People with faith who are living with HIV often experience difficulties in finding sympathetic or understanding people in faith communities or families, to whom HIV positive believers can be open about living with HIV. Even within HIV support services, views about Christianity and other faiths may not be welcomed by all.
Into this gap, in the UK and Ireland, steps Positive Catholics, which is for all Christians living with HIV.
Other faiths
Jewish Action and Training for sexual health, (JAT) serves the Jewish community living with and affected by HIV in the UK.
Resources and support for people of other faith communities affected by HIV in Britain, like Muslims, is much more limited. However Naz have produced a leaflet HIV, AIDS and Islam.
Christian and Catholic Peer support
Positive Catholics is a peer support network of women and men, who are living with HIV and have a Christian faith. Within the Roman Catholic tradition, they offer peer ministry of support and fellowship for each other. All who identify as Christian who are living with HIV in the UK and Ireland are welcome.
Positive Catholics are women and men, young and old, gay and straight, married and single, recently diagnosed and those who have lived with HIV for many years.
Welcome for all
Positive Catholics members are people originally from Africa, Latin America and Europe, as well as from the UK and Ireland. Members include Christians active in church life and Catholics who have been ‘away’ from the Church for many years. Some feel secure in their faith and identity as Catholics and Christians, while others struggle with faith. Some feel very at home in the church, some others have an uneasy relationship with the wider Church.
All kinds of Christians can be gay, including Evangelicals - and some live with HIV - at Manchester Gay Pride
They welcome all people living with HIV who share a Christian faith, and all who wish to explore living with HIV from a Christian perspective.
The Christian Way with HIV Together
Positive Catholics say
- We are united as equals through baptism – we are children of God – sisters and brothers in Christ
- We are bound together through love – younger and older, female and male, gay and straight, rich and poor - all are welcome
- We share together the gifts we have – gifts of time and listening, companionship and care – each one according to their ability
- We seek to follow Jesus who is our Lord and Saviour, our friend and companion
- We look to each other to provide a loving Christian community within which we can find strength and healing
- Through prayer and by God’s grace we take our place in our families, the churches and the world, as disciples of Jesus
Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (Isaiah 49: 15)
Manchester, Birmingham and London meetings
Positive Catholics have three active groups. These meet in London, Birmingham and Manchester. In London and Manchester they meet monthly, while the Birmingham group meets less frequently.
Meetings share food, prayer and conversation.
Services in Lent and Advent
Positive Catholics hold special services for members and friends during Lent and Advent.
Personal contact encouraged
They encourage members to keep in touch with each other for on-going support and friendship and their website has a password-protected message board for members.
Retreat weekends, near Bath and Reading
They hold several popular retreats every year. The next weekend away is in mid June, Friday 15th to Sunday 17th June. Their following one is Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th August, with another in late September.
During these weekends they take time out from our ordinary lives, to pray together, share stories and experiences, relax and reflect upon our lives as people living with HIV and seeking the presence of God in the midst of it all. We also manage to get in some quiet walks in the countryside and some jokes and conversation down the local pub.
A Roman Catholic Priest has been our ‘Chaplain’ since the beginning and has many years experience of ministry with people living with HIV. We are also accompanied by other priests, religious sisters and friends when they are able.
These weekends are held at the Benedictines’ Downside Abbey (top), near Bath, Somerset and the Benedictines’ Douai Abbey (above), near Reading, Berkshire .
Financial support may be available if this is required for people to attend.
Positive Catholics views on HIV
Can God cure me?
As Christians we believe that God can cure anyone. We place ourselves in the hands of God. We believe that God can heal us. However, our God is a God of surprises. God’s ways are not our ways and the healing we receive is not always the healing we expect.
We experience healing through prayer, and companionship, and love, and especially through HIV medicines. These ways are provide for us by a generous God. God knows better than we do those areas of our life where we need to experience a healing touch. We pray for God’s healing in our lives, so that we are strengthened and sustained as people living with HIV.
Are you feeling afraid?
We pray for you, and wish to express our solidarity and love in Jesus’ name. We pray that God will strengthen you and heal you, and bring you peace. We encourage you to remember that Jesus is with you, and know always that God, who is our Father and Mother, loves you beyond measure. May the Holy Spirit comfort and guide you especially in those times when God seems distant. We ask you also to pray for us.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11: 29-30)
Is God punishing me?
HIV and AIDS are not punishments from God. Yet often we ask this question. It is understandable that sometimes we think we are being punished. Illness, poverty, discrimination and stigma are the companions of HIV and AIDS. What have I done to deserve this, we ask. We judge ourselves and others, and we let stigma and rejection pierce our hearts and make us fearful. This is to make the mistake of thinking that God is just like us. This is to doubt God, and to misunderstand God. God does not blame us for our sufferings. God loves each one of us completely as we are. God does not want you to suffer. Thank God for everything, even through your tears. God will turn your suffering into joy. Ask God to heal and strengthen us.
