Today’s known as World AIDS Day. The focus of the day is “an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died. World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day and the first one was held in 1988.” This dreadful disease has claimed many millions of people world-wide –and sex is not always to blame. AND condom use is the answer.
With all the advances in medicine, there are still gaping holes in education and prevention in the fields of medicine, pharmacology, spirituality and society. The recent trip of Pope Benedict to Benin highlighted yet again the need before us. Specifically Benedict called for a holistic response to the AIDS pandemic.
Pope Benedict stated:
The problem of AIDS,in particular,clearly calls for a medical and pharmaceutical response. This is not enough, however: the problem goes deeper. Above all, it is an ethical problem. The change of behavior that it requires -for example, sexual abstinence, rejection of sexual promiscuity, fidelity within marriage- ultimately involves the question of integral development,which demands a global approach and a global response from the Church. For if it is to be effective, the prevention of AIDS must be based on a sex education that is itself grounded in an anthropology anchored in the natural law and enlightened by the word of God and the Church’s teaching.
The Holy Father shed some light on Western governments and NGOs ignoring the work and methodology of those agencies of the Catholic Church dedicated to HIV/AIDS prevention and patient care. The stats are quite interesting: Church health agencies provide more than 25% of all care for people living with HIV/AIDS in the world.
Pope Benedict stated with conviction:
In the name of life – which it is the Church’s duty to defend and protect – and in union with the Synod Fathers, I offer an expression of renewed encouragement and support to all the Church’s institutions and movements that are working in the field of healthcare, especially with regard to AIDS. You are doing wonderful and important work. I ask international agencies to acknowledge you and to offer you assistance,respecting your specific character and acting in a spirit of collaboration. Once again, I warmly encourage those institutes and programs of therapeutic and pharmaceutical research which seek to eradicate pandemics. Spare no effort to arrive at results as swiftly as possible, out of love for the precious gift of life. May you discover solutions and provide everyone with access to treatments and medicines,taking account of uncertain situations! The Church, indeed, has been pleading for a long time for high quality medical treatment to be made available at minimum cost to all concerned.
Moreover the Pope stated that education and literacy are at the heart of an effective response to HIV/AIDS by promoting an authentic and reliable approach to sex education which has as its focus the dignity of the human person.
What he said was:
The defense of life also entails the elimination of ignorance through literacy programs and quality education that embraces the whole person. Throughout her history, the Catholic Church has shown particular concern for education. She has always raised awareness among parents, providing them with encouragement and assistance in carrying out their responsibility as the first educators of their children in life and in faith. In Africa, the Church’s teaching establishments -her schools, colleges, high schools, professional schools, universities and so forth -place tools for learning at people’s disposal without discrimination on the basis of origin, financial means or religion. The Church’s makes her own contribution by recognizing and making fruitful the talents that God has placed in the heart of each person. Many religious congregations were founded with this end in view. Countless holy men and women understood that leading people to holiness first entailed promoting their dignity through education.
The Pope encouraged to the world’s pharmaceutical corporations to develop and provide inexpensive HIV/AIDS treatments for Africa.
The media harps and reduces the Pope’s thinking to a bromide by speaking of AIDS as a mere ethical issue. Clearly he said more than that. Could the issue really be that members of the media establishment are too fearful and unwilling to do the hard work of knowing the science, the ethical and the spiritual dimensions to holistically deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic while Pope Benedict is not? Who is really out of touch with this issue in promoting condom-use and other un-proven methods: the Pope or the media and liberal establishment? Prejudice and ideology has no place in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Perhaps it would be good to recall that the Catholic Church provides more than 25% of the healthcare for patients living with the disease.