Mysticism and Vulnerability

This paper examines theologies of the mystical body of Christ articulated by Catherine of Siena and Simone Weil, respectively, towards a mystically-informed political orientation to sickness, disability, and vulnerability that neither theodicizes suffering nor issues an imperative to perfect, productive cure. I contend that the mystical body in Catherine’s Dialogue is urgently relevant as a theological underpinning of what Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant call “extractive abandonment” – the process of statemaking by which the sick and disabled, those deemed unhealthy (unproductive), are necessarily abjected as surplus profitable to capital. I therefore read Weil’s critique of the mystical body as a critique of this political economy of abjection, arguing that Weil re-envisions the mystical body towards a political theology of disability justice that demands, as Adler-Bolton and Vierkant write, a “radical abundance of care.” 

Both mystical theology and disability theology frequently celebrate vulnerability as a site of divine encounter and relational transformation. Mystical traditions portray vulnerability as openness to God, while disability theologians such as Thomas Reynolds reclaim vulnerability as a shared human condition that fosters interdependence and belonging. Yet when vulnerability is universalized as a spiritual virtue, its political and structural dimensions can disappear from view. This paper argues that the theological valorization of vulnerability risks romanticizing conditions of marginalization if it fails to distinguish between vulnerability imposed by injustice and vulnerability freely embraced in solidarity. Drawing on disability theology, liberation theology, and the writings of Julian of Norwich, the paper proposes the concept of costly vulnerability—a chosen relinquishment of power undertaken for the sake of justice. Julian’s prayer for the “three wounds” provides a mystical model of vulnerability that links spiritual transformation with ethical participation in the healing of the world.

This paper examines Jean Vanier’s mystical theology of vulnerability in light of recent revelations of his tainted legacy of sexual abuse. To do so, I interrogate Vanier’s depiction of people with intellectual disabilities as uniquely revelatory due to their visible vulnerability, inviting nondisabled persons’ to recognize their own hidden vulnerabilities. Drawing on the findings of the independent study commission on his abuse, I trace the inheritance of a mystical theological worldview valorizing spiritual poverty, humility, and vulnerability, which enabled Vanier to discover in disabled people inspiration for L’Arche and a theological cover for his abuse. Ultimately, this paper explores how appeals to vulnerability often inadvertently mask power relations and abuse and reflects theologically on the broader valorization of vulnerability within disability theology and contemporary Christian thought.

This paper brings intellectual disability studies into dialogue with Christian mysticism to challenge the assumption that human personhood, knowledge, and strength are only found in rational autonomy. Such an assumption begets a negative view of disability where it is seen as nothing but limit. Voices from the Christian mystical tradition, however, claim that reality can only be truly known through a process of self-emptying that leads beyond individual rational thought and capacities. In this paper I consider intellectual disability in the light of The Cloud of Unknowing, an anonymous fourteenth-century text on contemplative prayer. I suggest that intellectual disability’s status as loss and limit correlates with the state of unknowing in The Cloud. This correlation suggests a transformative view of the human person and of intellectual disability in which a state of vulnerable unknowing that seems at first life-denying can become a path to true strength in interdependence and communion.