HIV/AIDS: A call to Action

HIV/Aids: A Call to Action — Responding as Christians, by Bishop Hugh Slattery. Paulines Publications Africa, Nairobi. 2007. 135pp.

Reviewed by Michail Rassool

Bishop Hugh Slattery of Tzaneen has produced “an instrument of hope” with this book, intended as an instrument for Catholics and others in the battle to halt the spread of HIV/Aids in the context of applied Church teaching and living the values of the Gospel.

This much enhanced second edition, with extensive material added and a foreword by Cardinal Wilfrid (misspelt on the cover) Napier, archbishop of Durban, presents 18 models for group reflection intended to promote morality, which is considered central to a Christian response to HIV/Aids.

It is also a useful information resource for tracking the national and international response to HIV/Aids, in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, putting the stark reality of the country’s Aids situation and its effects into sharp relief.

HIV/Aids is particularly visible in Bishop Slattery’s diocese and has become an ever-greater factor in his pastoral ministry, so the material is evidently well researched.

He writes of the rapid growth in the number of Aids orphans and needy children, the potential consequences for the continued growth of the economy, having an ongoing healthy, existing workforce and the overloading of the health services.

There is also the steady rise in the number of child-headed households which, aside from loss of parents to HIV/Aids, are also brought about through the inevitable death of grandparents, a vital life-line of care.

“A very important but perhaps less obvious effect of the Aids pandemic,” Bishop Slattery writes, “will be the great challenge to look more deeply at the whole issue of life itself—the purpose and meaning of life, how to live our lives as truly human beings, how to support one another, how to keep up our hope and our morale and how to ultimately overcome Aids as the great challenge to our survival.”

After the long and painful years of apartheid, HIV/Aids presents a new major struggle for a new era in the life of the country, the bishop says.

The book is also a quick information source for the disease itself —what it is, its physical effects, how it is spread, the effects of a sexually charged and spiritually starved culture and the media’s role in it, popular myths surrounding the disease, the social stigmatisation (for instance, that it’s a punishment from God for sin) and sense of shame that form part of its reality.

It tells of the importance of early HIV testing, acceptance of one’s situation versus denial, living constructively and positively with the disease, the rights and responsibilities of people living with it, the anti-retroviral drugs in use, the national response (which includes aggressive promotion of condom use), the HIV/Aids situation in other sub-Saharan African countries, and so on.

Bishop Slattery says the disease presents a call to action by way of a Christian response reaching out in love and compassion to others in need. The Christian analogy of necessary pain and suffering (sadness, despair, anger, confusion) before resurrection and new life (greater appreciation of a life hard-won, a closer union with Jesus and a Spirit-filled sense of hope, courage and joy) is also applied.

He outlines the Catholic Church’s response till now, which includes setting up home-based care facilities for people dying of the effects of Aids, helping to make anti-retroviral drugs more widely available, as well as awareness and prevention programmes, including behaviour change educational programmes targeted at the young.

The bishop makes it clear that an essential component in the fight against the disease is a need to transform the prevailing culture and its values. This, he writes, requires openness, dialogue and extensive collaboration, because “individuals and whole communities have the inherent capacity to change attitudes and behaviours…Behaviour change is the most essential strategy in overcoming the HIV pandemic.”

He writes of human sexuality and the way God planned it, citing scripture extensively. “Because sex is such a holy and precious gift, God wants us to treat it and surround it with modesty, respect and a sense of wonder and mystery,” he writes.

Prayer is an indispensable dimension of the pastoral response to HIV/Aids, and the book presents a compendium of prayers and litanies for those affected directly and indirectly by the disease, including care-givers, those in Aids ministry, children, secret sufferers.

There is also a section on St Thérèse of Lisieux whose spirituality Bishop Slattery sees as having a special significance for people living with HIV/Aids. It doesn’t ignore the special challenges HIV/Aids presents for married couples, often calling for an assessment of the strength of their relationship, and provides the form for renewal of marriage vows.