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Caritas in PNG
Jack de Groot, Chief Executive Officer, Caritas Australia, Sydney, NSW
I write in response to AAFI calls for PNG HIV/AIDS help (OLC #102) by Brian Haill of the Australian AIDS Fund.
I welcome Mr Haill’s interest in HIV and AIDS in Papua New Guinea, and especially Port Moresby. It is true that HIV is taking a terrible toll in the country’s capital. However, Port Moresby is not alone in this dreadful situation. In a country where 85 per cent of the population lives in rural areas, the World Health Organisation estimates that the Highlands region has an equally high prevalence rate. Sadly, reports indicate that the incidence of HIV is increasing in most parts of PNG.
Caritas Australia works through its partners overseas who are best placed to identify needs and implement programs. This is a tried and true method of long-term sustainability of initiatives. Currently Caritas Australia is working with its Catholic Church partners to address HIV as part of a co-ordinated but comprehensive national strategy. This approach supports the Government of PNG’s National Strategy on HIV and AIDS 2006-2010. In a country as diverse as PNG, which is resource poor, has large urban centres and remote rural areas, a co-ordinated approach is pivotal to managing all aspects of HIV from prevention, care, training and treatment to advocacy and policy making.
Caritas Australia’s partners in PNG, in particular the largest non-government deliverer of health services in PNG, the National Catholic Health Service and the National Catholic AIDS Office (NCAO), have taken a lead in the national response to HIV. Progress is being made on how Port Moresby’s needs can be more fully incorporated into this national strategy. Caritas Australia is committed to working with the NCAO on how it can best support these plans.
As part of its overall approach, Caritas Australia has so far supported a range of activities including the provision of 4000 HIV rapid test kits, post exposure prophylaxis to major Catholic health centres, training of health workers on HIV prevention, care and treatment, development of a curriculum for schools on human sexuality, multi-media awareness and education materials, anti-sexual and family violence programs, leadership development drawing on Catholic Church experience from South Africa and Australia, alcohol and drug abuse programs, the support of diocesan HIV co-ordinators and the establishment of 10 voluntary counselling and testing centres. This work will be increased over the coming years, with work about to begin shortly on a national Catholic HIV training centre in Port Moresby. These initiatives are from Caritas Australia only; they do not include the significant amount of other work that is being done by Church partners not just in Port Moresby, but in other parts of PNG.
While I recognise the dire needs of most medical facilities in PNG, not just Port Moresby, it is not appropriate for Caritas Australia to take over the job of government by feeding its patients, providing screens and burying the dead. Caritas Australia will support the Church to advocate for the Government of PNG to meet its responsibilities and for bilateral agencies such as AusAID to increase its resources for, and monitoring of, this work.
Mr Haill said that “it is quite bewildering” that in this year’s Project Compassion campaign Caritas Australia chose to highlight the HIV work it is supporting in Madang. It is disappointing that Mr Haill does not recognise the tremendous contribution that Judy Michael, the lady who was featured in PC, made to education and de-stigmatisation of HIV, not just in PNG but in other parts of the region. It is well recognised that the stigma surrounding HIV will kill a positive person long before the virus takes hold. While Judy’s story of how she contracted HIV is sadly common for many women in PNG, the strength and courage she showed in the face of great suffering was an example to all of us. In spite of her own HIV positive status Judy committed the remaining years of her life to ensuring that no other person would have to suffer from the prejudice and ignorance that she suffered. Judy took this role seriously, willingly travelling around PNG and internationally to increase understanding about the plight of women in PNG, especially those who are HIV positive. Judy’s youngest son died of an AIDS-related illness last November. Judy herself died a week before her story was featured in PC this year. Up until the end she was nursed by Sr Anne who runs the Bethany Centre in Madang that also featured in PC.
Progress on reducing HIV will be made through a co-ordinated effort. Caritas Australia is immensely grateful for the support it receives from the people of Australia. It is proud of the work that its partners are doing on all aspects of HIV management in PNG. Recognising that there is much to do, Caritas Australia is committed to working with the Church in PNG to manage all aspects of this terrible disease.
