We are not the problem, we are the solution," says Fr Thomas Coughlin, a deaf Honolulu priest who has founded the Dominican Missionaries for the Deaf Apostolate with five other deaf men.
Deaf since birth, it was Fr Coughlin’s lifelong dream to start a religious community where sign language is the primary means of expression at both the eucharistic table and the dinner table, according to the Catholic News Service.
Fr Coughlin was one of five men who made their first profession of vows as Dominican Missionaries for the Deaf Apostolate last week at St Albert’s Priory in Oakland, California.
"Necessity is the mother of invention," he told the Hawaii Catholic Herald, newspaper of the Honolulu Diocese.
"I saw how badly we need a religious community of deaf priests and brothers dedicated to a deeper spiritual life and the deaf apostolate in the language of signs and the deaf culture milieu."
The five men pronounced their vows before Oakland’s Bishop Allen H Vigneron, who formally recognised the new community in 2004.
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