Special
Report: PRIESTS Perilous choice to ignore AIDS issue
By A.W. RICHARD SIPE
A firestorm of reaction has followed
a Kansas City Star series on priests with AIDS, published in the
Missouri paper Jan. 30, 31 and Feb. 1
(http://www.kcstar.com/projects/priests/). Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, associate
director of communications for the U.S. Catholic Conference and a spokesperson
for the American bishops, attacked the series, the Star, the Associated
Press and Knight Ridder with scathing criticism in the Feb. 14 issue of
Editor & Publisher, a weekly journalism and trade magazine. She
chided the Star for exposing the AIDS death of a Catholic college
president, as if exposé was the aim of the series. In fact, the
Star had documentation of the AIDS death of another Catholic college
president, which they chose not to publish, presumably to avoid
sensationalism.
The ever-vigilant Catholic League named the Star a
Catholic basher. The Catholic League took credit for taking
the sting out of the series and stated that the Star was being
swamped by criticism.
Already on Feb. 4 the Catholic League claimed that notable
statisticians had discredited the results of the Stars
survey of 3,000 priests, which appeared in the series. They cite as their
authority S. Robert Lichter who, not coincidentally, had previously been hired
by the Catholic League to produce a study that analyzed media coverage of the
Catholic church.
Lichter runs three Web sites: Newswatch; Center for Media and
Public Affairs; and STATS. What first appears to be four separate entities
criticizing the series is in fact a consortium of information sources and
interests, not independent, objective sources.
The Catholic Register accused reporter Judy Thomas of
collaborating with NCR in producing her series and retracing interviews
that had previously been published.
Many diocesan papers have published editorials and official
statements about the series; some expanded their coverage to defend seminary
training, the quality of sex education in the seminary and the leadership of
the church in sponsoring AIDS hospice care.
Why the furor?
Already on Dec. 12, 1986, NCR ran a substantial story about
the AIDS death of a priest and spoke of a dozen cases within the
clergy. That story quoted a Hawaiian physician who said, There are an
awful lot of men in that profession [clergy] who test positive for the AIDS
antibody.
In 1987 NCR ran a piece about the gospel response to AIDS
(Dec. 25). Pamela Schaeffer updated the NCR coverage of priests with
AIDS in the April 18, 1997, issue and estimated that 100 priests had already
died and several hundred more were infected with the virus.
NCR was one of the few Catholic papers to address the
problem of priests with AIDS, but the secular media has also dealt with the
issue for some time.
The Village Voice for Feb. 10, 1987, noted more than a
dozen confirmed cases of priests with AIDS and cited the relationship of the
virus to homosexual behavior. They referred to the October 1986 Vatican letter
that identified homosexuality as an objective disorder and
homosexual orientation a condition ordered toward an intrinsic moral
evil.
David Firestone, writing for the New York Post, found a
dozen priests with AIDS in New York after he was told by the chancery in 1989
that they knew of no cases. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jacqui
Banaszynski reported in a Feb. 8, 1987, St. Paul Pioneer Press
article on priests with AIDS: The incidence of AIDS among priests seems
to be almost four times higher than among the general population. She
also quoted priests who acknowledged that clergy were not instructed in safe
sex procedures, either in the seminary or after.
Fr. Donald Cozzens, a seminary rector, commenting on the current
status of the priesthood, does not hesitate to acknowledge that a large
proportion (perhaps over 50 percent) of American priests are homosexual in
orientation.
The Star series raised a
level of attention and wrath not engendered by any of the earlier articles
either individually or collectively.
Why?
The Star series was based on interviews, over a seven-year
period, of priests with AIDS; families and friends of priests who died of AIDS;
experts in HIV/AIDS research, training and treatment; and documentation
including death certificates; and a sample survey sent to 3,000 randomly
selected priests. Critics have zeroed in on the survey as if the piece stands
or falls on its methodology and results. The sophistication, or lack thereof,
of the Star survey is not a major consideration. The deaths of several
hundred priests from AIDS can be documented.
Twenty priest deaths would be sufficient to establish a ratio of
HIV infection greater than that of the armed services 2 per 10,000
in a group of males of somewhat similar ages.
