Cathedral on Sunday night causes us to hope that Bermuda is coming together to face the challenge of AIDS. Togetherness and action over AIDS have not come easily to Bermuda nor have they come quickly. Given the extent of AIDS affliction in Bermuda, we think the response to AIDS has been scattered and slow. That seems to be changing.

However, the fact that so many people of prominence were notable by their absence on Sunday night is still an indication that AIDS is the disease which dare not speak its name. Because of that, we were extremely gratified to note that the Governor and Lady Waddington are giving a reception at Government House before that $100 a ticket fund raising concert at St. John's Church, Pembroke. The concert is to raise finds for the Sandys Rotary Club's AIDS education fund. Bermuda cannot do anything about a cure for AIDS but it can do a great deal about education and prevention.

The Anglican Cathedral service and the concert are events surrounding today as World AIDS Day. So far, 175 people have been counted as dying of AIDS in Bermuda, an alarming figure in so small a population. We say "counted'' because we think a number of Bermudians have chosen to die uncounted either here or abroad. The fact that they would make that choice is one reason to join the Rev. David Chisling who, in the sermon on Sunday night, stressed that the community must stop judging those who contract the deadly disease.

While David Chisling is absolutely correct, his message will not meet with anything close to universal favour. In the early days of AIDS Bermuda was conditioned, like some other countries, to look on AIDS as a plague affecting groups of people against whom many people were already prejudiced. And this was despite the fact that in Bermuda, compared to other countries, the number of women in the figures was high and the number of homosexuals was low.

Bermuda's drug user figures were very, very high and it was made clear to Bermuda that not much notice would be taken of them. As a result, we now have a significant number of infected women who were partners of IV drug users.

Ronald Reagan's government in the United States set the standard for stigmatising AIDS victims. That was the cheap and easy way to go. If the general public was prejudiced against AIDS sufferers, then the Government was free of pressures to do something meaningful about AIDS. Many of the churches took a similar easy course, condemnation rather than cure thus forgetting the forgiveness that was so much a part of Christ and his teaching.

Bermuda fell into the same trap of prejudice which David Chisling identifies in the title of his sermon, "Look What They've Done to My Name''. The response to AIDS was slow and grudging. We are now paying for that twice-over, with high health costs and then with lives.

We can only hope that the togetherness at the Anglican Cathedral and the events of this week indicate that things are changing.