The Body of Christ has Aids

by Editor · February 26, 2003

Towards a new Aids theology

The Catholic Church in Southern Africa has a right to take satisfaction from the magnitude and quality of its Aids care programmes.

Much excellent work has been done, spearheaded on bishops conference level by the energetic witness of the likes of Bishop Kevin Dowling, Sr Alison Munro OP, Johan Viljoen and many others. Although the Catholic Church is South Africa’s biggest Aids care provider after the state, there is a consensus that much more needs to be done.

Likewise, the Church has done tremendous work in advocacy around issues such as the provision of anti-retroviral drugs. In this, the bishops have found common ground with other lobby groups whose direction on other points often deviates from Catholic doctrine. In a spirit of collaboration on a crucial question, the bishops have shown an inspiring openness.

And yet, a recent theological conference found that the Church’s response to HIV/Aids remains incomplete.

One deficiency raised in the Johannesburg conference on Aids in February concerned the Church’s ineffectiveness in persuasively communicating its teachings on sexuality and chastity. Another obstacle is the Church’s inability to inspire “ordinary Christians” to “provide a Christian response” to Aids.

The conference concluded that the pandemic requires a coherent theology of Aids. Indeed, it was the focus of the conference to contribute to the development of such a theology, one that takes into account Southern Africa’s particular social realities.

The HIV/Aids pandemic is a relatively new phenomenon. The virus was identified only two decades ago. Not much longer than a decade ago, the common (and much mistaken) perception was one of Aids as “the homosexual disease”.

Even now, many South Africans remain sheltered by circumstance or choice from the devastating effects of Aids.

The HIV/Aids pandemic is a crisis that is unequalled in human history, in terms of its derivation and its nature. It is because of that uniqueness that the Church, the whole body of Christ, must return to scripture and tradition to interpret a new modern reality accordingly.

In this, debate may become intense. A case may be made that some doctrines cannot be properly applied to the Aids crisis. To that effect, the Johannesburg conference said in a final statement that the question of condom use in Aids prevention required clarification.

However, a theology of Aids must not become tied up in emotive issues, but seek a fuller Christian understanding of and response to HIV/Aids.

Naturally, such a theology will emphasise that the only safe method of protection is in line with gospel values: abstinence from sex before marriage, and fidelity within marriage (presuming that both spouses will have followed the Christian option scrupulously).

It will stress sexual responsibility as an ideal which must be energetically advocated. But it will doubtlessly acknowledge that many people, women especially, are routinely coerced to abdicate primacy over their own sexuality. Here factors such as poverty, violence, gender and culture come into play. In short, sexuality is not invariably a matter of choice, and adult HIV infection is not inevitably a consequence of voluntary immorality. Good theology must reflect that reality.

A theology of Aids will make it clear that God did not send Aids as punishment, it will reveal the compassionate dimension of our Christianity, and it will seek to give us a spark of hope in darkness. Crucially, it will reflect that Aids concerns all Christians, a notion that is neatly encapsulated by the analogy: “The body of Christ has Aids”.