Thomas series did more than venture a conclusion on the
basis of the survey. In effect, the author posed some important questions. Do
priests contract HIV/AIDS? If so, how many? In what proportion to others in the
population? What is the experience of a priest with HIV/AIDS? How is he treated
by his diocese or by his community? His family, friends? Lay people? Does the
rate of infection among clergy have any relationship to the lifestyle or
requirements of the priesthood? Does the number of homosexually oriented
priests influence the kind of sex education priests and seminarians receive?
Are priests instructed about safe sexual practice? And finally, does the
churchs understanding of homosexuality prevent or foster the transmission
of the HIV/AIDS among the clergy?
These are the real land mine
questions that lie beneath any responsible treatment of the subject of AIDS in
the priesthood. The Star series raises all of these questions, all
linked to sexual issues that remain controversial in church circles. If
ignored, they can result in peril to priests and lay persons alike.
In 1995, a priest with AIDS asked me to write his story. I had
hesitated to speak about priests with AIDS until that project was complete
because I want to set his story in the surest possible context, one that avoids
any misunderstanding or aura of sensation. But the churchs response to
the Star series commands attention.
Fr. James Graham was probably the first full-time diocesan
director of an AIDS ministry in this country. He founded a hospice for the
poorest of the poor AIDS patients. In 1989 he was appointed by the Vatican to
head the International Christian AIDS Network (ICAN) as an adjunct to the
Pontifical Council on Health and Healthcare Workers. He was a close personal
friend of Dr. Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS and
founding director of the human virology research institute at the University of
Maryland.
These are all elements that make his story complex and
compelling.
Graham knew that AIDS among priests was not the central problem of
the AIDS pandemic. He had hoped that the American church, with its health care
knowledge and its wealth of medical resources, would lead the church in
preventing, fighting and curing AIDS throughout the world.
But he was also aware that AIDS does not discriminate. Bishops and
priests from many countries have died of AIDS, and others are infected with the
virus. This in itself is not scandalous, nor even surprising to those who
understand human nature and the history of the church.
There are two scandals: the measures the church takes to deny the
reality of the illness among clergy and its refusal to openly discuss the
issue, means of primary and secondary prevention, and the ways in which it
contributes to the stigmatization of the disease and those who suffer from
it.
There are examples of the churchs behavior far more
disturbing than the Star series: An archbishop died in Rome of AIDS.
Those responsible for his body had his legs broken so that the cause of death
could be listed as accidental.
A priest in a major American city was diagnosed HIV positive. In
the process of contact tracing, 20 priests were notified that they had been
either primarily or secondarily exposed to the virus.
And death from AIDS has not bypassed clerics in those areas of
Africa that are being devastated by the disease.
The church will assume its moral credibility sooner is the issue
of priests with AIDS is faced squarely in all of its dimensions.
No one is suggesting that the church abandon moral teaching.
Rather, AIDS within the clergy is an urgent call for the church to establish
its moral leadership by confronting all the elements that impact the
contracting and transmission of HIV/AIDS in all persons everywhere.
The American hierarchy had ample
notice to become proactive about the crisis of sex abuse by clergy. Many
dioceses and religious communities are still picking up the pieces from their
resistance to a clear warning from the 1985 Peterson, Mouton and Doyle report
of the potential repercussions of the problem of abuse.
The Kansas City Star series is the beginning, not the end,
of the story of AIDS in the church. The portrait it gently and kindly painted
is of good clerics in profound struggles. These lives do not ask for cheap
compassion, so easy for religion to supply. They beg for consideration, honest
discussion and attention to the celibate/sexual agenda facing everyone in the
church.
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops should be the leader
not the reluctant follower let alone the obstructionist to the
discussion of sexual problems within the church. They should know the number of
priests suffering unnecessarily from this deadly disease and establish
effective means of prevention and education within their own ranks.
This is a time when a growing number of priests and bishops are
homosexual in orientation. They should not be outcasts or second-class servants
or secreted behind homophobic facades. Homosexually oriented clergy are equally
observant of their celibacy, as are their heterosexual brothers, and one
struggles as much as the other. Coming to terms with ones identity and
relationships are tasks central to any spirituality and leadership irrespective
of ones sexual orientation.
If The Kansas City Star moves the American hierarchy to pay
attention to a vital problem within its own ranks, it should receive a medal
for saving lives and enhancing the credibility of a venerable institution.
Richard Sipe is researcher and author of Celibacy: A Way of
Loving, Living and Serving. He is currently working on a book about priests
with AIDS.
National Catholic Reporter, March 31,
2000
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