AIDS and the Catholic Church :: HIV Religion Christianity Essays

help and the Catholic ChurchAs the aid epidemic in the United States advanced into the 1990s, it became clear that AIDS had a new pit population. AIDS was no longer strictly a gay disorder only when was leaking into the general heterosexual population as well. Moreover, as the ten-spot progressed, new cases of HIV infection were being increasingly identified in poor, minority communities. While the focus of the AIDS epidemic shifted from the high-profile male man population to poor, minority communities, political activism and monetary aliveness for the fight against AIDS also began to decline. With the new limitations set by decreased public incite and decreased financial resources, policy-makers, humanitarian organizations, and AIDS activists began to analyze how best to hand AIDS-related resources to these new target populations.The US Hispanic community is one such(prenominal) population for which new methods of AIDS programming is being sought. Hispanics comprise a ra pidly growing portion of the US minority population but are still over- represent among new cases of HIV infection. According to the CDC, In 2000, Hispanics represented 13% of the US population (including residents of Puerto Rico), but accounted for 19% of the total turn of events of new US AIDS cases reported that year (8,173 of 42,156 cases) (CDC 1). In wrinkle to the gay male communities of San Francisco and New York in the 1980s, Hispanics are lacking the financial resources to combat the spread of AIDS in their communities. As a thing of fact, the Hispanic poverty rate of 20% given by the US Census Bureau is about three times that of caucasians. Thus, it is likely that dungeon for combating the spread of AIDS within the Hispanic population must cum from an outside third party.Few institutions are in as nonpareil a position as the Catholic Church to address the AIDS epidemic in the US Hispanic community. A statistic from The Catholic farmers calendar says that 80% of US His panics are Catholic, and hence the Catholic Church has a very influential presence in the Hispanic community. As a community-based institution with international backing, a catholic community church bottom draw on the resources of its arch-diocese to address community-specific issues. Therefore, an AIDS campaign disseminated through the catholic church would not necessarily rely on the financial support of those communities it benefits most -- namely poor, Hispanic communities. Such a campaign, the National Catholic AIDS Network, was established in 1989 as a resource for each(prenominal) catholic communities dealing with the struggle against AIDS.