ALBANY, N.Y. — Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., has long been interested in helping drug addicts. In the late 1960s, as a young priest, he founded the first drug rehabilitation center in upstate New York.
But his approval of his diocese’s Catholic Charities’ plan to start handing out free syringes to intravenous drug users has some Catholics wondering if his decision respects Catholic moral teaching.
Run by the diocese’s Catholic Charities AIDS Services, Project Safe Point will provide IV drug users with free syringes at two neighborhood sites in Albany, joining 17 other needle-exchange programs across the state. The office studied the program for the past five years and received $170,000 in grants from the New York State Department of Health before implementing the project in early February.
According to Kenneth Goldfarb, the diocese’s director of communications, the $170,000 is to cover all the costs related to the program. He said that previous efforts by Catholic Charities AIDS Services to study this matter was supported entirely by funds provided by Community AIDS Partnership of the Capital Region, the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute, and state legislative appropriations. No money has come from the Diocese for exploring or implementing Project Safe Point, Goldfarb said.
In a press release, the diocese cited state Health Department studies that showed that 50% of new AIDS cases were due to IV drug use in 1990. But, by 2004, that figure had fallen to 7% after needle exchanges were introduced.
“The Department believes it is largely syringe access that caused the decrease,” said health department spokesman Jeffrey Hammond. “It’s a combination of syringe exchange and the Expanded Syringe Access Program, through which syringes can be purchased without a prescription at approximately 3,200 pharmacies across the state.”
Officials at Catholic Charities praised Project Safe Point.
“We expect that this program will be lifesaving for many,” said its executive director, Angela Keller.
“We view this new direction as an extension of our mission to serve the poor and vulnerable,” said Sister of Mercy Maureen Joyce, CEO of the diocese’s Catholic Charities office.
Realizing the move might be controversial, the diocese crafted a statement defending the project. It said it did not condone illegal drug use and was not trying to enable substance abusers.
“By providing sterile needles and syringes to limit the spread of HIV/AIDS among addicts, it may appear to some that we are complicit in the evils of drug use,” the statement said.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about illicit drugs: “The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense.
Clandestine production of and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices. They constitute direct cooperation in evil, since they encourage people to practices gravely contrary to the moral law” (No. 2291).
Catholic Charities contends that “the Church has long recognized that it is impossible to completely disassociate oneself from evil in all forms and still participate in the world and offer meaningful help to those in need. To guide us, the Church provides us with the principles of licit cooperation in evil and the counseling of the lesser evil. The sponsorship of Catholic Charities in Project Safe Point, then, is based upon the Church’s standard moral principles.”
Ethicists Disagree
Prominent ethicists objected that Catholic Charities’ statement condones the “proportionalist” position — weighing actions purely in terms of their consequences and judging which will bring about less evil — which Pope John Paul II specifically repudiated in the encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor (No. 75-83). Certain acts, like drug abuse, are “intrinsically evil”, he wrote, “on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances” (No. 80).
The Pope quoted Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae instead: “Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good, it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it” (No. 14).
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, pointed to the principle of “theological scandal,” which, he said, means that “even if cooperation in a particular evil might be licit — which is rather dubious in this case — there might still be the concern about grave scandal arising, which itself will often preclude the possibility of cooperating.”
He suggested a better case could be made for the diocese to support drug rehabilitation programs and initiatives that help addicts overcome addictions.
Goldfarb said Catholic Charities offers a residence for people with substance-abuse issues, and four of its agencies offer education, prevention and counseling services to substance abusers.
Father Thomas Berg, executive director of The Westchester Institute for Ethics & the Human Person, also disagreed with the diocese’s Project Safe Point project.
He noted that a 1990 document written by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, entitled “Called to Compassion and Responsibility,” affirmed that, “although some argue that distribution of sterile needles should be promoted, we question this approach for both moral and practical reasons.”
Instead, the bishops wrote, “education and treatment aimed at changing behavior are the best way to control the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users.” At the same time, they called for “increased government support for outreach and drug treatment programs.”
In its statement, the diocese said it is not trying to “skillfully craft loopholes in our moral obligations or provide cover to those caught in violation of morals but to illuminate how we should act to minimize our participation in evil while still discharging our ministry to others in an imperfect world.”
Father Berg responded that the needle-exchange program is in fact morally problematic because “it constitutes an illicit instance of cooperation in the moral evil of drug abuse” and that such a program “cannot be justified by touting supposed effects of the program, such as reducing the incidence of HIV or lowering crime rates in the area.”
“When such collateral effects are offered as reasons to justify needle-exchange programs,” Father Berg said, “I would suspect that advocates are employing a proportionalistic type of moral analysis, which has been discredited and refuted by the Church’s magisterium.”
Carlos Briceño writes from Naperville, Illinois.
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Since when did the Catholic Church become an enabler for sinful, self-destructive behavior? I don’t doubt for a second that the good Bishop’s intentions are anything but good, but this is just wrong. We should be helping these people get well, not helping them fall deeper into Satan’s clutches.
dumb.
Condom is next.
Sad you see.
