Catholics Work To Change Stigma Associated With AIDS

After finding out she had AIDS in 1993, Connie Statz believed her Catholic faith would be her strength.
But soon after she was diagnosed, a priest at her church in rural Minnesota delivered a cruel message. From now on, the priest said, she would no longer be able to drink the wine at Communion, which Catholics believe becomes the blood of Christ during mass.
"That really hurt me more than anything else, because that's part of being Catholic. That's part of the sacrament," said Statz, 50, who wept as she recalled the memory. "Since then, I haven't received wine at Communion in 13 years. There's still that feeling inside that I will be rejected."
Since the first cases of AIDS were identified 25 years ago, the Catholic Church's attitude on the disease has evolved from initial nervousness to actively providing pastoral care and medical treatment. There are no official prohibitions that bar people with AIDS from drinking wine at mass out of a shared cup, yet Statz's experience represents early misconceptions about the disease.
Today, the Roman Catholic Church plays a significant role in fighting the pandemic, with nearly 27 percent of HIV/AIDS services worldwide provided by the church or Catholic-based agencies, according to the Vatican.
However, as clergy, health educators and caregivers gather at Loyola University Chicago this week for the 19th annual National Catholic HIV/AIDS Ministry Conference, leaders said discrimination remains one of the most difficult issues for the church to change. Catholic AIDS activists also charge that priests are still reluctant to speak openly about the disease.
Rev. Robert Vitillo, special adviser on HIV/AIDS for the Geneva-based Catholic group Caritas Internationalis, said the theme for this year's conference--"Are We One Body?"--speaks to the heart of discrimination against people with AIDS.
"This goes back to our basic teachings. We are all parts of the body of Christ, and we need all those different parts," Vitillo said. "People with AIDS are essential parts of the church. Their illness makes them all the more important because they are suffering and need our help."
However, clergy and laity remain divided on Catholic teaching on prevention issues, specifically condoms and needle exchange. Though the church prohibits condoms, several theologians and Catholic health professionals have endorsed condom use as morally justified to prevent HIV transmission. Recently, Pope Benedict XVI asked for a Vatican study on whether the church could permit condom use in a very specific circumstance: for married couples where one partner has the virus.
Rev. Jon Fuller, a Jesuit priest and AIDS physician at Boston Medical Center, believes a change in the Vatican stance would have a dramatic impact in preventing the spread of AIDS. Like other Catholic health professionals on the disease's front lines, Fuller argues that condom use to prevent HIV does not contradict the church ban on artificial birth control.
"The intention, in this case, is not contraception, but decreased risk of transmission of a fatal virus," Fuller said.
Fuller began working with AIDS patients when he was an intern in 1983 at San Francisco General Hospital. He said he remembers what a difficult issue this was for Catholic leaders because AIDS affected two populations that the church was very uncomfortable with: gay men and drug addicts.
Since then, the face of HIV/AIDS has changed dramatically, with infection rates devastating African-Americans, Latinos and women. Still, even as the disease has affected other members of the church, Fuller said the stigma has stayed.
People "in some parts of the world, and even some Catholic people in the U.S., have said that this illness is God's punishment. I think what the church needs to do is say, `That's not the way God operates.' This is an illness that has biological causes, and people who are ill need our care and our support," Fuller said.
At the conference, organized by the National Catholic AIDS Network, AIDS activists said Wednesday that discrimination has lessened in urban areas where the disease is more prevalent. Yet in rural areas of the Midwest and the South, discrimination persists.
Pat Drott, Catholic Charities' HIV/AIDS liaison to the Chicago archdiocese, said several efforts have been made to educate the community, including an informational DVD distributed to the region's 372 parishes.
Dan Lunney, executive director of the Chicago-based National Catholic AIDS Network, said efforts to combat discrimination are complicated by the mistaken assumption that AIDS is no longer a problem. Although advances in treatment have cut the number of AIDS deaths a year, the number of new infections and AIDS diagnoses has not decreased.
Statz, who is in Chicago for the conference, said more priests need to speak out about AIDS from the pulpit as well as promote church discussions and forums on the issue.
Though Statz remains scarred by the painful words of a priest who is no longer at her church, she is working toward the day when she has the courage to drink from the cup of wine again.
"I have Christ in me. That allows me to forgive. It's harder to forget," she said.
from The Chicago Tribune