Well, if I can't have any fun I might as well leave.

I started this post several times in commemoration of World AIDS Day last week. At times it's gotten pretty long so I'm going to just pare it down to it's essence.

Somebody that my wife and I knew personally, loved and lost to AIDS was Father Peter Davis. Peter was a wonderful man, bigger than life and the pastor at the Catholic church my wife and I met at.

Part of what's made it so hard to finish this post is that it's difficult to find the words to describe just how great a man Peter was. He was down to earth, charismatic and had a great sense of humor. Most importantly; Peter advocated a Christianity based on caring for the weak in our society and centered around forgiveness. He was as much a true Christian as I've ever met.

So I was thinking about Peter on World AIDS Day and decided to do the Google thingy and see if I could find a biography or maybe his obituary to share. To my chagrin the only thing I could find was a mention on the Women for Faith and Family website on what amounts to their Priestly Hall of Shame. No doubt because of the cause of his death, but also it seems because he ministered in a flamboyant manner.

This excerpt from Peter's obituary (not available online, alas) is supposed to be taken as ironic. I read it and it made me glad I knew the man. Go figure.

From auctioning a suckling pig dinner while dressed as Miss Piggy to lighting Easter fire from a trail of gunpowder, Father Peter Davis lived and ministered with passion, humor and drama. On Dec. 28, he died at a Portland, Ore., hospice of AIDS. He was 43. He loved being a Jesuit and a priest. "I absolutely love it," he told a radio talk show host. "I do it easily. I do it naturally." [obituary by Brad Reynolds, S.J., in the National Jesuit News, April 1990]

So for no other reason that it breaks my heart that the only mention of Father Peter Davis anywhere on the world wide interwebs is by an organization run by a bunch of intemperate evil shrews, I simply want to give testament here on my little corner of the digital world that Father Peter Davis was a great man. He was the kind of man who...

...would willingly volunteer to take part in all sorts of goofy, outrageous youth group activities that may have been beneath the dignity of his position but endeared him to teens in the parish...

...would light up every time he saw a baby...

...put the ministry of the poor first and foremost as the parish goal...

...would go out of his way to tell you the worst joke you'd ever heard...

...made Christianity real and not a series of hollow rituals and motions...

...when he was diagnosed with AIDS went against the wishes of the Portland Archdiocese and, trusting his parishioners, publicly announced what he was sick with and how he had contracted it...

...meant so much to Mrs. Wormer and me that even though we were no longer Catholics, nor believers for that matter, we named our son after him.

I am lucky to have known him.

It's that every now and again - not often, but occasionally - you get to be a part of justice being done.

Do you remember when AIDS was held out by fundamentalist types as proof of God's disapproval of homosexuality? How in the 80s all evidence that AIDS wasn't exclusively a gay disease was lost on those types?

I wonder how the Pat Robertsons of the world will react to the amazing news that AIDS may actually hold the cure for lung and other types of cancer.

So how does CTMP halt cancer progression? Using biochemical analysis to analyze the expression levels of certain proteins, scientist found that overexpression of CTMP shut down not only Akt signaling but also protein synthesis, proliferation, angiogenesis and cell cycle progression of lung cancer cells while normal cells were not affected. Not only was lung cancer progression halted in 9-week old mice but the authors of the study found that cancer cells died from apoptosis.

Unlike chemotherapy which preferentially affects cancer cells but still has deleterious consequences to normal tissue after prolonged treatment, lentiviral mediated gene therapy “surgically” targets tumor cells while sparing normal tissue.

"God's Wrath" just might end one of the most horrible diseases ever to plague man providing incalculable good to the world.

If there was a God it's almost as if he goes out of his way to make the Pat Robertsons of the world look bad. Hmmm.

We are not the members of a democracy, Father. We are the members of an order.

I've mentioned many times that I don't like pope Ratzinger.

As a fallen catholic I've sort of decided that in most cases it doesn't matter what the catholic church does as long as they stay out of the rest of the world's business. Live and let live.

But condoms and AIDS prevention in Africa are very much the world's business. The pope is once again asserting a morally indefensible position and shaming the entire catholic church in the process.

I know individual catholics have nothing to do with that man assuming the throne of St. Peter. There are many, many catholics who disagree with the pope who've decided to keep their heads down and focus instead on making their communities better. I admire those people.

Nevertheless; I will not set foot in a catholic church until there's a different, less morally compromised man leading the church.