(Vatican Radio) Pope Benedict XVI issued an appeal on Wednesday in behalf of efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. The call came at the end of his weekly General Audience in Paul VI Hall, and looked forward to the UN-sponsored World Day against AIDS, which will be marked this coming Saturday, December 1st. The Holy Father spoke of the millions of deaths and the tragic human suffering that the disease has caused. “Suffering,” he said, “that is particularly great in the poorest regions of the world, where people have great difficulty in accessing effective drugs.” Pope Benedict also noted the great number of children each year who contract the virus from their mothers, who do not have access to or knowledge of treatments capable of preventing mother-to-child transmission. Concluding his appeal, Pope Benedict offered his encouragement to the many initiatives that the Church, in Her missionary work, promotes and carries out in order to eradicate the disease.
During the catechetical portion of his weekly General Audience on Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI continued his reflections for the Year of Faith, focusing specifically on the way in which we are to speak about God to our contemporaries, communicating the Christian faith as a response to the deepest longings of the human heart. “The first step, he said, “is to listen to what God has told us.” Speaking in English, Pope Benedict said that communicating the faith, “means bearing quiet and humble witness each day to the core of the Gospel message,” the heart of which is the Good News of the God who is Love and who – in His Son – has drawn near to us, giving Himself for us on the Cross, bringing us in His resurrection the hope and promise of eternal life. He also spoke of the privileged role that families play, saying that in families, “The life of faith is lived daily in joy, dialogue, forgiveness and love.”
“Jesus,” he said, “gave us an example: by his loving concern for people’s questions, struggles and needs, he led them to the Father. The God of Jesus Christ has revealed our grandeur as persons redeemed by love and called, in the Church, to renew the city of man, so that it can become the city of God.”
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
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If it wasn’t for God, there wouldn’t be HIV/Aids anyway. Apparently.
Maybe we should be praying to Him to end the whole business.
Apparently, he could. Omnipotent, and all.
“The call…(to combat HIV/Aids) … looked forward to the UN-sponsored World Day against AIDS, which will be marked this coming Saturday, December 1st.”
Hmm. Wonder what the general recomendation there will be. Chastity?
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…it would not be just to say that God is the author of evil…since a thing is considered good by the degree to which it expresses its form through mode and order…since, “No being is called evil by participation, but by privation of participation:”….so the emergence of the aids virus as a course of evil would be an accidental incidence of evil which did occur from a good first cause…evil in itself has no formal first cause since it is only a privation in relation to form….evil is only the absence of good which is proper and due to a thing….just as death entered the world through sin… and so all nature has fallen from its perfected state so that it could accomodate the fallen nature of man…..so to say evil is created is wrong ..to say evil is an accidental defect in nature is better… and so all evil stems from a deficiency in virtue and so God could be said to be the cause of evil as it relates to penalty ( since divine justice calls for the salvation of the just and the penalization of sinners) but not evil as it resides in fault… so the corruption of things in their nature is more a fault of the sin of man than anything else…
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If you read Toad carefully, JohnK, you will see that nowheredoes he suggest that AIDS is evil. Any more than is Malaria or Leprosy. (or earthquakes)
Toad doesn’t even use the word “evil” at all.
You do.
You may think death and disease are “…caused by a deficency of virture,”and are “…more a fault of the sin of man,” if you choose.
Toad doesn’t happen to. Takes all sorts, though.
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It seems a curious aspect of Catholic thinking that God, whom we ceaselessly praise as the maker of all things, – is apparently responsible only for the nicer bits of life.
So who the heck is responsible for AIDS?
Toad?
No doubt.
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