Professor Jon Fuller, S.J., M.D., who is a staff physician with the Center for HIV/AIDS Care at Boston University, has offered this wonderful review of our recently released Calling for Justice throughout the World. Here, he gives a comprehensive endorsement of the book's inspiration and purpose and of the women whose contributions to both the volume and the fight against the pandemic are so important. Please enjoy!
In July of 2006, a remarkable, first-of-its-kind conference in Padua, Italy brought together more than 400 moral theologians from 63 countries to reflect on “Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church.” The meeting was certainly notable for the papers presented, but it was important for another reason as well: this gathering allowed theologians from vastly different cultures not only to meet their fellow scholars face-to-face, but also to reflect as a cohort of professionals on their identity, capacity, and mission in service to the Church and to the human community. Ten papers were presented in Padua on the topic of HIV/AIDS, but the meeting also became – in the words of editor Mary Jo Iozzio – a “rolling stone” that led to further analysis by theologians particularly interested in the pandemic. This collection represents the further reflections of 25 women theologians representing 15 countries and 7 global regions.
Indeed, this collection by women is mostly about women. But perhaps because of their lived experience of being biologically (and often culturally and economically) more vulnerable than men to becoming HIV-infected, women have also been able to identify with other marginalized and vulnerable groups whose voices must also be heard and for whom solutions must also be found. These groups range from the elderly and physically or developmentally disabled to African Americans, children, addicts and migrant workers. These reflections are contextualized not primarily in the realm of sexual ethics, but rather as failures of justice whose solutions must be based on the claims of human dignity, and on the church’s professed interest in a preferential option for the poor. It is by the epic milestones of Catholic Social Teaching that several of these analyses find their way, beginning with Rerum novarum (1891) and Populorum progressio (1967), and culminating in the prophetic language of the Latin American bishops conferences held at Medellin in 1968 and in Puebla in 1979.
Ready access to both correct information about condoms and to condoms themselves is seen by many as a critical step in helping women who have less economic and social power to protect themselves, especially when they are intended as a means of preventing HIV infection and not as contraceptives. But as well, the Church is challenged again and again to move beyond its sexual ethics lens and to use its considerable resources to advocate for the abandonment of cultural practices and conditions of impoverishment that put women and other marginalized groups at risk.
For example, Suzanne Mulligan from Ireland and Therese Tinkasiimire from Uganda remind us that poverty can force parents to make their children available as sex workers or can force women into survival sex. They note that women are put at particular risk of becoming infected by longstanding cultural traditions such as levirate unions, polygamy, and “bridewealth” – a fee paid by a groom’s family to the bride’s, completely purchasing her sexuality and requiring her always to satisfy her husband’s sexual needs, even if he is bringing HIV into the relationship. They draw attention as well to the need to reform inheritance laws which may give a widow no right to her husband’s property after his death.
Christina Astorga from the Philippines (currently teaching in the U.S.) points out that it is economics – such as the 40% poverty rate among women in the Philippines – that forces women to work abroad to provide support for their families. (Women now represent more than 70% of all international workers from that country.) They engage in labor described as encompassing “the three D’s”: dirty, demeaning, and dangerous, with their second-class status in foreign countries putting them at even more risk for abuse and exploitation.
In one final example from this fine collection, Mary Doyle Roche from the U.S. speaks
with particular eloquence for youth who are at risk. She reminds us that their voices must be engaged if we are to forge effective solutions for them – and that our duty to care for the young lies not in their “innocence,” but in their human dignity. This focus on dignity as the fundamental concern avoids the false dichotomy of separating persons living with HIV into the “guilty” and “innocent,” and it enlarges the circle of care and compassion to include children who might not be considered children at all: those in the global sex industry, bandits, child soldiers, or gang members.
These essays provide a powerful reminder of the daunting challenges we face if we are to make real our claims to prioritize care for those who are poor or who are marginalized by gender, economic, or racial/ethnic inequity. Our first important task is to let their voices reach us so that we might learn from them what would constitute effective ways to address – and ultimately reverse – their vulnerability.
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