Our fragile brothers
Nieckarz, Jim
WHAT WE MUST LEARN FROM AIDS Our fragile brothers JIM NIECKARZ MY FRIEND Arthur died of AIDS on October 23 last year. He was thirty-nine years old and had battled AIDS for four years. Very...
...He was hospitalized for the last time...
...12 July 1985: 405 Suddenly, when I was able to speak the monster's name, it began to melt away...
...I doubt I could have talked to him...
...I met his parents...
...During the past four years, I have learned about the defensiveness in the church, and about homophobia in straight and gay people...
...Why was there so little understanding or sympathy for the patients, and so much of the "blame the victim" syndrome...
...I tried to be relaxed...
...I tried not to resist, channel, or change them...
...I went out with a friend for a couple of drinks...
...I have learned so much from these courageous, weak people about my own weakness and courage...
...There were even instances of funeral directors who would not take the bodies of AIDS patients...
...Perhaps both...
...We talked about developments in the church, about scriptural and theological renewals that have both challenged and changed the church...
...But the priest did not understand my tears...
...About the same time Arthur brought me to a support group for AIDS patients...
...In the area of sexual morality and ministry to lesbian and gay people, I had to admit there was little such change...
...They wrote me later: Spending that one week in New York with Arthur's friends and seeing the true friendship and love that each one had for one another made us better Christians in many ways...
...He said, "If we don't organize to fight for our rights, who will help us in this current AIDS epidemic?'' At the time this was true...
...During the wake and funeral I did not cry...
...My experience with Taoism and Zen helped me...
...There were now support groups, and other services were being offered by the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC...
...Within six weeks he was dead...
...Very little was known about the disease at the time...
...With three different organizations — GMHC, the AIDS Resource Center (ARC), and Dignity-NY, I offered to visit AIDS patients who wanted to see a priest...
...The most important realization among some theologians was that the church had no adequate sexual ethic which incorporated the best available information from psychology and the other social sciences...
...During the wake and funeral they seemed to find some...
...He was not dealing with his own fear of death...
...The priest who had first asked me to visit Carlos was sick himself...
...Later he worked in a program which led to the development of a vaccine against hepatitis B. After he was diagnosed with AIDS, he learned everything there was to know about the disease...
...Within a few months, the priest had died of AIDS...
...The process is still unfinished, but I am aware of my feelings and fears at a more conscious level...
...I am no longer afraid to cry when I need to, or to share in the tears of a patient who needs to cry...
...If we respond, it could lead to a greater degree of freedom for us all...
...I tried to steel myself against the growing sense of outrage, and the negative influences...
...Several thousand new cases are expected by the end of the year...
...I asked if he had seen a priest in the hospital...
...You are a missionary by being instrumental in bringing back those who have drifted away from the church...
...I am still learning from Arthur as I reflect on things he taught me...
...He told me what time Mass was and left in a rush...
...He was partially blinded, developed shingles, had liver complications, and other disabilities...
...Studying the Scriptures and liberation theology was part of the process...
...In the last two months of 1984 there were several other funerals...
...We spoke several times after this...
...All of these feelings and angers surfaced like old dinosaur bones from the tar pits...
...Vincent's hospital...
...A sense of dread began nestling deep down inside me...
...I didn't want to...
...Arthur, to me, is not just another statistic, but a hero and a saint...
...The AIDS crisis invites us to be more compassionate, to practice that love which Jesus showed to Samaritans, lepers, and Roman soldiers...
...Or he was just plain homophobic...
...I began to see how denial, anonymity, and hiddenness complicate the ability of society to deal with gay rights, and the AIDS crisis in particular...
...There was The Church and the Homosexual by John McNeill, S.J., and John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, but very little else...
...Carlos was much sicker than Arthur...
...To a great extent it remains so...
...Now AIDS was becoming the disease that could not be mentioned...
...I tried, but I failed...
...I recognized my resentment against the church which was offering little in the way of pastoral care and seemed more concerned with airing an antiquated moral theology which was contributing to the atmosphere of homophobia...
...But, I explained, the right questions were beginning to be asked, and the gradual emergence of new opinions was in itself good news...
...I also tried to remain strong and in control...
...Some nurses had refused to care for AIDS patients...
...His life became a model of reconciliation — with his family and with God...
...I finally recognized in the watching, in the unresolved grief and mourning, my anger against society and those institutions who were uncaring or damning...
...I have learned what it means to share joy and sorrow with another human being...
...Some hospitals were extreme in their efforts to isolate patients...
...There were stories of friends, lovers, and relatives abandoning people who came down with the disease...
...Little by little, however, the broader implications of the AIDS crisis and of gay rights began to become clear to me...
...As of this writing, over 11,000 cases of AIDS have been reported in die United States...
...I saw this was preventing society from responding to AIDS...
...Even though I knew it was highly improbable that he had contracted the disease from a patient, the priest's death affected me deeply...
...He worked as a volunteer in a clinic which treated gay men...
...I was aware of a certain anger and pain building up inside...
...During the next year, Arthur suffered a variety of illnesses...
...During the past four years I have visited fifteen AIDS patients in hospitals or in their homes, usually once a week...
...More than half of them have already died...
...I occasionally felt a twinge of anxiety during these discussions...
...I was there to be supportive to Arthur and to learn — not to deal with my own fears...
...Talking with Arthur, I began to realize how a "virtual conspiracy of silence'' is morally reprehensible...
...I realize now there is fear all around me...
...Four years after first visiting Carlos, I visited Louis in his home...
...Sometimes there is only silent presence, or the admission of a lack of answers or solutions...
...Was it because most of the victims were intravenous drug users, Haitians, and gay men...
...As we face this challenge, we must also deal with our own most basic fears: our own mortality, our own vulnerability...
