Funding for the digitization of this title was provided by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta.
About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (March 19, 1987)
PAGE 8 — The Georgia Bulletin, March 19, 1987 Response To Priests With AIDS Stresses Compassion BY JERRY FILTEAU WASHINGTON (NC) — An in-depth report by the Na tional Catholic Reporter weekly newspaper on Catholic- priests with AIDS — acquired immune deficiency syn drome — began a media blitz in the past few months which has spread to TV networks, wire services, major daily papers and national news weeklies. Some AIDS ministry specialists reported having been contacted by as many as 25 different news organizations. The heavy media coverage indicated wide interest in the questions surrounding the issue. How many priests have AIDS? How is the church dealing with them? The numbers question has no clear answer. A bare outline that has emerged from interviews and published reports suggests that perhaps several dozen U S. priests or Religious have died or are dying of AIDS. At least four names have been made public, and well over a dozen other distinct cases have been cited without names. Hard numbers are not even possible. Lack ol public- reporting or central data-gathering makes any figures speculative. Non-publication is defended on grounds that the priest or brother and his family have a right to protec tion of their privacy. / \ Confidentiality Seen As Issue WASHINGTON (NC) — Personal rights to privacy and confidentiality are the main reasons for church secrecy about Catholic priests with AIDS, say AIDS ministers and church officials. Despite wide publicity in recent months about priests and religious brothers dying from acquired immune deficiency syndrome, only a handful of names has gotten into print, and none involved men still living. The issue is particularly delicate because homosex ual activity, condemned by the church, is a common way that AIDS is contracted. Some priests may have died from AIDS without their bishop or religious superior knowing it. Priests interviewed said this might happen particularly if a priest contracted it through homosexual activity and felt such shame that he was unable to reveal it to his bishop or a fellow priest. But, said Msgr. Raymond Boland, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, “It would be a very ungrateful church that would turn a priest away" because he contracted AIDS. “My own archbishop's (Archbishop James Hickey's) first reaction would be, ‘What do you need? What can we do for you?'” he said. He said that priests with alcoholism go through similar feelings of guilt and remorse, but they meet compassion, assistance and protection of their privacy when they bring the problem to their bishop. When a bishop and fellow priests maintain a strict silence about a priest with AIDS, it is because privacy is one of his basic needs, Msgr. Boland add ed. Some may view that silence as a church cover-up of the fact that there are priests with AIDS, he said. "But what is a bishop supposed to do? Make a grand announcement?" The first publicized case of a priest dying of AIDS, the 1985 death of a Worchester, Mass, priest was a classic example of the reasons for confidentiality. Ac cording to subsequent reports church officials had maintained strict confidentiality, but some hospital personnel had let the news leak. Msgr. Raymond Page, vicar general of the Worcester Diocese, said the publicity that resulted “was just a very cruel thing.” It "devastated” the priest’s family after they had spent months prepar ing for his death and coming to terms with it, he said. Salvatorian Father Robert Nugent, long identified publicly with homosexual ministry and a strong ad vocate of more open discussion about homosexuality in the church, said church officials should not be criticized for being silent about priests or brothers with AIDS. “I wouldn’t attribute this to a cover-up," he said. “It’s a matter of respect for the privacy of their . members.” “I know of two priests who have died of AIDS,” said a priest-psychologist who asked not to be named. “There was no press report on either. AIDS was never acknowledged as the cause of death." Those in AIDS ministry say that far more important than the numbers question is how the church deals with priests who have AIDS, for that symbolizes the much broader issue of the church’s ministry to all persons who suffer from the disease. In one of the cases described by the priest-psychologist, the bishop, who knew his priest had AIDS, remained close to him until he died and then was chief celebrant of his funeral Mass. The priest retained his church post until his death In the other case, the psychologist said, a network of priest friends quietly took care of the man, “moving him from rectory to rectory" as he approached death, and not informing the bishop. “I had to call the bishop and tell him off the record, ‘Do you know so-and-so has AIDS?' He said. ‘Yes, I suspected it but no one would tell me. Thank you for confirming it.”' Where priests reveal to their bishop or superior that they have AIDS, they seem usually to meet with loving care. African Missions Father Bernard Lynch tells of a