This Pastor’s Note is directed especially towards those among us who are convinced that it is immoral to take a COVID-19 vaccine, the assurances of the Church’s Magisterium notwithstanding.
Such a position is succinctly found in the words of Bishop Athanasius Schneider, suffragan Catholic Bishop of Kazakhstan, who is unalterably opposed to the COVID vaccines:
[Taking this vaccine] is in itself immoral and not pleasing to God. We can never do something consciously that will displease God. We have to be ready as Christians to lose all temporal advantages and even our short temporal life, rather than offend God and participate in the chain of criminal acts, of which the manufacturing and testing of abortion tainted vaccines is also a part.
… The use of abortion tainted vaccines brings us to a close collaboration with the fetal industry and their products, a use which is because of this proximity immoral, and furthermore it gives a scandal since by such a use we are de facto supporting that immoral industry.
Because of Bishop Schneider’s good reputation as an orthodox bishop and a man of integrity, these words can seem, at first glance, unassailable to earnest Catholics who want to do the right thing. For that reason, I recommend a lengthy essay which appeared in the January 6th, 2022 edition of
The Wanderer (hardly a liberal Catholic voice on the scene) by Fr. Brian Harrison, OS, who also has a good reputation as an orthodox priest and a man of integrity. The essay is entitled:
Bishop Schneider’s Critique Of Church Teaching on COVID-19 Vaccines. It is a dense and well-argued rebuttal of Bishop Schneider’s position. Furthermore, it explains the larger context of what the Church’s Magisterium means by distinguishing between direct, proximate material co-operation in sin and remote and passive material co-operation.
Fr. Harrison points out first of all that Bishop Schneider, in taking an unduly strict position, is actually rejecting the conclusions of the Church’s Magisterium which require the religious assent of mind and will of every believing Catholic. He is rejecting not only the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (CDF)
Note on the morality of using some antiCOVID-19 vaccines, December 21st, 2020 approved and ordered by Pope Francis, but also the CDF’s
Instruction Dignitas Personae, September 8th, 2008, approved and ordered by Pope Benedict XVI as well. These two CDF documents teach that, under certain conditions, it is morally acceptable for Catholics to receive medications which involved the use of cell lines from aborted infants in their development process. Furthermore, these two CDF documents are
“fully in line with the traditional moral theology taught in all seminaries long before Vatican II, which is also reflected in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”
Fr. Harrison then goes on to cite a number of approved Catholic moral theologians, who tend to be on the stricter side of things, in refutation of Bishop Schneider’s absolutist position. For example:
While Bishop Schneider is telling devout Catholics they must sacrifice even their lives, if necessary, rather than ‘take the jab,’ the great Spanish Thomist theologian Antonio Royo Marin is not nearly so severe. He teaches that material co-operation in even ‘a grave injustice’ against the human person (which would include abortion) can be justified in order to avoid ‘very grave harm’ to oneself or one’s family, such as ‘loss of employment, the complete ruin of one’s business.’
...Therefore it stands to reason that since the traditional theologians we have cited allow even that kind of material co-operation that helps cause an abortion, much more would they allow (if asked) the kind of after-event co-operation that in no way does so. No doubt this point was taken into account by the CDF in coming to its successive decisions that receiving the abortion-tainted vaccines under certain conditions is in accordance with the Church’s existing doctrine and tradition.
… It needs to be said, in conclusion, with all due respect to Bishop Schneider, that his absolute opposition to any acceptance of the current anti-COVID vaccines is seriously mistaken and pastorally harmful. Because of his great prestige among devout traditional Catholics, his undue rigorism is contributing to, or reinforcing, unwarranted and unjustified moral scruples in the minds of many of them, and leading them into dissent from magisterial teaching that is perfectly orthodox and based on sound, traditional Catholic moral theology. Tragically, this is making some of these faithful feel obliged in conscience to sacrifice their jobs, homes, and livelihood rather than accept the vaccine, thereby unnecessarily causing great hardship for themselves and their families.
It is fervently to be hoped that Bishop Schneider will revise his position, and that if he does not, other Catholics, at least, will follow the Church’s authentic teaching rather than His Excellency’s dissident personal opinions.
Mary Immaculate of Lourdes is Newton and Needham Massachusetts' oldest Roman Catholic Parish. Founded as Saint Mary Parish in 1870, it was renamed "Mary Immaculate of Lourdes" when the new Church was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, 1910. In addition to being a regular territorial parish of the Archdiocese of Boston it is also a "Mission Parish" since 2007 with a special apostolate for the Traditional Latin Mass (1962 Missal).
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