The country is continuing to reel from multiple infectious disease outbreaks in America, even as childhood vaccination rates continue to fall. Measles, cyclosporiasis, whooping cough: you don’t actually need me to go on. With RFK Jr. using his position as Secretary of HHS to further muddy the waters on vaccines and their safety, some states are going even further than the federal government. Even as states like South Carolina have fielded proposals to end religious exemptions for public school inoculations, states like Florida have attempted to go the opposite direction and simply end all school vaccine requirements by law. While that attempt has so far failed, there are state laws that mandate schools accept religious exemptions for vaccines.
And not just public schools. This mandate is written to affect private religious schools as well and the irony here is thick. For example, Florida AG James Uthmeier wrote a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops warning them that they might qualify for state scholarships and vouchers any longer. Why? Because Florida Catholic schools don’t accept religious exemptions for vaccine requirements.
As you can read for yourself in Uthmeier’s post, his letter did far more than issue that warning. It also went into great detail in explaining to a group of Catholic Bishops why they don’t have any legitimate religious reason to refuse those exemptions. Uthmeier did correctly identify that there is irony in all of this, but his targeting computer is off. The actual irony is in a government official, an Attorney General no less, telling religious elders what their own religion says, all while blatantly violating the First Amendment.
Here’s the First Amendment’s opening text, in case you need it.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If an AG can tell a religion what it means to express its faith, then there is no point to the opening of the First Amendment. They can’t. This is obvious.
But let it never be said that Florida Bishops aren’t a patient lot, I suppose. The FCCB took the time to respond to Uthmeier to demonstrate precisely their religious justification for refusing vaccination exemptions.
Florida’s Catholic schools do not accept religious exemptions for vaccines. In a letter to Attorney General James Uthmeier, made public last week, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops said Florida bishops don’t have to justify their position, but are doing so “out of respect for you and your office.”
The letter goes on to say that the position against religious exemptions for vaccines is rooted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states that, “Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good.”
A better justification for vaccinations in general this writer could not come up with. And the debunking of Uthmeier’s misguided attempt to tell Catholic leaders what they should believe is fairly easy, as well. The AG’s letter makes much of the idea that today’s vaccines include the cells of presumably newly aborted fetuses and, since the Catholic Church is very much anti-abortion, that means that they should I guess be anti-vaccine as well. Which, if you’re following along, isn’t an argument that Catholic schools should accept religious exemptions for students, but rather an argument that no Catholic anywhere should get vaccinated at all.
Except he’s wrong. Vaccines produced today, and even going back decades and decades, don’t contain any cells from newly aborted fetuses.
Vaccines do not contain fetal cells. As the American Academy of Pediatrics explains, some vaccines involve growing viruses in human cell cultures originally developed from two aborted fetuses in the 1960s: “These cell lines are still going, so no new aborted fetuses are ever needed. Purification processes filter the vaccine during production, and no fetal tissue remains.”
The Catholic Church says it’s morally permissible to receive these vaccines and that people who choose to vaccinate their children can do so with a clear conscience because, as the Florida bishops note, “the parent is not cooperating with the original immoral act.”
Additionally, in 2021, Pope Francis told people to get the COVID-19 vaccine, calling it an “act of love,” even though fetal cell lines were used to develop both the Moderna and Pfizer shots.
Does AG Uthmeier really intend to argue with the Pope, the vicar of Christ to Catholics, about what is permissible under Catholic dogma and what is not? This from the same party that absolutely adores playing religious victim when it suits their own political desires, or when they want to encroach on American secular society.
If the Uthmeier had any shame, he’d immediately apologize for disrespecting Florida Catholics, Catholic leadership, and for wildly overreaching in his attempt to carry out his state government’s stupid attempt to make everyone sicker. But he won’t. At best he’ll slink away and say no more on the topic at all.
But if we’re really lucky, there will be a conflict that pits the Florida government against the Catholic Church with the latter crying foul over an encroachment on its own religious liberty. Were I of a praying sort, that is what I would pray for.