Catholic Charities recently started providing syringe exchange services in New York (see post here).
I am a life-long Catholic. I went to Catholic school grades 1-8, and then asked my parents to send me to a Catholic high school. I approach my work with people who are opiate dependent in moral terms. It’s just who I am.
So when I tell you that I started a syringe exchange program about 9 years ago (and still run the program as part of a broader approach to supporting recovery from opiate dependence), please know that I have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue in terms of ethics and morals.
My years of experience with syringe exchange have left me with absolute personal moral clarity on this issue: syringe exchange is God’s work.
This week, several theologians shared their thoughts on the issue of whether or not it is appropriate for the Catholic church to be involved in providing syringe access services here.
One of them says that the church should do what Jesus would do. But as you will see from the article, even the theologians can’t seem to agree on what, exactly, Jesus would do.
I’m bothered by the opinions of the theologians in the article, both pro and con, because they are offering conclusions when it is clear that they don’t have a full grasp of the facts about syringe exchange. They are operating at a theoretical level, but syringe exchange operates at a very concrete level, with very concrete impacts on real people.
To me, God expects us to use our experience to inform our theology. I have thoroughly studied the scientific research on syringe exchange, and I have years of real world experience with syringe exchange.
I know what Jesus would want me to do, and with the help of a great team, I’m doing it.
Please feel free to share your thoughts about the moral/ethical dimensions of syringe exchange in the comments. This is something I thing people should be thinking and talking about.
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I know you are doing God’s work. Your program has likely prevented countless infections and crimes by making clean syringes available at little or (usually) no cost. I believe with all of my heart that you are doing exactly what Jesus would do. You are reaching out and offering not only help and charity but also compassion and humanity to the people in our world that are looked down upon and cast out of “good” society. In the same way that Jesus helped and respected the thieves, beggars, prostitutes, and other untouchables in His time, you are doing God’s work here in your time. As a recovered heroin addict (clean for over 3 years now) I owe the fact that I never contracted HIV, Hepatitis, or any other bloodbourne illness to people like you who are able to see God in all people, regardless of what walk of life they come from. Please know that myself and millions of people like me are alive and healthy today because people like you searched your souls and found Jesus’s message there. Thank you.
Virginia Goss