NEW YORK (Zenit) As the organisation responsible for more than a quarter of the worldwide care of Aids patients and those affected by the disease, the Church speaks on Aids with plenty of experience. And what it says, and said again at the United Nations in early June, is that people are better, stronger and more capable than ordinarily thought they have more dignity than the United Nations give them credit for.
When a UN political declaration on Aids/HIV was accepted unanimously on June 10, the Vatican delegation had points of contention.
To fight the infection 30 years after it first appeared and 30 million deaths later Jane Adolphe, associate professor of law at Ave Maria School of Law, spoke on behalf of the Vaticans permanent observer at the UN, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, and proposed a starting point: "The recognition that the human person can and should change irresponsible and dangerous behaviour, rather than simply accept such behaviour as if it were inevitable and unchangeable."
The archbishop reminded participants that Aids is about more than statistics, or ideologically tinged plans to fight it.
"Policies, programmes and political statements are without meaning if we do not recognise the human dimension of this disease in the men, women and children who are living with and affected by HIV and Aids," he said.
The only universally effective, safe and affordable means of halting the spread of the disease is abstinence, fidelity and the avoidance of irresponsible behaviours, as well as universal access to drugs that prevent the spread of HIV from mother-to-child, he said.
He decried those who ignore the positive results of abstinence- and fidelity-based programmes in order to be "largely guided by ideology and the financial self interest which has grown as a result of the HIV disease."
The Holy See said that what is needed is a value-based approach to counter the disease that provides necessary care and moral support and which promotes living in conformity with the norms of the natural moral order while respecting the dignity of the human person.