Father Enda McDonagh
Internationally known Irish moral theologians, Fr Enda McDonagh and Fr James Keenan, have criticised what they describe as the "unethical and unfounded" stances of the Church and political leaders that they say have failed the world in preventing the spread of HIV.
Addressing "those with the political, economic, moral and religious power," the priests said such people must undergo "a moral conversion of dearly held but now unfounded and unethical positions in regard to condoms, needle exchange and other means of (HIV) prevention", the Irish Times reports.
Fathers McDonagh and Keenan said in every 37 days some 300,000 people, equivalent to the loss of life in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, die in the world because of HIV pandemic.
And yet "the will to commit concomitant resources to prevent such loss of life simply does not exist," they said.
Fr McDonagh, former professor of moral theology at St Patrick's College Maynooth, and Fr Keenan, founder professor of theology at Boston College, made their comments in a pamphlet prepared for the Catholic Progressio group.
The pamphlet is titled Instability, Structural Violence and Vulnerability: A Christian Response to the HIV Epidemic.
They continued also that "corporate vulnerability to the pandemic will require the fundamental step of putting people - and suffering people above all - before profits. This would require the drug companies to forego their usual exorbitant profits."
They noted, that instead of supporting public health HIV preventative strategies such as condoms, needle exchange and preventive education, some leaders perceived that the better shields were those which kept the vulnerable and most-at-risk people away from the "general population" or those seen as protecting social mores and orthodoxy from contamination.
Such a strategy was "often backed by a deep moral judgmentalism," they said. Studies on the HIV pandemic had found "a church leadership which stands aloof, righteous, and judgmental."
They had also found that religious beliefs "strongly influence the way people think about HIV and AIDs." It was found, for instance, that "a significant percentage of those surveyed" believed "HIV was a punishment from God."
However, biblical tradition of Job, whose narrative contradicts the deep seated belief that we are the authors of our own troubles, apparently has no claim here," they concluded.
FULL STORY
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1102/1224257901697.html (Irish Times)