Jesuit father Michael Czerny directs the African Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN). For anyone interested in delving beyond the NY Times simplistic (and distorted) headlines and op-eds, his essay, "A Human and Spiritual Wake-up Call," in Thinking Faith, the online Journal of the British Jesuits, is well worth the read.
Here are a few quotes from the essay:
Vatican officials estimate that around the world the Catholic Church now provides more than 25 percent of all care administered to those with HIV/AIDS. The proportion is naturally higher in Africa, nearly 100% in the remotest areas. Let an HIV-positive Burundian on antiretroviral drugs explain the service:
When we go to other places, they only see numbers in us. We become hospital cases to be dealt with. We are problems. We lose our sense of dignity and worth. Yet we never feel that when we come to our Church programme. This is because we get a complete approach to our problems, whether spiritual, medical, mental, social or economic. (Personal testimony)
* * *
Facing not only AIDS but multiple crises in most corners of the continent, Africans have good reason, based on experience, to believe in the Church’s bold vision for them.
Having pointed towards the Church’s holistic programme and taken distance from the necessarily narrower approach of public policy, the Holy Father now critiques the further reduction of public policy to a single means and method: ‘…the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it.’
In Europe and North America, where condoms are culturally accepted by many, people ask incredulously, ‘Why on earth does the Church oppose their promotion?’ Some with muddled thinking have even accused Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI of presiding over an AIDS genocide.
* * *
Springing up out of Catholic faith and tradition, the Pope’s whole and indeed holistic message is for the people he is visiting. It connects thoroughly with the human reality on the ground. A Congolese Jesuit wrote to me, ‘Over here we are following the visit of the Pope with great interest, as well as the speculation in the press about the question of condoms arising from the Holy Father’s wise statement before touching down in Africa. What a shame that so far people don’t realise that the solution to AIDS won’t come with distribution of these things, but by handling the whole question as a whole.’
The Holy Father concludes by answering again the journalist’s allegation of ‘unrealistic and ineffective?’: ‘It seems to me that this is the proper response, and the Church does this, thereby offering an enormous and important contribution. We thank all who do so.’
According to my experience, most Africans, Catholic or not, agree. To them, what the Holy Father said is profound and true. He is reiterating what they have been experiencing for years and what they continue to expect. They too thank those who implement the Church’s strategy.
HT: Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda
Do you think it's time for the State Department to spend a little more time briefing top officials? The Catholic News Agency reports this exchange between our Secretary of State and the Rector of the Basilica of Our Lady of Gaudalupe during Clinton's recent visit to Mexico:
Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.
After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”
The Virgin quote was Mrs. Clinton's remark to Mexicans gathered to greet her as she left.
Today's gospel reading, John's account in Chapter 11 of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, is one of my favorites. In one of his books (Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John), Jean Vanier speculates that Lazarus was perhaps mentally retarded. Why else would a grown man in those days be living with his two grown sisters? Might that explain the special love that Jesus clearly had for Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha?
I also love that reading because it continues the story of Jesus' fascinating relationship with Mary and Martha. This story always seems to me a sort of vindication of busy-bee Martha. Remember, this is the same Martha who was rebuked by Jesus for spending too much time with the housework, and not enough time just listening to his words, like her sister Mary. In this story, Martha is bustling around as usual, going out to meet Jesus on the road when she hears he's on his way, while Mary stays home, weeping. When Martha finds Jesus, she rebukes him for dawdling, telling him he's too late. In response, we get what John Paul Paul II in Mulieris Dignitatem called one of the most important exchanges in the Gospel. It is to Martha that Jesus utters these words "I am the resurrection and the life: whoever believes in me, though he should die, will come to life; and whoever is alive and believes in me will never die." And it is busy-bee Martha who is the first person who the Gospels have saying something like this: "I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God: he who is to come into the world."
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Tina Beattie’s March 7, 2009 article in The Tablet (subscription required) makes the following observation:
Among the leading bankers that have brought the British economy to its knees there are no women. Could it be that the tendency to the sin of greed – as highlighted recently by the Pope – is primarily a male trait?
In a recent article in L’Osservatore Romano, the Pope’s personal theologian, Mgr. Wojciech Giertych, endorsed a theory by a 95-year-old Jesuit, Fr. Roberto Busa, that men and women sin differently. … [This is not new] since feminist theologians have been writing about the gendering of sin for nearly 50 years.
Any reaction?