Does Bishop Hubbard hand out condoms to prostitutes and their Johns to prevent sexually transmitted diseases? Does he supply a man wishing to commit suicide a working gun? Does he provide sterile instruments to a back alley abortionist? Perhaps he should prepare the addicts injection to prevent an overdose or contamination and guide the needle so the addict does not suffer a blown vein with subsequent cellulitis. It appears Bishop Hubbard also has a history of paying out millions of parishioners’ dollars to hush up priest sex abuse scandals. These wrong headed ideas have caused millions to lose confidence in the Church.
Bishop Hubbard has been “off the reservation” for years in other areas (which I won’t go into). This is just one more example of proof that he should have been removed from his office decades ago. It will take time to restore that diocese to orthodoxy once he is gone, I am sure. But with the help of the Holy Spirit, all things are possible.
While the Albany Diocese has done many good things in the service of the needy over the years (early in the crack epidemic opened homes for crack babies, strong program in their maternity home to enable girls to parent, hospice work etc..) they have neglected the spiritual and mystical side of our faith. It has sadly become a diocese where even the Catholic high school sees no issue with having the children miss Easter Mass when they are on a habitat for humanity mission—instead holding a sister-led cornbread and sweet tea “liturgy” at the home the teens were staying in. The Bishop and diocese needs our prayers.
You learn something new every day—I cannot believe the Bishop of Albany and his thinking on this subject. The State gives the addict at rehab., medication to relieve them of the urge for a drug. Did the Bishop say “we will provide clean needles on the premise that they go to rehab”? In the fight against Aids, our Pope is against condoms, surely he would be against supplying the addict with needles.
THIS IS SO WRONG!! Has commonsense completely gone out the window?
I thinks its time for a change in leadership. Why are we facilitating the evil habits of these poor helpless people who are crying out for help. When you are drowning you don’t throw someone a brick! I wouldn’t contribute one cent to this cause. May God have mercy on us!
Imagine our shock when we read of this! We also read that the program has already been on-going, it’s not just a proposed program, but has been on-going for about a year!
We in the Albany diocese have been praying for a long time for faithful Catholic leadership. Good and gracious God, help us!
This,of course, is more fuzzy logic comming from this bishop and from the USCCB in general.
Let’s be honest…how does providing needles to drug addicts different from providing condoms to prevent aids? The answer is simple, there is no difference and this is just another bishop falling away from Catholic teaching.
Mike Malone
Bishop Hubbard,
Which is of greater concern: physical death or spiritual death? Respectfully I suggest the clergy must concern themselves first with spiritual death. Let the professional medical professionals take care of their first priority. This is a scandel and damaging to those within and outside of the Church.
Gabriel
CHS
These comments sadden me because they are so sincere but not based on a good understanding of the facts or moral geography of the situation. It’s too bad that people don’t have more faith in their Church leaders, who spent a long time studying and praying about this issue. Instead, they read an article in five minutes and pass judgment. I am a life long Catholic who also happens to be an attorney and an addictions expert. I fully support the work of the Church in this area. To those who compare providing sterile syringes to people living with addiction to providing condoms to prostitutes: The prohibition on birth control relates to a respect for life. This is why condoms are unacceptable even if the sexual partners are husband and wife. Syringe exchange respects, protects and preserves lives, including the lives of the sexual partners and children of people living with addiction who otherwise might be exposed to HIV/AIDS. Is it wrong to offer an alcoholic a cab ride home? Is it wrong to allow smokers to use filters on cigarettes? Is it wrong to allow people who speed to wear seatbelts? These are all examples of taking practical measures to help protect the health of people who are engaging in behaviors that put themselves and the community at risk. I’m glad our state officials and Church officials are more compassionate, informed, enlightened and moral than those who have commented here. Syringe exchange is compassionate and effective, and is an excellent bridge to treatment for many people who are struggling with addiction. And to those who compare syringe access to abortion! Get real! Saving a life is much different than taking a life.
No personal offense Tom but your arguments are very weak, especially for an attorney and you are presumptuous of other readers. Public health is not the churches role in society, it is morality. Yes we allow a speeder to put his seatbelt on but the policeman gives him a ticket or even arrests him if necessary in an effort to stop the behavior. He doesn’t do a car inspection to see if the vehicle is safe for high speed and send him on his way. As for the condom and sterile instrument analogies for back alley abortionists, it is known as reductio ad absurdum or perhaps more accurately, reductio ad incommodum. We may not be as compassionate, informed, enlightened and moral as you but we try our best with the gifts the Lord has given us.
I agree with Tom, I don’t see how people who attempt to follow our Lord Jesus so closely try to act against him. I’ve never read once in the bible that we should condemn those who need us the most, quite frankly I hear quite the opposite, God bless Bishop Hubbard and his great works.
It is neither compassionate nor enlightened to help someone pretend that their sins can be made safe, morally or physically. We know from condom distribution that it only increases the destructive behavior, thus putting the person at more risk, not less. Even if this program does statistically decrease transmission of AIDS (which itself is a dubious claim) it increases all of the other moral and physical consequences of drug use. We, as Catholics, are not to assist people in their sinful behavior. We are to love them enough to help them avoid it and overcome it.
It is Bishop Hubbard and his supporters who is condemning these people: to a lifetime of addiction and all of its consequences. Choosing not to enable someone’s destructive behavior is not a condemnation. It is love.
And as to the silly analogies to speeding and cigarette smoking: neither act is sinful in itself so the analogy doesn’t hold.
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