THE EARLY YEARS (1985-1994)
3.2. The Roman Catholic Church’s Response to HIV and AIDS
3.2.1. Edward T. Rogers: A Pioneer in the Response to HIV and AIDS
3.2.2.2. History of the Documents, Context and Reception
131
with AIDS. More than half of such children have a chance of being born healthy and without any infection.503
Members of the ZCBC were also aware of the challenges of caring for such babies and other OVC orphaned by AIDS. In the light of this need, the Roman Catholic families were encouraged to take new roles in caring for OVC. In 1992 the bishops maintained the stance that human life was sacred as noted from a pastoral statement entitled ―Even children of HIV-positive mothers have a right to life.‖504 The bishops thus stated:
Both HIV positive mothers and their children need our care and support. This is a great challenge to society in general and the church in particular. AIDS is killing many people already. We have no right to add to their number by deliberate killing. It is our duty even under these tragic circumstances to preserve and cherish the gift of life.505
The ZCBC repeated the same message in 1994 in a pastoral statement entitled
―Human life is sacred: Catholic bishops strongly opposed to abortion.‖506
132
issued from the New Zealand Roman Catholic bishops who argued that the course of AIDS could only be altered by responsible sexual behaviour and not by the use of condoms.510 The message of the Holy See, delivered in a country long associated with the first cases of AIDS among homosexual men in 1981, appeared to offer hope to PLHIV. For example, Pope John Paul II showed sympathy towards HIV positive people when he stated: ―He [God] loves those of you who are sick, those suffering from AIDS.‖511 According to Rogers, who was the architect of the ZCBC‘s statement, the Zimbabwean bishops were inspired by the Roman Catholic bishops of Kenya in issuing a statement on AIDS.512 However, the emphasis in the statement by the Roman Catholic bishops of Kenya‘s was more toward compassion and care than being moral as stated:
We urge the members of the church in our countries, laity and clergy, cooperating where possible with already existing organizations to search for the most effective means of help, and we ask our bishops to give their active support to this work of Christ: for it is His Body which has HIV/AIDS.513
The first statement by the Zimbabwean Catholic bishops also carried a message specifically directed to young people. The bishops held the perception that young people could be effective in preventing the spread of HIV by encouraging them to abstain from immorality. According to Auxiliary Bishop Mutume, ―the churches in Zimbabwe were in control of the youth through their schools. They had a golden opportunity to influence their thinking.‖514 The bishops perceived the State‘s adoption of liberal approaches to HIV prevention including the indiscriminate distribution of condoms among the youth as a threat to morality.
Furthermore, according to the bishops the State‘s introduction of an individualised approach to sexuality, which was totally divorced from African traditional family values and Christian teachings, was a major weakness.515 The statement could also have had the unintended effect of enhancing stigma by blaming AIDS on human folly.
510 MacLeran, The church response to HIV/AIDS, 8.
511 MacLeran, The church response to HIV/AIDS, 3.
512 T. Rogers, same interview.
513 Kenya Episcopal Conference.
514 Mutume, ―Insights from the second Chimurenga,‖ 143.
515 P. Mutume, same interview.
133
The message from the second statement showed elements of continuity with the earlier one of 1987. For example, in 1987 the bishops stated that the church condemned both pre-marital and extra-marital sex in keeping with local African traditions.516 The Roman Catholic Church in Zimbabwe had mixed membership of both blacks and whites and not all people respected African tradition. Apparently, the reason why the bishops chose to invoke African traditional cultural family values was driven by the reality that in Zimbabwe, AIDS was reportedly more common among blacks than in others.517 Generally, the ZCBC‘s moralistic stance on HIV prevention AIDS was similar to the statement issued by the Southern African Catholic Bishops of Conference (SACBC) in 1990.518
The Zimbabwean Catholic bishops‘ position that moral weaknesses among Roman Catholic men contributed to the spread of HIV was not unfounded. Elsewhere, in Malawi, a study by Jenny Trinitapoli and Mark Regnerus in 2006 concluded that married men from the Roman Catholic were likely to report recent extramarital sexual behaviour, followed by men from Protestant missionary churches, African initiated churches and Pentecostal churches.519 The bishops‘ emphasis on Christian morality and African traditional values as ways of preventing HIV had the unintended effect of undermining women. Within the African traditional worldview women were generally perceived as dirty and men as clean.520 The practice of dry sex placed women at great risk of HIV. In Zimbabwe, some women dried their vaginas using cloth, cotton, shredded newspapers, salt, methylated spirits, herbs, baboon urine, and other various concoctions obtained from traditional health practitioners.521 While the practice existed before the HIV and AIDS era, its perpetuity was unsafe and thus ―increased the likelihood of HIV infection. And some AIDS workers believe the extra friction
516 ZCBCH, ZCBC, ―AIDS and our moral responsibility.‖
517 T. Rogers, same interview.
518 MacLeran, The church response to HIV/AIDS, 4.
519 Trinitapoli and Regnerus, ―Religion and HIV risk behaviours among married men,‖ 515.
520 S. Leclerc-Madlala, ―AIDS in Zulu idiom: Etiological configurations of women, pollution and modernity,‖ in B. Carton et al., (eds), Zulu identities: Being Zulu, past and present, (Scottsville: UKZN Press, 2008), 559.
