good at Masking and have a high IQ to get that far. However, being chaplain to a school and not picking up kids' non-verbal communication lead to a diagnosis.

I'm open about my diagnosis and you can check the social media in my profile if you wonder. Last year I made a video and blog when I made my diagnosis public.

I had an account here before that was more anonymous but only posted a dozen or so times, plus I forget the name I used.

If anyone has questions, feel free. I'm pretty open. I would love to here others' experiences of religion. (If you want to debate theology, God's existence, etc., there is a different forum for that: let's do that over there.)

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Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC
Openly autistic Roman Catholic Priest
Blog: Through Catholic Lenses (All posts Catholic but not all relate to autism), My story of diagnosis, etc.
Social Media: @AutisticPriest (autism specific) & @FrMatthewLC (gen Catholic)
YouTube: Autistic Priest
I did the ApsieQuiz Twice: Neurodiverse score 131/135, Neurotypical Score 61/64

CarlM
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14 Mar 2020, 8:11 am

Welcome to Wrong Planet from an aspie atheist .

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ND: 123/200, NT: 93/200, Aspie/NT results, AQ: 34
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Mountain Goat
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14 Mar 2020, 8:47 am

Hello.

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Stardust_Dragonfly
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14 Mar 2020, 8:56 am

Welcome to the forum! I hope you find it useful and enjoy it here

Juliette
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14 Mar 2020, 9:00 am

Hi and a very warm welcome to you .

blazingstar
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14 Mar 2020, 11:42 am

Welcome to Wrong Planet. I am glad you are here.

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Magna
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14 Mar 2020, 11:44 am

Welcome, Father.

IsabellaLinton
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14 Mar 2020, 11:48 am

Welcome to our world, Father!

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Mona Pereth
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14 Mar 2020, 5:17 pm

Welcome to Wrong Planet. I'm glad you're finally able to post links. Here are two other articles of yours I've found very interesting:

- Christians Should Embrace Neurodiversity - December 2, 2019
- Facial Recognition: How Much Privacy is Just? - January 22, 2020

I'm not Catholic, but I'm a strong proponent of building a much better-developed autistic community than now exists. To that end, I hope the autistic community will eventually include many other kinds of groups (both in-person and online) besides just autism support groups, therapy groups, etc. Among the many kinds of groups I'd like to see are groups for autistic people of particular religions.

Hopefully you're in a good position to help build up a network of autistic Catholics.

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- Autistic in NYC - Resources and new ideas for the autistic adult community in the New York City metro area.
- Autistic peer-led groups (via text-based chat, currently) led or facilitated by members of the Autistic Peer Leadership Group.

AutisticPriest
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14 Mar 2020, 5:26 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:

For the record, my current day job is writing a doctoral thesis in moral theology on the topic of genetic privacy, so I'm thinking a lot about privacy. Once I was diagnosed, I asked and was granted permission to switch to more of the role of teaching theology as that requires less social reading & I had the grades to get into higher schooling. Genetic privacy just seemed to be an upcoming topic that was pretty much absent in Catholic moral theology and bioethics literature so a good one for a doctoral thesis.

enz
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14 Mar 2020, 6:08 pm

Welcome to wrong planet

AutisticPriest wrote:

If anyone has questions, feel free. I'm pretty open. I would love to here others' experiences of religion. (If you want to debate theology, God's existence, etc., there is a different forum for that: let's do that over there.)

I might take you up on that

Mona Pereth
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14 Mar 2020, 7:30 pm

AutisticPriest wrote:

Obviously a very important and timely topic, given recent advances in genetics.

EDIT: Should you ever decide to lead a group of autistic Catholics, that will require a somewhat different set of social skills from what is expected in the NT world. I would be very interested in your comments on Autistic-friendly social skills vs. blending in with NT's. See also the separate thread Starting and leading autistic peer support & social groups. I would be very interested to hear, in that thread, your thoughts on this matter.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 14 Mar 2020, 9:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Jakki
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14 Mar 2020, 8:05 pm

AutisticPriest wrote:

welcome ... nice of you to be here ..... some of the posters here can be very direct , FYI , Seperating Theology and autism , might make for some interesting discussion, i think .. Hope this endevour works well for you .

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aquafelix
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15 Mar 2020, 5:50 am

Welcome,

Work as a chaplain must lead you feeling exhausted at the end of each day.

aquafelix
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15 Mar 2020, 5:56 am

Rachael Lee Harris is an autistic woman who used to be a catholic nun. Shes now a psychotherapist in Brisbane Australia. I'm sure you two would have a lot to talk about.

AutisticPriest
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15 Mar 2020, 8:08 am

Mona Pereth wrote:

Should you ever decide to lead a group of autistic Catholics, that will require a somewhat different set of social skills from what is expected in the NT world. I would be very interested in your comments on Autistic-friendly social skills vs. blending in with NT's. See also the separate thread Starting and leading autistic peer support & social groups. I would be very interested to hear, in that thread, your thoughts on this matter.

Thanks! I'm trying to be part of a peer support group for a while first before trying to lead one. I have gone to a few different ones and found one that fit well not far away last month. However, COVID19 canceled the meeting this weekend.

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