priest dying of AIDS who received help and support from his religious order, while a blood brother, angered at what he perceived as the order's support of homosexuality, got power of attorney from the dying man and forbade order members from seeing him in his final weeks of life. A Salvatorian brother with AIDS returned to his provin cial headquarters in Milwaukee when illness forced him to end his active ministry. He died there last November among a supportive community. The first public report of a priest dying of AIDS came in Worcester, Mass., in 1985 when hospital personnel leaked the information to the press. Before the leak, the bishop, vicar general and retired bishop of Worcester were among the few who knew the priest had AIDS. They visited him regularly. In a Southern diocese, a bishop had a different response to a priest dying of AIDS. Two separate sources quoted the priest as saying that his bishop offered to cover any medical or other expenses but asked him to move out of the area. The bishop said when asked about the case, “No priest has been asked to leave his rectory ” The bishop declined to discuss “the state of health of any of my priests" but said that any bishop who had a priest with AIDS would have to fulfill “obligations of justice and compassion” toward him. Justice would require “seeing that the priest is adequate ly cared for," he said, and “anyone who is facing a death sentence obviously requires a great deal of compassion.” Compassion for someone with AIDS does not imply any compromise on church teaching regarding homosexuality, he added. Father Robert Nugent, a Salvatorian priest engaged in homosexual ministry, said some priests with AIDS may “of their own accord quietly go off among friends,” leaving their diocese or order rather than tell their bishop or superior. He added that it is always possible a priest with AIDS will run into “a panic reaction” when he first tells his diocesan or religious superiors. "But I think in the large majority of cases they are met with a great deal of compassion and understanding," he said. Franciscan Father Jay Pinkerton, a campus minister who heads the Catholic Coalition for Gay Civil Rights and does volunteer work with AIDS patients in the New York area, said he has worked with two religious brothers with AIDS, both of whom are now dead. “By and large, their treatment across the board has been very good” by their religious communities, he said. He said the community of one brother “wanted to support him, so they contacted me. They needed information about what they should do.” Divine Providence Sister Marilyn Bergt, a campus minister at Wayne State University in Detroit and an AIDS ministry volunteer, reported essentially the same ex perience with the community of a religious priest who has AIDS in Detroit. The religious superior of a priest who died of AIDS in 1984 said a revelation of AIDS may be particularly difficult for priests because everyone knows that the most common way of contracting AIDS is homosexual activity, “and people automatically presume that's what happened." But in his experience the reaction has usually been one of compassion rather than condemnation, he said. “People may be more understanding than we realize, more merciful than we think.” AIDS Death Toll Rising, CDC Says WASHINGTON (NC) — AIDS, a disease not even iden tified at the start of the decade, has struck nearly 32,000 Americans and killed more than 18,000 of them, according to early March figures from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The number of reported deaths was 600 higher than just two weeks earlier, and the total of reported cases had climbed by 1,000 in that time. The federal monitoring agency predicts 270,000 cases of AIDS in the United States by 1991, with the death toll by then mounting to 179,000. AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is caused by a virus that scientists have labeled HTLV-lll-LAV. It is transmitted by exchange of bodily fluids — most commonly through sexual contact, shared hypodermic needles by drug abusers, blood transfusion, or from mother to child in the womb. Despite widespread fears, scientists have found no clear evidence that more casual forms of contact transmit the disease. The virus causes death, usually within three years, by destroying the natural immunity system the body uses to fight other diseases. For someone with AIDS, a common cold or flu can become fatal because the body's defenses are disarmed. AIDS was first diagnosed in the United States in 1981 among homosexual men in New York and Los Angeles, leading many people to label it a “gay disease." More than 90 percent of those who have contracted the disease in the United States are adult males, and more than two-thirds of those have been identified as homosexual or bisexual. Experts in AIDS research recently reported, however, that transmission of AIDS through heterosexual activity is an increasingly serious problem. DYING FROM AIDS — A doctor ex amines a patient with AIDS, a disease that is spreading rapidly in the United States. More than 18,000 Americans have died from AIDS since the start of the decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. (NC Photo)
