Finally Following the Vatican’s Lead on AIDS?

By Contributor | June 7, 2011

Catholic News Agency reported earlier this week on the growing appreciation for the Catholic approach to combatting the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“We are at the beginning of a convergence in the sense that functionaries of international institutions and organizations and people from faith-based groups are talking across the lines and coming to respect each other a bit more,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told CNA.

“It has been proven and even documented now that the really effective way is to change your behaviour. And so, this has been our insistence,” Archbishop Tomasi said, stressing the Catholic Church’s emphasis on behavioral change over condom-distribution.

The CNA report also highlighted a study written by Matthew Hanley entitled, “The Catholic Church and the Global AIDS Crisis.” The study looks at the effectiveness of behavioral changes in stemming the spread of HIV infections, and suggests that six million infections would have been avoided in sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade if the Catholic approach of behavioral change (fidelity and abstinence) had been promoted in the area, instead of pushing the use of condoms.

Hanely’s report is less optimistic, it seems, about the possibility of a consensus on the approach to combatting AIDS.

“We are always told that condoms are the best known ‘technical’ means for preventing HIV transmission, but we are never told that condom promotion has failed to reverse those most severe African epidemics; behavioral modification, on the other hand, has brought them down,” says Hanley.

“That this is not common knowledge should give us pause. Public health leaders may increasingly recognize this reality – but remain, by and large, reluctant to emphasize behavioral approaches to AIDS control over technical solutions.”

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