The 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna is still ongoing, but it has already proved at least partially successful in refocusing people on what works in fighting AIDS.
One of the most heartening stories from Vienna this week was a new report from the U.N. that confirmed studies showing a decrease in HIV/AIDS infection rates among African youth in the continent’s most affected countries who practiced behavioral changes, such as abstinence or having fewer sexual partners.
An article from Catholic News Service quotes Msgr. Robert Vitillo, special adviser to Caritas International on HIV and AIDS, who said that despite the international community’s preferred “strategy of promoting condoms,” the U.N. report shows an openness to accept that promoting changes in behavior can be a successful strategy in combating the rampant disease.
Of course, when Pope Benedict XVI suggested a strategy along similar lines during his trip to Africa last year, he was excoriated by politicians and the media around the world.
For Msgr. Vitillo, such prejudice is not uncommon, but fortunately, neither does it dominate all discussion. Relating his involvement in a UN AIDS group that met to create the framework for a strategy on HIV prevention, Msgr. Vitillo recalled, “There were some protests that they’d invited someone from the Catholic Church, especially me, a priest. But there were others in the group who said: ‘No, the Catholic Church has excellent prevention programs and a valid approach to prevention.’”
There has long been this tug-of-war between secular and religious allies in the war against AIDS. Unlike many international organizations, the Church has maintained that a focus on monogamy and a culture of chastity will do more to stem the spread of the epidemic than pouring condoms into the continent. The work of scientists such as Harvard’s Edward Green has backed up the Church’s claim, yet the UN study is noteworthy as it comes directly from the heart of the international community.
In his latest encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict stressed that “moral evaluation and scientific research must go hand in hand.” Surely this insight applies to the heartbreaking situation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic today. For the international community to place all its hope in a technical fix like condoms – more of a band-aid solution than a permanent answer – without considering the moral root of the problem is to set up for defeat the very people it’s trying to help.
As Matthew Hanley, coauthor of Affirming Love, Avoiding AIDS: What Africa Can Teach the West,wrote last December 1 on World AIDS Day:
At a deeper level, what all these risk reduction measures have in common is a deflating absence of hope. And hope for the future is what is needed most -- hope to be healed of past traumas; hope to live free of disease, discord and inner turmoil.
Fostering real hope is difficult, because it means first recognizing and then aspiring to a preferable alternate behaviour, a standard even. But this is precisely what our culture tends to deny, relativise, or deride. This is why risk reduction, harm reduction and safe sex are the only politically safe ways to engage the issue. To foster hope, the public health establishment needs to be courageous and break free from the bonds of culture and from the deadening despair of relativism.
… I once heard a colleague in Africa put it like this: "Ideals are like the stars. We may not reach them, but we set our course by them." The motto of risk reduction, however, is: "No need to shoot for the stars. Stay safely in the abyss." The virtually exclusive focus on risk reduction measures amounts to the quiet institutionalisation of hopelessness.
In this respect, the Church’s place as an active partner to the U.N. and other international organizations involved in relief work fills an incredible void. The recent report from the U.N. is evidence. As Msgr. Vitillo’s story above related, people have their prejudices, yet the truth of the Church’s position is making a difference every day.
It is sad that the medical community is so hesitant to admit to the clear superiority of abstinence. We tout health promotion and illness prevention in areas of diet, exercise, smoking cessation etc. We are bold enough to instruct people to stop smoking altogether but are often too "sensitive" to discuss healthy sexual practices such as monogomy.
Posted by: Rose | July 21, 2010 at 11:32 PM