"GROUP THINKING" FALLACIES AND THE CHURCH'S RESPONSE TO AIDS             

    Ken Johnson, S.J., a medical doctor working in the district hospital in Choma in southern Zambia, looks at what he terms "group thinking" in relation to the current HIV/AIDS crisis.  Believing that this approach has too much  influence in dealing with the pandemic, he implores the church to take a multi-dimensional approach approach that is more in keeping with its spiritual resources and obligations

    "Group think" happens when a particular set of ideas takes over in a group of individuals and does not allow other ideas to surface and gain some expression.  It can happen that the controlling set of ideas have a great deal of truth and per­suasion and, at least initially, were well expressed.  The problem is that no expression of truth completely exhausts the meaning of human experience.  Hence it is to be expected that diverse individuals in a group will eventually try to express some additional aspect of truth that was not captured in those first expressions.

It can happen however that there is a controlling aspect of the initial expression or those individuals who espoused it in a group.  The result is that the different members of the group stop thinking for themselves about the limitations of those initial ideas and wondering how to add what was missing from those expressions in their own experience of human life.

PREVAILING PRESUMPTIONS

In the matter of AIDS, I think we have an example of group think as newspaper stories carry articles about the devastating impact of the disease --mentioning prevalence in different populations, changes in work force and the number of dependents on each worker, the rising number of orphans, the changes in schooling, challenges in health care delivery based in homes rather than in clinics. 

Many organizations have begun responses to each of these aspects of the problem.  They all fight against the disease although sometimes their competition with each other for donor funds can make them seem to fight each other, each promoting the importance of their own project.

There is no evil here, but rather a great deal of good work has been done.  And yet the deficiency has been a ready acceptance of the basic idea that the problem of AIDS is a highly prevalent virus and we fight all the problems of AIDS by fighting the virus.  That's the "group think" in this situation. 

In his recent comments in South Africa, President. Mbeki has challenged "group think." While it seems he has been caught up in a scientific controversy, there are two of his observations which make a lot of sense. 

(1) The devastation of AIDS in countries of our region is not caused only by the virus itself but by the poverty in which the disease is experienced in Africa. 

(2) The solution to the problem here cannot be simply an importation of Western medical technology.

The reaction to his statements has been swift and strong.   It is unclear whether the reactions are always considered reflections. Are they giving Mbeki a good interpretation of his remarks, or are they reflexive reactions characteristic of those whose economic or social interests are threatened?  Most of us know persons who have suffered and died from AIDS.   Moreover, many of us know the paradox that some of those who work against the disease enjoy very high life-styles and some drug companies make very high profits.

Mr. Mbeki's observations can provoke us to reflect on the situation again.  They might generate some new insights among us on how to respond to the challenge of AIDS.  So far the Church's response has been to be caught up variously in any one or another of these activities of fighting against the virus, fighting against its spread, compassionate care for those afflicted, strategies for lessening the impact of a declining work force (in production and even in educatio­n).

Again I would readily say much good work has been done.  However, I mean to propose in this article a rather sharp departure into another direction where I think the Church may serve.  I will offer three reasons for this departure.  In the first place we might consider the presuppositions underlying the responses of these charitable, counseling, and educational works.  This is a philosophi­cal and theological service of reflection.  Each social service activity tries to restore the social order to what has been before.

Even if it is not true that each makes a God out of development or education, still it could be said that each supposes God is to be found in develop­ment and education and wants the progress in these areas that we have inherited (driven by many Western influences).  These ideas need to be re-thought in a non-defen­sive fashion.  Otherwise donor funding and donor accountability lead to a sort of "Cocalization" of the world  -- an inexorable im­position of Western cultural life as salvation for the world.

GRACES EXPERIENCED

In the second place, we need to consider and claim the graces which arise in the midst of this experience.  For the Society of Jesus, GC-32 in Decree Four, Our Mission Today, challenged us to probe our experience and that of those among whom we live so as to identify and then proclaim in those struggles the experience of Christ crucified and risen.

The African Synod gave us a recent example of proclaiming Christ Our Hope in several dimensions in the aftermath of the experience of the genocide in Rwanda.  Although we have par­ticipated in the work of many organizations fighting the disease of AIDS, we have not been particularly vocal in our proclamation of how we experience Christ in the struggles mentioned.

In the third place, we might begin to wonder at the new opportunities for dialogue arising among religious groups with whom we share a commitment to service.  We profess a faith in one God but perhaps are slow to realize that our many cooperat­ing partners serve the one same God. 

 Their ideas of God leading them to cooperative service may find expression that builds faith across the borders of denomina­tions.  This is true for those other Christians who labor with us; it is true for Moslems; and it may be true also for those whose principle spiritual experience is in African Traditional Religions (I would be thinking particularly of traditional healers themselves and those who seek aid from them).  I think I can identify seven kinds of spiritual experiences brought to mind by the challenge of AIDS.  I will offer a brief explication of them.

COPING-HEALING

            The most immediate experience elicited on meeting patients with AIDS is a response of sympathy and compassion.  Perhaps sometimes after much experience, there can be empathy.   We see the "face of Christ" suffering on the cross in these persons who suffer before our eyes.  And, rightly, we feel moved to help them.

Hence we may take up all kinds of strategies to assist those who are suffering and prevent others from falling into such suffering.  I put almost all the current Church activities into this category of responses.  Even pastoral care for the sick is a kind of helping ministry.  I believe these activities should continue but we should realize that despite the numbers of these activities they are only one category of responses which the Church should make.

