Views from the coalface

by Editor · October 3, 2007

It might strike some Catholics as impertinent that a priest and a lay Catholic journalist based on the southern tip of Africa should presume to write a letter to the Holy Father which is implicitly critical of aspects of the Church’s response to the Aids pandemic.

Yet, going by Pope Benedict’s record as a listening pontiff, chances are that he will appreciate the respectful candour in the letter by Fr Stefan Hippler and Bartholom us Grill even if he might not agree with its content or be persuaded by it.

Since the early days of his pontificate, Pope Benedict has been keen to hear the views, experiences and expectations of Catholics at the proverbial coalface of the Church.

Meeting priests in northern Italy just over two months after his pontifical election, he took interest in their experiences of dealing with divorced and remarried Catholics. At the World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany, the pope lunched with young people to hear their thoughts. At the Synod of Bishops last year, the pope was open to references concerning clerical celibacy.

The pope will not reform any present teachings or disciplines, but he is willing to listen.

In that spirit, he might even welcome the letter on Aids from South Africa. Indeed, he may well entertain the ideas raised by Fr Hippler and Mr Grill because many of the issues raised in their letter and their German book, Gott, Aids, Afrika, are still very much open for discussion.

For example, the Church has no formal teaching on the thorny issue of condoms as a means to obstruct the HI-virus. Such a teaching is still in the stages of theological and doctrinal investigation, at the direct instruction of Pope Benedict himself.

It is unfortunate that the Church is so slow in providing clarity about where it stands on condoms and Aids. Clearly, theological opinion in the Vatican and within the Catholic episcopate is deeply divided on that point.

In the Southern Africa region, the Church is guided by its bishops 2001 pastoral letter, A Message of Hope, which generally opposed the promotion and use of condoms to fight Aids, arguing that abstinence outside marriage and fidelity within are the only safe methods of Aids prevention. The bishops, however, left the use of condoms to the informed conscience of a married couple where one spouse is infected.

A Message of Hope was at once a courageous and a cautious statement, drafted at a time when the only discernible voices on the subject in the Vatican opposed the use of condoms under any circumstances. Since then, many high-ranking Church officials, including a former theologian of the papal household, have proposed that condoms can play a licit role in Aids prevention.

Nevertheless, until the Vatican arrives at a formal teaching, there will remain an atmosphere of uncertainty. This, in turn, can give rise to wild statements by some Church leaders.

Quoted by the BBC in late September, Archbishop Francisco Chimoio of Maputo, Mozambique, reportedly alleged that there are two countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on purpose in a genocidal bid for Africa’s colonisation.

Unless the archbishop makes public evidence to support this extraordinary claim, his reported assertion is unhelpful to the Church’s impressive work in the arena of Aids, which includes the provision of 25% of Aids care globally.

The dialogue on Aids is not aided by extravagant conspiracy theories, bad science or superficial sociology.

The Church’s deliberations about how to arrive at a Christ-like theology of Aids requires thoughtfulness, compassion and pragmatism. The proposals by Fr Hippler and Mr Grill meet these criteria. Whatever Pope Benedict may make of their conclusions, he will surely appreciate having access to the views of two men at the coalface of the Church’s apostolic ministry.