Missing the point
Father Peter Dresser, Parish Priest, Coonamble, NSW
Prior to Mass on Sunday an altar server questioned why I vested for Mass rather than wear ordinary clothes. He was really asking why our religion hides or removes itself from the real world. I was reminded of this incident when I read Peter Flint’s letter (OLC #103) which concerned the ever-increasing chasm between institutional religion and the spirituality yearned by our people, young and old. In short, I believe Peter was lamenting the vanishing role of our Catholic religion as the source and nourishment for contemporary spirituality.
Readers of Online Catholics will appreciate this has been a concern of mine for several years and I am becoming more concerned than ever. The fact that something could be done but no one is listening is discouraging. The vocal conservative minority will always wag the ecclesial tail and so nothing effective can take place. Of course the scary point is that we do our youngsters great harm by not allowing them to experience the spiritual in their religious practices or providing religious practices which for them are devoid of spiritual meaning. Their religion and lived experiences are not being connected. So whilst spirituality is alive and well in our world, established religion is not providing a means for its nurturing, experience and nourishment. Sadly, the only avenue open for many young people seeking spiritual fulfilment is in the occult and other dangerous practices. Also, whilst not to any degree dangerous, mainstream evangelical religions are attracting a good number of younger people with their warmth, welcome, music, fellowship, innovativeness and zeal.
I encourage readers to consider some of the articles I have presented in the past few years and share ideas that might help remove this “chasm” that Peter Flint refers to.
Language is SO important
Ted Lambert, Elizabeth Downs, SA
Am I right to intuit that Michael McGirr's Inner Springs update in the recent issue (OLC #103) was truncated? Michael's amazing pieces always end with a sting in the tail, or a gentle correction administered by Cardinal Shallots. Not so this week. It just ends as though the last page was left on the editing floor.
Secondly, Timothy Ratcliffe op, quoted at length in “from the editor’s desk”, disappoints me by what I see as a sad use of recalcitrant language. He sees a division among us between the 'Kingdom' Catholics and the ‘Communion’ Catholics. The division may well exist but it is Timothy who has chosen to categorise it in those words, thereby labeling some brilliant theologians quite outrageously, in my opinion.
For me, the division will proceed into the future for as long as our theologians see kings and kingdoms as useful currency in the language and imagery by which we express our faith. The historical precedent of power as a right of birth or of conquest must now be transcended among human beings, and the place to start is with the language.
The Spirit, who brings union to us is not a King but a Lover in essence and the ambience is home and family. Until we all know this, whether 'Kingdom' Catholics or ‘Communion’ Catholics, we will surely be squabbling Catholics.
An interventionist God presents difficulties
Jamie Miller, East Brighton, Vic.
“The prayers of millions of Australians over the past fortnight have been answered with the successful rescue of Todd Russell and Brant Webb at Beaconsfield yesterday morning”, the Archbishop said. (News briefs, OLC #103) Read the Bishop’s words; read them very carefully. Within them lies one reason many people cannot countenance themselves as part of the Christian Church “What of Larry Knight?” these people ask. “Is this God of yours so capricious that he saves two and not the third?” “Does this fickle God listen only to you, and not to me?” “Is yours a God of arbitrary and often unfair choices?”
And the Bishop isn’t on his own. The local Uniting Church Minister’s words to the TV reporter were even more stridently triumphalist. I can’t quote her exactly but the distinct impression from her interview was that she and God had managed to save the day! Alleluia!
The outcome of the Beaconsfield mine disaster may well have accorded at least in part with the ‘prayers’ of many, but the distasteful implication of these clergy remarks is that God is indeed capricious and apparently quite arbitrary in answering prayers and rescuing miners. These remarks imply a ‘magical’ notion of God that more truly belongs in Sunday School than in a mature discussion of the events in question. Presumably these same people also see tsunamis, earthquakes, floods and other ‘natural’ disasters as part of their God’s intervention in the world; or are only the events with ‘good’ outcomes those for which God is responsible? If so, why can’t we have more of them?
The belief in an interventionist God who resides somewhere ‘up there’ and ‘out in space’ and who from time to time interferes in the natural order, presents many people with great difficulties in an age that understands and experiences gene engineering, space travel, DNA matching and IVF, let alone the mining of precious metals more than a kilometer under the ground.
