Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear by Michael J. O’Loughlin
Hey it’s been a hot minute since I did one of these write ups and I feel like this is a book that deserves one. I’ll throw the rest under a cut so people can easily skip it because I know this probably isn’t most people’s cup of tea.
So something that I don’t like super talk about (here or in person) is that I’m technically Catholic; I say “technically” because, while I’m confirmed and everything and I do go to mass, I’m not like a big believer (I lean more toward agnostic than anything else). But my church invited this author to speak a while back and I went to his talk and I was just so moved by it. So, obviously, when I got home, I immediately ordered his book.
Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear by Michael J. O’Loughlin looks at both the Church’s response to the AIDS crisis and how gay Catholics felt at the time. He talks about how he started this whole journey to help him figure how he felt about being gay and Catholic and then it became so much more.
While O’Loughlin tells lots of stories, two of the main... characters, shall we say, are Sister Carol, a nun and nurse who wanted to learn more about how to care for those with HIV and AIDS, and Father Bill, a gay priest and artist who saw himself in many of the men who were dying.
Sister Carol and another nun, Sister Mary Ellen, traveled from a small town in Illinois to NYC to live there for several months. While they were in NYC, they went to gay bars, worked at hotlines for HIV and AIDS support, and they both were really forced to confront their own biases so they could help those in need as best they could.
Father Bill, also in NYC for I think a majority of the crisis, cared for as many people as he could, whether that was being a listening ear, providing healing masses, or creating art, including AIDS Crucifixion and Stations of the Cross for a Person with AIDS. I know I’m not going to do him justice in just a couple of sentences so I’m not going to try. Father Bill also had a bit at the end where I did actually have to stop reading a sob for a bit:
While in conversation with O’Loughlin, Father Bill said that he “wants other gay Catholics to know that they have a place in the church”. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m more agnostic than Catholic and that’s partially because of the attitude the Church has had with the queer community, abortion, how it seems like they refuse to practice what they preach in terms of acceptance, etc. So while I’m not big on Catholicism, I did just like full on cry for a bit at that one line of acceptance. Full disclosure: I cried a lot while reading this. I hate crying. But I think learning this history was worth it.
Part of the other reason why I wanted to read it is my like weird relationship with the Church. Like I’ve mentioned, I have issues with Catholicism and the Church. But one of the reasons why, despite all my issues, I keep going to church is my parish, my community. I’ve spent pretty much my whole life in the same parish (except when I was at college and didn’t attend mass there outside like Easter and that was only the first 2 years) and so I’ve known many of the parishioners for years, many of them older. Going to church is how I really regularly interact with members of other generations and I’ve gotten a lot out of those relationships. I think it also helps that my parish was founded with social justice as a big part of its vision; I found out during the talk with the author that our parish actually had a buddy program for people with AIDS back in the 90s. So I think the relationships I have and the fact that my parish is generally more progressive than the sort of typically Catholic church makes me want to go regularly. I can tell you that, when we visit my sister, I do not go to her parish lol (not that her parish is bad, mind; it’s just so much bigger and def more traditional than mine and that makes me uncomfortable, especially after growing up in the parish I go to).
So, anyway, if you’re Catholic or maybe even religious at all and want to read about some great- and some, uh, not so great- responses to the AIDS crisis or if you want to find out another perspective of what was going on then, I highly recommend this book.
