A silent scandal: Catholic schools promoting morally unacceptable vaccines

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 24, 2015

In at least two American dioceses, the parents of children attending Catholic schools are being told that they must have their children vaccinated, regardless of their moral qualms about vaccines derived from the cells of aborted children. This is an injustice to parents who are determined to bear witness to their pro-life convictions, and a serious misreading of an important Vatican document.

In Birmingham, Alabama, for instance, a diocesan school informed families:

Diocesan policy has changed for the 2015-2016 school year. Due to the fact that the Catholic Church does not object to any of these required immunizations, religious exemptions will no longer be accepted in lieu of the certificate of immunization.*

That statement is simply wrong. The Catholic Church does object to the required immunizations, insofar as the vaccines are derived from fetal tissue. In a statement released in 2005, the Pontifical Academy for Life said that Catholics have “a moral duty to continue to fight and to employ every lawful means in order to make life difficult for the pharmaceutical industries which act unscrupulously and unethically.”

It is true that the Pontifical Academy went on to say that parents could be justified in allowing vaccinations “on a temporary basis” if there was no other way to protect their children from serious disease. However, the Vatican document said that parents who chose vaccination would have a moral duty “to make a conscientious objection with regard to those which have moral problems.”

The 2005 Vatican document concludes that parents may vaccinate their children. Nowhere does it suggest that they must vaccinate their children. Church officials who now invoke the authority of the Vatican to justify compulsory vaccination are ignoring the central thrust of that document.

When parents are forced to inoculate their children with vaccines derived from morally unacceptable sources, the Pontifical Academy argued, the result is “moral coercion of the parents, who are forced to act against their conscience or otherwise to put the health of their children and of the population as a whole at risk.” Now Catholic schools are participating in that “moral coercion.”

”This is an unjust alternative choice, which must be eliminated as soon as possible,” the Vatican document concluded. By ordering parents to accept vaccination—and saying nothing about the moral obligation to protest and to press for development of alternative vaccines—diocesan officials are working against the Vatican instructions, encouraging passive acceptance of what should be recognized as unacceptable.

*- Update: After a group of parents brought their concerns to the attention of Bishop Robert Baker, the Birmigham diocese changed its policy. The diocese now allows for a conscientious objection to vaccination.