AIDS Mass a barometer of medical, societal changes

On a dreary recent Sunday afternoon, a reader stood at the altar of an Episcopal church in Los Angeles and offered the congregation’s intercessions, or prayers, to God. There were appeals for wisdom and for strength. Then she paused and asked the crowd to say aloud the names of those they knew, dead or living, who had AIDS or HIV.

A few names were spoken, the words echoing briefly in the cavernous sanctuary of St. James’ in the City, where a few dozen people were in attendance. And then the service proceeded.

That unusual public offering has been made every year since 1985, at a special AIDS and HIV Mass sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

But the scene at that point in the Mass was much different 25 years ago from what it is these days, participants said. Then, for several minutes, the congregation would call out the names of partners and friends who had succumbed to the disease that had swept through the gay community, said Jim White, whose partner, Donald Lowers, died of AIDS in 1986 at age 32.

A quarter-century later, the Mass serves as a barometer not only of the advances made in preventing and treating the disease, but of more subtle societal changes as well.

“I only named three names today because those are the only three people I know who have the disease. That’s a reason to rejoice,” said White, 62. But, he added: “It’s disappointing that there aren’t more people here. It’s not as personally important to people anymore.”

The diocese’s first AIDS Mass was held May 5, 1985, in the crowded sanctuary of St. Augustine by the Sea Church in Santa Monica. Organizers said it was a way of acknowledging the suffering caused by the disease and of embracing people who had often been rejected by other religious institutions.

Especially in those first years, the service was a cathartic experience for many involved. The disease had “washed away a generation of gay men,” said the Rev. Malcolm Boyd, the Episcopal priest who officiated at the first AIDS Mass.

Boyd said the church’s decision to hold the special service helped him to see it “not as something with high stained-glass windows, but engaged in the world.”

Canon Jack Plimpton, executive director of AIDS ministries for the diocese, said the yearly Masses were empowering for the gay community. “You may not be accepted by your fellow kind,” he said, “but you know that you will be accepted by God.”

More than anything, though, the church gave those touched by the disease an opportunity to mourn, said Canon Randolph Kimmler, who serves as an advisor in the diocese to those joining the clergy. A swath of gay men seemingly vanished, dying sometimes within weeks of the onset of symptoms. And families would often bar partners and gay friends from funerals, if they even had a service at all, in an effort to cloak the shame of having a relative die of what was known as a “gay disease,” he said.

“A lot of churches wouldn’t hold funerals for AIDS patients…. It was looked upon as something you deserve — it was a really weird time,” Kimmler, 62, said. “Those of us who went and organized it felt courageous. We felt the church was courageous.”

As the years passed, though, attendance at the service dwindled. One year, only three people came, and organizers questioned whether to continue the Mass. The scientific advances that meant AIDS was no longer a death sentence, as well better cultural understanding, were blessings, but also made things more challenging for those trying to raise AIDS awareness, the organizers said.

Marsha Van Volkenburg, chairwoman for the diocese’s AIDS and HIV ministries, said the Mass, which once helped a community grieve, must now evolve into focusing on those living with AIDS and HIV.

“God is right here in the middle of it with us,” she said. “It’s more about the living than it is about the dead, [to] celebrate the lives of those who are living and who are struggling.”

rick.rojas@latimes.com