Bishops Urge Concern for AIDS Victims

California’s 5.8 million Roman Catholics were urged Friday by their bishops to lend compassionate care to homosexuals and other people considered at high risk of contracting AIDS.

Commending the “generous manner” in which homosexuals themselves have provided support to AIDS victims and education for others, the bishops said in a pastoral letter that they “regret” the fact that many homosexual Catholics have left the church. “(We) long to heal their wounds by offering our support and fellowship,” the bishops said.

The 3,000-word pastoral letter may surprise some people in the light of the strong condemnation of homosexual behavior last October by a Vatican document, said Jesuit Father William J. Wood, executive director of the bishops’ California Catholic Conference in Sacramento.

“It’s not challenging the Vatican teaching, but the letter appeals to the Catholic community to respond with love and puts the services of the church at the sufferers’ disposal,” said Wood, who helped write the letter.

The state’s bishops earlier this year gave qualified support to proposed legislation that would mandate the teaching about the acquired immune deficiency syndrome in public schools. Although the Catholic prelates expressed reservations then that a moral context for sex education was missing and probably would encourage the use of condoms, the bishops did not mention their objections to condoms in this document.

‘A Call to Compassion’

The letter, titled “A Call to Compassion,” was designed to promote understanding about the disease, “to allay irrational fears” and to explore ways that Christians can respond to people victimized by AIDS and the AIDS-Related Complex (ARC), the bishops said.

Jesus placed no condition on his concern for lepers and outcasts, the bishops said. “If we are to follow His example, our response to those who are ill should be that of compassion, not of judgment,” they said.

They also called for special attention by Catholics to the needs of AIDS-afflicted intravenous drug users, for whom they said the disease and addiction are double burdens.

The AIDS virus attacks the body’s immune system, leaving the victim vulnerable to a variety of infections and tumors. Groups at high risk include homosexual men and intravenous drug users.

The letter made several practical recommendations.

In expressing concern for prison inmates who have AIDS, the bishops called for an AIDS hospice program “to care for severely or terminally ill prisoners in a humane and compassionate environment.”

Call for Further Care

The prelates asked that churches develop further hospice and home care programs for victims. They also advocated legislation to support medical research, AIDS education, insurance coverage for ARC and AIDS victims and protection of civil rights for infected people.

“Despite all evidence that this virus is not easily transmitted,” the bishops criticized “inappropriate reactions,” such as “attempts to bar children with AIDS from schools, eviction from housing, loss of medical and life insurance or insurability, and denial of access to medical care and emergency medical transportation.”