As a Christian who apparently worships a quite different God to some leaders of the Church, I appeal to those leaders to be more mindful of the effect their pronouncements have on many both inside and outside the Church.
World domination
Dominic V. Crain, East Melbourne, Vic.
You love to get out the whip to attack Cardinal Pell. On the matter of Cardinal Pell's discourse on Islam, he (the Cardinal), is correct, as opposed to the anti-Pell vitriol by contributor Kerry Gonzales. (Mimicry trap, OLC #103)
Few of your contributors shall have visited, let alone lived in, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam. Coming from an ignorant knowledge base about Islam, the very first thing which strikes the average Christian who attempts to live in the place is the absolute hypocrisy of the populous, and the propaganda issued in the welcome documents presented to expatriate employees. Amongst the documents I was issued with was a clear statement that Islam is "tolerant of all religions". Nothing, nothing, could be further from the truth.
After three months, even in the expatriate compound, a home venue was found in which Christians might meet on a secret basis to read scripture. The base was moved each week to avoid detection. The Saudis are totally intolerant of any other form of religion, despite it being a requirement to declare, on entry, your religion. Acknowledging "no religion" or “agnostic" or "atheist" on the entry card is unacceptable.
The hypocrisy continues. Alcoholic beverages, despite being banned, nevertheless flowed in secret, attained through smuggling or concocting some seriously dangerous stuff by adding pure alcohol to fruit juice. When wealthy women left the country temporarily (and they did so only with their husband's or father's permission and under male escort), they wore full Arab regalia on departure only to arrive in the European destination wearing the most magnificent fashions. Returning to Jeddah or Riyadh, the reverse took place.
I assume the author, and the like, have not lived under strict Islamic rule, and probably have not read or understood, as Cardinal Pell has, the reality of Islam.
Like most cultures, there are very nice people, and I met and worked with a couple of Muslims who were great people. One has died (he was a "born again" and therefore devout Muslim). The other remains a good friend. However, Christians in general should labour under no illusion that the agenda of Islam is world domination. In Jeddah, and other places, corners are plastered posters bearing the words in English: "The Koran – The Final Testament".
It’s here!
Dr Mary Coloe, Berkeley, California, USA
After much publicity “all good, since even criticism is publicity” Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is about to hit the screens. Already it is being proposed by the Congregation for the Doctrine and Faith that Catholics boycott this film because of its offensive errors. More free publicity, I’m afraid, adding to Dan Brown’s fortune. What I find most surprising is that so many people fail to grasp that this is FICTION. The book can be found in libraries in the fiction section -- not history, not biography, not religion. Like other books of fiction such as A Tale of Two Cities, or Robbery Under Arms, The Da Vinci Code is set in the real world and given a veneer of historicity, to entice readers into suspending disbelief and so be carried along by the thrilling tale. As the statement on the novel’s copyright page states: "In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously." It is a wonderful amalgam of ingredients: religion (Mary Magdalene), wars (the Crusades and Knights Templar), secrecy (Opus Dei) murders and suspense. In the crucible of these various elements Dan Brown has achieved what the alchemists of old searched for -- gold, and lots of it. As an author, he has excited the imagination of many and is making money from his craft. The French tourist trade is also benefiting.
So is this film yet another crisis of faith, or an opportunity? I hope the latter. The interest sparked by the novel, and now the film, can be the catalyst for some sound biblical and historical education in parishes. Who was Mary Magdalene? Why was she given the title “Apostle to the Apostles”?? What is the “Gospel of Mary”? Why have we never heard of it before? What about other gospels like the “Gospel of Thomas”, and the recent discovery of a manuscript the “Gospel of Judas”? For those of us involved in theological education, Dan Brown’s work is a golden opportunity to offer creative seminars, workshops, and evening lectures to address people’s curiosity. The U.S. Catholic Bishop’s Conference has seized on this opportunity and produced a documentary and website “Jesus Decoded”? For anyone wanting some brief answers to questions raised by the book, this is a readily accessible resource (click here)
(See this week’s News Briefs and Call Me Catholic for further comment)
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