...During the next few weeks I made a more or less conscious effort to let my real feelings surface...
...It has prevented me from practicing my religion for a very long time...
...At first I was sure a cure would be found and Arthur would be all right...
...But there are many more who have not met the challenge...
...Over and over Arthur stressed that the AIDS crisis was only a symptom, a reflection of the larger problem of society's failure to deal fairly and honestly with the problem of gay rights...
...During the funeral, I struggled to reach them with an attitude of forgiveness and with words of comfort...
...There is self-destructive behavior, homophobia, anti-gay violence, anger of all kinds...
...Toward the end of 1984, Arthur became very sick...
...Commonweal: 406...
...There is fear in the church and among churchpeople...
...I sobbed and heaved forth agonizing cries for hours...
...I was no longer afraid of contagion...
...During the next two years I visited a dozen hospitals...
...Arthur struggled to find a positive gay identity...
...Since then, I know that most AIDS patients die within two years of diagnosis...
...He seemed to panic and began to repeat again and again, 'Don't cry, please don't cry.' I tried to explain, but he was not able to hear...
...I recognized that mine were the same angers and fears as the AIDS patients' I had met...
...He lived as full a life as he could, even in his last years...
...At the same time, I visited Commonweal: 404 Carlos more often...
...At that time (late 1982), there were stories of callousness and over-reaction...
...He seemed to be afraid of me...
...He could barely walk...
...It was enough to crack my whole defense system...
...He made me feel so uncomfortable that I asked him not to come back...
...The church was a large player in this failure...
...He participated in support groups, visited other AIDS patients, spoke in public forums, and never stopped reaching out to others...
...But there was good news as well...
...I had heard much of this before...
...His family was not so understanding...
...I had been suppressing fear for over three years...
...Tentative new explorations by moral theologians had begun...
...I was overwhelmed by the constant stress and the effort I was making to suppress something...
...I did not realize at the time how important Arthur's survival was to me...
...It was the sin "whose name could not be mentioned...
...AIDS threatens our security...
...They seemed non-judgmental but struggling for answers...
...At first I didn't understand a lot of the things Arthur was JIM NIECKARZ, MM.., a Maryknoll priest, works with the Fourth World Movement, the Taiwan Human Rights Association, and AIDS ministries in New York City...
...He lived by choice in a gay subculture during his last few years...
...telling me...
...I wanted to "be there" for the family, lover, and friends, and not let my own emotions interfere...
...Arthur continued to be my teacher, my support system...
...When he and I first began to talk about the spiritual life and the relationship with God, Arthur said, "I still have a lot of anger against the church...
...There is the hospice program of Sr...
...When I saw he was a priest, I began to cry because I was hoping to reconcile myself with the church...
...Carlos remarked that he had once been visited by a priest who was obviously afraid of him...
...I am less inclined to give glib comfort...
...One of the patients I am seeing is a nurse with so much wisdom and wit I am sure I get more out of the visits than he does...
...The challenge is great, but appropriate responses on many levels could lead to the defeat of the disease...
...It is in the gay community and the straight community...
...He said to me, "I am so happy — no, it is more than that, it is like pure joy.'' I cried for joy with him...
...AIDS was getting too close for comfort...
...But most of all, as I listened, and waited, I discovered my own fear of death and dying, my own fear of AIDS, my own fear of being labeled and tarred with the same brush, my own homophobia...
...It challenges ourprejudices, our narrow dogmatism, our inadequate sexual morality...
...Patrice Murphy at New York's St...
...I wanted to appear to be open and strong...
...I relied on him for strength and information...
...I see the church as my oppressor, as one who has rejected me as a person with human rights.'' He felt the church had contributed to the alienation he felt from some of his own family and from most people in society, simply because he was gay...
...Why were so many young people dying of this disease...
...I was more comfortable dealing with Arthur as an isolated person...
...By the beginning of 1985 I could no longer cope...
...Several members of the support group spoke of their struggle to maintain their sense of dignity and self-worth, and of a new openness to the spiritual life...
...I am learning from the patients I am seeing now...
...He was weak and gaunt with Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare kind of cancer to which AIDS patients are susceptible...
...It challenges us to share the suffering of Jesus in the outcast...
...I knew what to say and what to avoid...
...There are a few priests and nuns now working with AIDS patients in association with organizations such as ARC and GMHC...
...The fear and denial take many forms...
...I can take more freely from them, too...
...He explained that although many people criticize the gay and lesbian community, it is homophobia in society that encourages gay people to find refuge in a subculture in which they are accepted and can be themselves...
...I learned how society, and hospitals in particular, were dealing with AIDS...
...Others spoke of the joy they experienced in sorting out priorities, and articulated satisfaction over finally coming to terms with themselves and their own fear of death...
...I met Jim, who told me he was in "the same boat" as Arthur and wanted to talk...
...He answered that a priest had come around: "He stuck his head in the door...
...But I suppressed the feeling and tried not to identify it...
...I tried to be strong for those still battling...
...Hearing it firsthand was somehow more shocking...
...They fail to recognize the monster of their own fears...
...Though I was unaware of it, a storm of depression was slowly gathering around me...
...Homosexuality had not been discussed by most traditional moralists...
...SOMETIME LATER, a priest asked me if I would visit an AIDS patient and bring him Communion...
...Thank you for being Arthur's good friend, and may God give you assistance in your work...
...This was a turning point, and a dark night of despair...
...Why was there still too little effort to solve the puzzle, too little money committed to research...
...By now I knew a great deal about AIDS...
...After I celebrated the sacrament of reconciliation, the sacrament of the sick, and the Eucharist with Louis, he began to weep...
...I have returned to the ministry of visiting AIDS patients...
Vol. 112 • July 1985 • No. 13