521 A. N. Turner et al., ―Vaginal practices of HIV-negative Zimbabwean women,‖ Infectious diseases in obstetrics and gynecology, (2010), 1-7. See also J. H. M. Van de Witjert et al., ―Men‘s attitudes toward vaginal microbicides and macrobicides trials in Zimbabwe,‖ International Family Planning Perspectives 25/1 (March 1999), 15.
134
makes condoms tear more easily.‖522 Beverley Haddad has also pointed out that such practices as virginity testing justified male domination through patriarchy, while women and girls were exposed to unprotected sexual manipulation.523
The advent of HIV and AIDS gave renewed sustenance to long-established diseases that were dangerous to women‘s health:
The infectious bodily fluids talked about in modern AIDS awareness campaigns may be new ideas, but they have been distilled and filtered through not-so-unfamiliar old ideas of women‘s pollution and the peril it represents to men and to society in general.524
Roman Catholic married churchwomen took exception to the ZCBC‘s position of intolerance to condoms use as a precaution against HIV. Married churchwomen mentioned that all barriers to sex such as following a woman‘s menstrual cycle were impracticable because of the high risks of infection if one‘s spouse was unfaithful. For example, Teresa Nyawera of St. Paul‘s Dangamvura and Eugenia Tichawangana of Triashill mission stated that many young couples found it difficult to practice natural contraception. Women who used natural contraception faced the wrath of HIV because male spouses were not patient and thus became involved in extra-marital sexual relationships.525 It appears that some Christian women were aware of the fact that in the short term condoms could assist in reducing the spread of HIV.
Similarly, at Nyahukwe, two female informants stated that impatience with a woman‘s cycle by male spouses forced women to use condoms as a means of contraception, but privately.526 Thus, out of fear of contracting HIV infection from an
522 M. Schoofs, ―Death and the second sex,‖ AIDS: The agony of Africa, (December 1999),
<http://www.thebody.com/content/art2762.html?ts=pdf/> [Accessed 4 November 2011]. See also, B.
Haddad, ―Choosing to remain silent: Links between gender violence, HIV/AIDS and the southern African church,‖ in Phiri, African women, HIV/AIDS and faith communities, 149-166.
523 B. Haddad, ―Gender violence and HIV/AIDS: A deadly silence in the church,‖ Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 114 (November 2002), 95.
524 Leclerc-Madlala, ―AIDS in Zulu idiom,‖ 559.
525 T. Nyawera, interview conducted by M. Mbona, St. Paul‘s Roman Catholic parish, Dangamvura, Mutare, 5 September 2010. See also E. Tichawangana, interview conducted by M. Mbona, Triashill mission, 9 September 2010.
526 M. Chitsungo, interview conducted by M. Mbona, St. Paul‘s Roman Catholic parish, Dangamvura, Mutare, 5 September 2010. See also M. Mudzimiri, interview conducted by M. Mbona, St. Thomas Roman Catholic Church, Nyahukwe, 26 September 2010. See also V. Chibatamoto, interview conducted by M. Mbona, St. Thomas Roman Catholic Church, Nyahukwe, 26 September 2010.
135
unfaithful spouse, women in the Roman Catholic Church resorted to illicit means of obtaining and using condoms without the approval of the clerical leadership. The position taken by the ZCBC of openly opposing the prophylactic use of condoms caused the church‘s leadership to be seen by the general public as being insensitive to the dilemma faced by Roman Catholic married women.527 Denis‘s study on sexuality and AIDS in South Africa added another perspective by arguing that the patriarchal nature of modern society in which women were expected to submit to the sexual advances of men, played an important role in the transmission of the virus. For physiological reasons women were more vulnerable than men to the virus, hence the higher rate of infection among them.528
While the ZCBC and public health policy makers in Zimbabwe agreed that behaviour change was a key strategy in HIV prevention, the bishop‘s blamed the government for openly sanctioning the use of condoms without regard for age and marital status. The State preached the ABC method in which abstinence (A) was the first priority, followed by the admonition to be faithful (B) and to use condoms (C).529 Father Joinet, a Roman Catholic priest, in Tanzania in the mid-1990s, invented the ABC method.530 The position taken by the ZCBC was that one could not stop the spread of HIV by using the same device that was responsible for fanning the pandemic. While the State offered condoms as a protection tool against HIV, the bishops argued that condoms led to death from AIDS and that morality led to life. Church followers were urged to choose life: ―But you are not trapped. You have a choice. Choose life!‖531 Women were trapped because they had very limited options in choosing safe sex. The ZCBC appeared to have overlooked this aspect.
