AIDS: Portrait of the Inner-Sickness of our Culture

AIDS [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome] has become a portrait of the inner sickness of our culture.

There is no longer an immune system for the soul.

Positivist intelligence offers the soul's organism no ethical immune power; it is the ruin of the soul's immune system, and thus the defenseless surrender to the lying promises of death, which appear in the guise of more life [e.g. unleashing of sexual desires, drugs, traffic in arms;...abortion, suicide, collective violence].

Medical research is at full tilt in search of a vaccine against the disintegration of the body's immunizing powers, and that is its obligation.

It will nevertheless, merely displace the arena of destruction, and not hold back the victorious campaign of the anti-culture of death, unless at the same time it is recognized that bodily immune sickness is an outcry of misused human nature, an image which represents the real sickness, the defenselessness of souls in an intellectual climate that annuls the real values of being human, that is, the values of God and the soul.

If we Christians in this situation just stand by and offer appeasing words, we are totally superfluous...

Joseph Ratzinger in Communio: Volume 2, ("Christ the Life -- Pre-existence and Love) p. 100 .

...A God who is insignificant for human life is no God at all...p. 95

...Today we are unable to see any longer that the matter of God is something of the greatest reality, that it is the real key to our deepest needs. And this points out the seriousness of the sickness of  our civilization.

In fact there will be no healing if God is not again recognized as the foundation of our entire existence. Only in God is human life truly life.

Without [God], [human life] remains within the threshold of self and destroys itself...p.102...Life should give to us without our self giving. Thus we could also say that the reality of the whole process is the denial of love, which leads to the flight into lies. But behind this is a false view of God [the solitary monad of Arius].

...Man desires to be a god to whom everything comes and who gives nothing. And therefore the true God is the real enemy, the competition for a man so inwardly blind [like Lazarus and the rich man of the Gospel parable]...p. 101

[However] "This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (Jn 17:3)

...Christ is the life because he brings us into...union with God...[R]edemptive union with God is only possible in him whom he has sent, through whom he is God-with-us. We cannot "construct" this union.

Only here do we find the fountain of living water... p. 102

N.B. The full quote in which Pope Benedict XVI famously declared that condoms cannot solve the Aids epidemic.

I think that the most efficient, most truly present player in the fight against Aids is the Catholic Church herself, with her movements and her various organizations. I think of the Sant’Egidio community that does so much, visibly and also behind the scenes, in the struggle against Aids, I think of the Camillians, and so much more besides, I think of all the Sisters who take care of the sick. I would say that this problem of Aids cannot be overcome merely with money, necessary though it is. If there is no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by responsible behaviour], the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it. The solution must have two elements: firstly, bringing out the human dimension of sexuality, that is to say a spiritual and human renewal that would bring with it a new way of behaving towards others, and secondly, true friendship offered above all to those who are suffering, a willingness to make sacrifices and to practise self-denial, to be alongside the suffering. And so these are the factors that help and that lead to real progress: our twofold effort to renew humanity inwardly, to give spiritual and human strength for proper conduct towards our bodies and those of others, and this capacity to suffer with those who are suffering, to remain present in situations of trial. It seems to me that this is the proper response, and the Church does this, thereby offering an enormous and important contribution. We thank all who do so.

INTERVIEW OF THE HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI DURING THE FLIGHT TO AFRICA Tuesday, 17 March 2009