Catholic priest's AIDs rate soars

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Catholic priest's AIDs rate soars

Highlight of March 2000 article by Judy L. Thomas, Knight Ridder Newspapers published in The Arizona Republic

Some blame lack of training by the church.

Hundreds of Roman Catholic priests across the U.S. are dying from AIDs or living with HIV.

It appears priests are dying of AIDS at a rate at least four times that of the general U.S. population.

The deaths are of such concern to the church that most dioceses and religious orders now require applicants for the priesthood to take an HIV-antibody test before their ordination.

In a survey of 3000 priests, most said the church failed to offer an early and effective sexual education that might have prevented infection in the first place. Three of four said the church needed to offer more education about sexual issues.

Many priests and behavioral experts argue that the church’s adherence to 12^th-century doctrine about the virtues of celibacy and its teachings on homosexuality have contributed to the spread of AIDS within the clergy. The church has kept priests uneducated about the reality of a sexual world.

Moreover, by treating homosexual acts as an abomination and the breaking of celibacy vows as shameful, the church has scared priests into silence.

Through the years, the issue of AIDS deaths among priests has been so sensitive that many kept their illnesses a secret.

To the surprise of researchers 801 priests responded to a survey of AIDS – a response rate of 27%. Nearly 60% said they personally knew at last one priest who had died of AIDS. And one in three said they knew priests who were living with HIV or AIDS.

The Rev. Tom Casey, an Augustinian priest from the Boston area, said the church bears some of the blame for AIDS deaths. “They have created a tremendous amount of homophobia,” Casey said.

“Gays are in the priesthood, and not all of them are celibate. Both of these issues are explosive that superiors and bishops don’t want to deal with publicly”, said Robert Goss, a former Jesuit priest.

Experts say the incidence of AIDS among priest’s stems primarily from sexual contact.

As long ago as the early 1980’s, the Rev John Keenan found that Catholic priests were contracting AIDS at an alarming rate.

“We looked at what was happening in the gay Catholic population, and there was a lot of concern about the epidemic proportions of HIV”, said Keenan, who runs an outpatient clinic in Chicago for priests.

Keenan now runs weekly support sessions for infected priests. He believes most priests with AIDS contracted the disease through same-sex relations. He said he treated one priest who had infected eight other priests.

Charlie Isola, a New York City social worker and psychotherapist, said all the priests that had AIDS that he has treated are gay men in their 40s to early 60s who became infected through same-sex relations.

But the church tries to argue they could have been infected before they became priests. Some argue that failing to address the issue how the priests were infected shows that the church is in denial about the issue…the church just doesn’t want to admit it.

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