MIRROR

            St. Clare wrote about "the mirror of Christ," how in contemplating Christ we might see something of our reflection and have an intuition of how closely we imitate Christ's own image.  Meeting patients with AIDS can have this kind of effect on us.  We can become aware of our gently helping them with sincere love as Christ related to those who are sick; we can become aware of our (perhaps occasional) impatience or hasty judgments with those who are suffering.

We can ask for grace to be moulded ever more closely into the image of Jesus.  This growing into the image of Jesus is more than imitating his compassionate care (it would then be reduced to the previous example).  It involves also his relating to the Father, to his dis­ciples, to the various matters on which he taught.  

Pastoral care and counseling for health care providers and for families who have members with AIDS can bring to conscious­ness some of this kind of important understanding.  In many circumstan­ces however, probably most of Church ministries are directed more to the sick themselves than to others responding to them.  Therefore more needs to be done.

INCARNATION

            Few of us don't at some time or other indulge the kind of thought, "If only I had ..., then life would be better."  Many of us have used the kind of phrase, "Some years ago, this is the way it was done" implying a kind of idyllic past and forgetting some of its troubles.   We can do this in the matter of AIDS -- hearkening back to the time of different productivity in the workplace when there were more workers and less absenteeism because of sickness or attending funerals.

Whether in a weighty or light way, these remarks are movements against a deepening acceptance of the mystery of the Incarnation -- Jesus Christ truly entering our world just as it was.  God has surrounded our lives with circumstances today with no less care than he showed for his own Son.   We are invited to fully consent to entering our world against all the temptations of escapism searching for an idyllic past or a future paradise.

CHURCH AS FAMILY

            The Church as family is a phrase from the African Synod.  One meaning has been that in the Church in Africa there is room for all, that all have a place to feel "at home."  But we are still exploring meaning of this phrase.  Jesus said not to turn one's back on one's own.  And in the challenge of AIDS, there are so many widows and orphans that almost everyone is stressed by the command of Jesus.

Extended family respon­sibility competes with immediate family needs, job responsibilities and even personal development.  Another tension arises in finding the wisdom to balance appropriate personal (and family) benefits from jobs and corruption (abusing those benefits).  We have hardly begun as a Church to explore the repercussions of these tensions.

DEATH

            Saints have puzzled over the meaning of death.  Death was "Sister" to St. Francis of Assisi.  But St. Francis meant his own death.  Teilhard de Chardin prayed over how disability and even death would bind him closer to the Lord; he too meant his own death.

The challenge of AIDS is that we are faced with many deaths --no t our  own deaths yet (although this may touch us when we become infected with the virus) but the deaths of those who have lived and worked with us.  The pervasive feeling is that we have been left alone, we have been left behind.  There is much grieving but there is more than grieving here. 

Some time ago one of the nurses at a hospital where I worked mentioned how it had been terrible to bring a body to the mortuary in the middle of the night; but now she was used to it.  It is only in a relation of love and gentleness that we can begin to ask the delicate question whether this getting used to it is a matter of building up defenses and so steeling ourselves against the old feelings or whether it is a matter of entering into the process of life and death that we may find mercy of God there.  Hardly any parish has a particular outreach in these two areas.

EMPLOYMENT

            The challenge of AIDS means that many of us (temporarily) able- bodied may need to do some extra work, covering for our colleagues who may have fallen sick and died or who may be away at funeral.  But it means more than this.  It means a rethinking of the "goods" of employment -- not just in producing goods, not just in earning a wage, but in providing a space in which I find meaning of my own place in the Kingdom of God, a place in society where I contribute something tangible as well as the intan­gibility of my presence to others.

Many institutions or companies have employment contract clauses allowing termination of the contract if the employee is sick for six months for a chronic illness.  This can make business sense but it is evident testimony that the employment relation is a "goods-producing" relation.  When the person is no longer productive, that person should cease to be employed. 

The place of acceptance is limited to home life.  And yet most of us do have an intuition that we must remain socially related and that there is a proper place of acceptance within society even outside the family.  And commonly this acceptance is expressed socially as employment.  And so we realize a tension between the business sense we know in our heads and the social relatedness we intuit in our hearts.   We need the Church to help explore this spiritual dimension of our lives because it is a part of how we belong to each other in the Kingdom of God.

EDUCATION

            Colleges are proliferating in order to give new certification and skills to a growing cadre of workers.  There are so many courses to choose from at University or College that we often have to ask what we want to do with the education afterwards. 

This makes some sense but it promotes a utilitarian view towards education.  And this utilitarian view promotes the thinking that education should be reserved so that the most gifted and the most enabled can make use of it afterwards.  In our particular time we may wonder if some of the UNZA decisions to admit those who can pay reflect the assumption that such students as can pay may be expected afterwards to have capital they can use in production even as they had capital to be used for tuition fees. 

On the other hand, we all know that education is not only and always utilita­rian.  It relates to self-knowledge and growth into maturity as we share the collective experience of those who have gone before us  -- learning about their questions and their answers.  In this knowledge we immediately realize that we have our own somewhat different questions and we will have to find our own answers. 

Thus every young person has a proper place in an educational institution --whether or not that one will be productive later, whether or not that one has AIDS -- because in school is where a young person ought to be.  We need the Church to be active in reflection in this area because the historical consciousness of our heritage and the courage to move forward are matters of the human spirit always living in a finite way in the presence of God.

 CONCLUSION

This short essay has endeavored to show that just as the physical clinical manifestations of AIDS are protean, so too the religious and spiritual experiences that arise among us in the time of AIDS are varied.  The Church's response cannot be limited to just a fight against the virus.  It needs to explore all the many spiritual dimensions that arise in our day because of the virus and its effects.

Ken Johnson, S.J.

Choma District Hospital

                                                                                                                                          Choma