Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Condom conversion validates Catholic action on the front line (Contribution)

EARLIER this year Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times correspondent whose job takes him to some of the most dire realities on the planet, reflected that in his travels he routinely encountered two Catholic churches.

''One is the rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy that seems out of touch when it bans condoms even among married couples where one partner is HIV-positive. To me at least, this church - obsessed with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice - is a modern echo of the Pharisees whom Jesus criticised,'' Kristof opined.

The ''other'' Catholic church ''does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. [It] supports extraordinary aid organisations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives.'' 

While there is not much likelihood of this, depending on which of a confusion of theological interpretations you subscribe to, seismic utterances by Pope Benedict XVI may have just nudged open the door to a Vatican blessing of condom use to prevent the spread of HIV.

As commentators tie themselves in knots over what it all means, I'm nursing an image of devout religious dropping to their knees in the hospitals and clinics where HIV is their daily scourge, pausing in their endless work to utter the simplest of prayers. Please God.

Having had the privilege of encountering the ''other'' Catholic church several times, in places from Southern Africa to the Pacific, I have been awed by the work of the religious on the front line of the HIV emergency - the nuns most of all.

In many cities and villages where AIDS looms large it is the nuns - in their guises as nurses and counsellors - who will break the news that the person sitting before them has tested positive. It is the nuns who will have to try to answer the excruciating questions: What will I tell my wife/husband? What will it mean for the babies I haven't borne yet? Who will care for my family?

It is the nuns who will give them the medicine they pray will keep them well, who nurse them when it doesn't, who hold them when they die. In the Papua New Guinea highlands in the early years of the pandemic, when people were too scared to touch the dead, the extraordinary Sister Rose Bernard Groth would bury them herself.

Sister Rose, nearly 80, has been at the forefront of the HIV/AIDS battle for 25 years. In the impoverished, remote highlands community where she lives and works, women have no right to negotiate sex, to say no to an infected husband. Even to try may cost a broken arm or smashed teeth. If the church tells them not to use a condom, how will they protect themselves?

When I asked how she reconciled the edicts of her church with her ministry, Sister Rose explained she separated her vocation as a nun from her role as a counsellor to people of many faiths. She tells those in her care ''the most important thing is to keep you alive'', and lays out the strategies for doing that. Sometimes a condom is the best option. 

''We're not here to tell you what to do. We're here to give you all the information, and you make your decision.''

I have had many similar conversations with clergy and lay Catholic aid workers engaged with this work, trying to reconcile their practice, their church, with the enunciations of Head Office. 

It's never a comfortable conversation.

The wry joke among nuns at the coalface is that they are getting very old and hard of hearing, and Rome is a long way away. The line reflects their weary forbearance, but it obscures the darker reality of their bravery.

Not so long ago, I was quietly urged not to write what everyone on the ground knows is true - that condoms are available in Catholic clinics in vulnerable communities - or critical programs might be targeted for retribution by ''the Catholic Taliban''. 

Having been born, raised and educated in the Catholic tradition, I was appalled by this threat from within to the healers and carers I was taught to revere and respect. This was not the church I remembered.

Trying to resolve the schism between the two churches, I recently came across the work of Elizabeth Reid, once a women's adviser to prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has 30 years' experience on the development front. 

These days she works for Catholic agencies in PNG and the Pacific talking to clergy frankly and openly about sexuality, about the HIV pastoral ministry, and about how to deal with the fraught ethical issues of the epidemic in their communities.

She explains that there are indeed two churches - the theological, and the pastoral. The first we know from the headlines and the loud declarations of doctrine. 

The second is hidden, deeply personal, it is in the cloistered intimacy of the relationship between the counsellor and the counselled. In this realm there is capacity for discernment, for reflection, for the exercise of informed conscience.

I am no theologian. 

I am merely an itinerant witness of the best that Catholic pastoral care can achieve, programs distinguished by compassion and humanity recognisable to Catholic and Calithumpian alike. 

They survive despite the best efforts of that other church.

Their theology rests on one simple doctrine - not a cliche when it comes from the mouth of a Sister Rose. ''What would Jesus do now if he was here on this earth? He'd be here to help the people. I'm here to help the people, that's what I do.''

SIC: TA/AU