Women also carried the burden of supporting and caring for infected spouses, relatives, children and neighbours.532 However, the issues responsible for fanning the spread of the pandemic had deep roots. For example, Basset and Mhloyi argued that women faced with divorce or dire poverty had to choose between social death and
527 V. Chibatamoto, same interview. See also M. Chitsungo, same interview.
528 Denis, ―Sexuality and AIDS in South Africa,‖ 75.
529 See NACP, AIDS questions and answers, 14. See also, NACP, Living with HIV and AIDS, 14-19.
530 The origins of the ABC approach, <http://www.avert.org/abc-hiv.htm/> [Accessed 10 November 2011].
531 ZCBCH, ZCBC, ―Save our families.‖
532 Bassett and Mhloyi, ―Women and AIDS in Zimbabwe,‖ 147.
136
biological death: ―No one involved in caring for HIV-infected women in Zimbabwe, and presumably elsewhere, can fail to be struck by the limited options women have in negotiating their sexual relations.‖533
The continuous rise in HIV and AIDS cases further contributed to the deterioration in the relationship between the ZCBC and the State. This time, the Roman Catholic bishops in Zimbabwe accused the government of not doing enough to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS on the population. The ZCBC argued that because cases of HIV were ever increasing the State‘s HIV prevention strategies did not work.534 According to the ZCBC, in 1991 half a million people were carriers of HIV, many children were orphaned, and families were in charge of looking after close relatives sick with AIDS, in their homes.535 The estimated adult (i.e., 15-49 years) HIV and AIDS prevalence in Zimbabwe in 1991 was at 15%.536 Given the fact that the population of Zimbabwe was at 10.4 million in by 1992,537 the estimate by the ZCBC was probably less. According to UNAIDS, the number of PLHIV in Zimbabwe in 1991 was at 800,000. The Roman Catholic Church also denounced migrant labour systems that forced married couples to live separately and exposed them to high risks of HIV.538 On the one hand, the ZCBC‘s argument that those migrating for work sacrificed the welfare of the family in favour of income, and propelled the spread of HIV and AIDS, was legitimate. On the other hand, the same families stood in great need of income for survival, and that drove men to work far away from home.
Perhaps the Zimbabwean Roman Catholic bishops overlooked these realities and therefore the situation could not change easily.
The statements on HIV and AIDS issued by the ZCBC between 1987 and 1994 made no reference to the medical aspects of the epidemic which meant that the treatment of HIV using ARVs was still not a possibility. Generally, in Zimbabwe the treatment of AIDS using ARV medication only became available when ―the national antiretroviral
533 Bassett and Mhloyi, ―Women and AIDS in Zimbabwe,‖ 146.
534 P. Mutume, same interview.
535 ZCBCH, ZCBC, ―Save our families.‖
536 UNAIDS, ―Zimbabwe country report,‖ 9.
537 Van Donk, ―Development planning and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa,‖ 131.
538 ZCBCH, ZCBC, ―Save our families.‖
137
treatment roll out plan was launched in 2004.‖539 As a result, between 1987 and 1994 treatment was still largely unavailable to the majority of PLHIV. In Zimbabwe the ZCBC worked closely with the church‘s healthcare centres through a diocesan healthcare secretariat.540 However, the bishops were not medical experts and at times their statements about HIV and AIDS could differ from those of healthcare service providers at the church‘s healthcare institutions.
The Zimbabwean Roman Catholic bishops appeared unaware of the reality that ―at least for some married people contracting AIDS had nothing to do with a person‘s moral life.‖541 The ZCBC focused on one dimension and left out the others. This was despite Pope John Paul II‘s words during a visit in Tanzania in September 1990. The Pope urged that HIV and AIDS initiatives should take into account both the medical aspect of the illness as well as the human, cultural, ethical and religious dimensions of life.542 Therefore, as church leaders the bishops could have carried the hopes of the nations on HIV prevention and AIDS mitigation. Denis has noted:
As representatives and interpreters of religious beliefs they [the bishops] influence both public policy-making and popular attitudes.
They define moral norms, in matters such as condom use or pre- wedding HIV test requirements, and articulate a religious response to the epidemic.543
In 1992, the State proposed a bill that could legalise abortion for HIV infected pregnant mothers. The minister of Health and Child Welfare, Dr Timothy Stamps, made a presentation to Parliament on this matter in February 1991. In an enraged attack on this bill, the ZCBC expressed dismay that the government did not consider protecting the sacredness of human life. It appeared that the State and the ZCBC were at odds with each other again after the failure of each side to concede to each other‘s position on the prophylactic use of condoms. The position taken by the Zimbabwean Roman Catholic bishops was in continuity with the teaching of the church on abortion as contained in Humanae Vitae:
539 NAC, Zimbabwe HIV and AIDS national strategic plan, 9. See also Madzingira, ―The Zimbabwe National AIDS Levy Trust,‖ 27.
540 P. Mutume, same interview.
541 T. Nyawera, same interview. See also E. Tichawangana, same interview. M. Chitsungo, same interview.
542 MacLeran, The church response to HIV/AIDS, 2.
543 Denis, ―HIV, AIDS and religion in sub-Saharan Africa,‖ 59.
138
In conformity with these landmarks in the human and Christian vision of marriage, we must once again declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun, and, above all, directly willed and procured abortion, even if for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as licit means of regulating birth.544
In fact, the ZCBC‘s critical voice against abortion could have contributed to the survival of children born to HIV infected mothers.