HIV Testing Anyone?

I was surprised by Pastor Melody Eastman's statement in her parish mission homily (on St. Paul) last Sunday night that she and her congregation were planning to do a mass HIV testing. She said that HIV trends show a problem among older people, and her congregation's effort is to encourage people to get tested for HIV. This is an act of Christian charity, she said.

Now, it doesn't seem that you need to get tested for HIV if you are monogamous and faithful, and have been for a long time. It DOES make sense to be tested if you are engaging in extra-marital sex. However, the appropriate Christian response is PRIMARILY, it would seem, to remind on the morality of sexuality, that is, the moral rules against sexual license. I didn't hear this point from Pastor Eastman. That doesn't mean she wouldn't agree with it.

I saw this point made by the Bishops of Kenya (quoted in the article I cited a few days ago): "Even if HIV did not make pre-marital sex, fornication, adultery, abuse of minors and rape so terribly dangerous, they would still be wrong and always have been. It is not the risk of HIV or the sufferings of AIDS, which make sexual license immoral; these are violations of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments which are sinful, and today in Kenya surely the worst of their many destructive consequences is HIV and AIDS. The Church does not preach a different sexual morality, when or where AIDS poses no danger. But this teaching is not easy for 'the world' including the media to understand, much less to accept."

I would have felt less queasy with Pastor Eastman's remarks if I had heard something like this. But again, I don't have any reason to assume she would not agree with the above Bishop's statement.

But, hearing about other trends among non-Catholic Christian denominations makes me somewhat cautious. Here is what the United Church of Christ is doing:

"Recently, the HIV and AIDS Network of the United Church of Christ (UCC) said condoms should be handed out at places of worship. The statement was issued during a presentation to the denomination's Wider Church Ministries Board and also advocated making condoms available at faith-based educational settings.

"A UCC executive said that condom distribution is a matter of life and death and that condoms should be made available to save the lives of young people.

"Calling it the denomination's "moral responsibility" to make condoms available, the UCC's executive for health and wellness advocacy said "people of faith make condoms available because we have chosen life so that we and our children may live.""

Pastor Eastman's views on this subject would be telling on whether she is going down a different path from the Catholic Church.