CAPS News 2023
Download CAPS News anniversary edition 2023
Director’s Message by Vincent Manning
We celebrate 21 years of CAPS and 20 years of our peer support ministry PositiveFaith, with edited versions of talks given at two Symposiums this year: The Power of Peer Support (Stockwell, June) and Making Faith Sense of HIV (Douai Abbey, September)
In distinct ways the articles reflect on what it means to be church - a special community formed through bonds of baptism and mission. These deeply personal accounts are rooted in experience - honest and theologically rich reflections on HIV through the lens of faith.
Martin recalls Christians in the UK responding to AIDS as adult disciples of Christ. In her account of ministry in the slums of Nairobi, Sr. Gill highlights the empowerment of lay people and the willingness to serve others in the face of immense suffering. The AIDS pandemic and the fact of HIV today challenge the whole faith community still. Despite all the medical advances, Dr Laura highlights how, because of stigma, HIV remains a site of suffering that needs a Christian response.
Timothy and Lazarus point towards an ethic of friendship as essential for Christian community. Love is expressed in the practices of service, the fruits of which are deep friendship in community. Tyrone, Abigail, Alberto and Patrick point to faith and spirituality as sources of hope and healing. The promise of Christ ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest’ (Mt. 11:28) is made real when we are accepted, listened to, understood, welcomed, just as we are. And the fruits of this rest? The strength to pick up one’s own particular cross and follow Christ in loving service of one another.
Pope Francis has initiated a process of renewal within the Catholic Church. Following two years of global consultation, the first session of the Synod on Synodality took place in Rome this year. The second session will occur in October 2024. Pope Francis has insisted that this process begin with a deep listening, especially to the voices of those who are the poorest, most marginalised and those who have suffered, in the hope of discerning what we are called to become, as Church. A process that is lived as Kairos - a time of openness to what the Spirit is saying to the Church. Disturbing for some and exciting for others, Pope Francis is inviting us to dare to imagine, discover and re-create a new way of being church. Nothing less.
Reflecting upon the phenomenon of AIDS in our world in 1994, moral theologian Enda McDonagh referred to the AIDS pandemic as Kairos time: a “…time of God’s special presence and summons”. With compelling testimony from the very start of the AIDS pandemic up to the present day each of the articles here speak of how Christians have responded to the special presence and summons of the Holy Spirit in a time of HIV and AIDS.