Who amongst you, if your child asks for bread, would give them a stone? (Matt: 9).
This is what God wants
God gently invites us to witness to the glory of God through our lives on the margins of the church and of society. Jesus is with you. God holds you gently by the hand.
“This is what the Lord says - Seek me and live” (Amos 5:4)
What is good has been explained to you; this is what the Lord asks of you: only this, to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God.”
(Micah 6:6-8)
weblinks
Contact Positive Catholics [email protected]
Reading and resources
Theology
Faith and HIV in Action: Training Toolkit evaluation from the UK’s National African HIV Prevention Programme
Faith in the community – from HIV Treatment Update, October 2009, published by NAM, aidsmap.com in the UK
Religious faith is important to many Africans in the UK. Kerri Wells looks at the role religion plays in the lives of HIV-positive African people and the way faith leaders can channel strong health promotion messages.
- The role of faith in the lives of African people
- The problem of ‘cure by prayer’
- Faith leaders bridging the gap between medicine and the Bible
- HIV tool-kits and training for faith leaders
- The Pope and condoms
- Islam: the supportive role of the mosque
- Conclusion
- Contacts and further information
Prayer or Medicines for HIV?
Mildmay, the international HIV charity based in London, have a leaflet that may be useful for some Christians with HIV concerned about taking HIV treatments.
It deals with prayer, HIV treatments, and praying for healing. It quotes from the bible to show that using HIV treatments completely fits in with Christian belief.
‘It doesn’t show lack of faith when we use medicines. Medicines are not different from everything else in creation: God gave them to us to use.’
“For everything that God created was good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” 1 Timothy 4 v4. New International Bible
Prayer or Medicines for HIV leaflet
Worship - HIV resources and materials
Positive Rites is a 90+ page booklet of worship resources, designed for World AIDS Day (1st December). It also contains some of the services used in past years at Southwark Anglican Cathedral, CAFOD/Caritas events throughout the world.
£3.00 each, or £5.00 (for two, incl. p/p) from Catholics for AIDS Prevention & Support (CAPS), PO Box 24632, London E9 6XF - 020 8986 0807 - e-mail
These websites have HIV and worship materials you can download:
Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) -
Christian Aid
Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance
The Balm in Gilead
The African American Lectionary
This website, Catholic Relief Services College, has academic resources for Catholics and others interested in HIV and the church’s response, including a series of 7 videos.
Related articles
Thanks for highlighting the important work done by Positive Catholics. I would like to add a word for its sister organisation, CAPS (Catholics for AIDS Prevention and Support), which is a registered charity (Registration Number 1095756). For more, see the websites
http://www.caps-uk.org/ (for CAPS) and
http://www.positivecatholics.com/ (for Positive Catholics).
I am not personally involved with either organization, but I am proud that the Soho Masses congregation contributes to funding their important ministry, through a retiring collection four times a year. In supporting their work, Soho Masses joins with other eminently respectable bodies, Benedictine Communities of St Gregory the Great at Downside and St Edmund at Douai; The Society of Jesus; Wimbledon College; The Passionist Communities in the UK; Westminster Diocese Pastoral Board; The Mary Strand Trust.
May they continue their work, and increase in public support.
Thanks for drawing attention to the valuable HIV prevention and support work of CAPS (Catholics for AIDS Prevention and Support) as well.
I used to regularly promote Positive Catholics’ weekend retreats on the George House Trust website (in Manchester) while I worked there and we always had good feedback from the people who attended and grateful appreciation for the financial support that enabled Catholic refugees and other migrants especially, as well as gay men to take part.
I hadn’t realised the Soho Masses congregation contributed much of the money to support people living with HIV to attend.
I’m thinking about a creating series of posts on the theme Catholics, Sex and HIV, with a particular focus on LGBT people.
Hi Chris great to see you are continuing pushing forward the boundaries of acceptance. trisha and John Morgan. Sheffield is not too far away….
I would love to see more on HIV/AIDS here. It’s an important topic, which I know I’ve neglected unduly - but I’m wary of tackling itself. By luck and fortunate timing for my own coming out, I avoided infection myself, so it’s an area where I have neither personal experience nor particular expertise - but have had a deep interest ever since luck and timing led to me setting up what I believe were the first two public information event in Johannesburg, for the members of GASA Rand (Gay Association of South Africa, Witwatersrand region), in about 1984/5.