By JOHN G. BOULET, MD
I read with great interest Fr. Brian Harrison’s critique of Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s public dissent from statements of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) that “under certain conditions it is morally acceptable for Catholics to receive medications which involved the use of cell lines from aborted infants.” [See The Wanderer, January 6, 2022, p. 4B.]
I agree with Fr. Harrison’s view of the situation, disavowing, nonetheless, any pretense of any theological background of my own, and as always attesting to the necessity for all Catholics to assent to the teachings of Holy Mother Church: that is to say, I have no “credentials” or “office” by which even to state that I am in any position to agree or to disagree, only that I find Fr. Harrison’s essay on the matter — to my walnut-sized theological brain — to be very pleasing and convincing.
I say this not because I “took the jab” in December of 2020 and one booster in January of 2021. As a physician on the front lines in the early months of the pandemic — I am a pediatric emergency physician — I acquiesced in the public pronouncements of the hierarchy that the Pfizer shot was morally acceptable; and as the husband of one and father of four, I felt that the defensive maneuver of getting vaccinated was my moral obligation to my loved ones.
There is no self-justification going on here in my agreement with Fr. Harrison; only a sense of validation that perhaps I might have needed when I saw, belatedly, Bishop Schneider’s declarations that I might have offended God by taking the “jab.”
The Pfizer vaccine, of course, having decades ago begun with at least some lab work, as I understand it, occurring on cell lines derived from a fetus whose life was snuffed out decades earlier, was pronounced as acceptable. We who received the subsequent vaccine that is — we are told — not made from ongoing use of fetal cell lines, incur no culpability in the ongoing tragedy of 40-million plus abortions worldwide yearly. We vaccine recipients have engaged in a sort of passive, unwilling, remote material “cooperation” — reluctant acquiescence in things we cannot change — the decades-ago death of a preborn baby.
We remain blameless to the degree to which we hope and pray for an end to all directly procured abortions; and speak out and vote in accord with our pro-life convictions that all pharmaceutical researchers going forward are to cease to participate in any ongoing destruction of preborn babies’ lives. I am writing to add what I believe to be perhaps an added perspective to the whole matter of “material cooperation with evil.”
I take as my point of departure for discussion chapter 8 of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, specifically in reference to the matter of whether it is licit for Christians to consume food offered to idols and then brought to the general marketplace for sale. I believe that this passage is worth an extended quoting.
St. Paul says: “. . . as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one” (1 Cor. 8:4). And, further, “However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through being hitherto accustomed to idols, eat food as really offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. . . . Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if any one sees you, a man of knowledge, at table in an idol’s temple, might he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ dies. Thus, sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.
“Therefore, if food is a cause of my brother’s falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall” (1 Cor. 8: 7-13).
To wit: substitute a consideration of aborted babies for that of meat offered to idols; for indeed abortion has been mockingly pronounced to be a “sacrament” to pagans who worship at the temple of so-called “reason” and utilitarian ethics or “power” (see my previous essay regarding “Power,” published January 13, 2022, page 8A).
I believe that in the matter at hand — that of the liceity of receiving the Pfizer vaccine, or similar vaccines that are not dependent upon ongoing destruction of unborn babies, or upon the cold-blooded ongoing utilization of fetal cell lines that have been granted a sort of “immortality” in the lab — and without intending any disrespect for Bishop Schneider, I wonder whether Bishop Schneider’s line of reasoning might, by “reductio ad absurdum,” extend to all matters of day-to-day living.
Consider, for example, the simple matter of a trip to the local grocery. Assuredly, the vast majority of large companies in America engage in “woke” business practices. Publix, the 1,200-store chain of groceries in the Southeastern U.S. where my wife and I shop the most, every year sponsors its cashiers requesting of the customer at the checkout whether we want to give any money to the March of Dimes, which I understand supports measures that are anti-life. Of course, I decline to contribute when asked, and sometimes will mention to the cashier my view that the March of Dimes is a pro-abortion organization.
Any online search for corporate sponsors of Planned Parenthood yields a plethora of major U.S. companies; lifesitenews.com is one source of this sort of information. We can search our local Publix grocery store high and low, and doubtlessly be unable to buy any items that are not made by leftist-run corporations.
I would ask of Bishop Schneider whether he believes that simply by my shopping at Publix at all, I might be aiding and abetting ongoing anti-life efforts because of Publix’s seemingly uncritical implicit approbation for the work of an organization such as March of Dimes.
I would ask: How many of the items at the grocery store are offered by companies which support Planned Parenthood, or other nefarious anti-life activities all around the world?
Indeed, the Apple computer that I am using to type this essay arguably is also a fund-raiser for anti-Christian activities, even if only by enriching the owners of Apple stock.
All of the major corporations in America, it seems, are tools in the hands of leftists bent upon the ultimate destruction of Christian civilization. And we Catholics who participate in the larger economy of the United States and of the world at large, including most especially the atheist Chinese government — are we thereby culpable in the evils that these organizations inflict upon humanity?
Of course, then, St. Paul would teach that our participation in commerce with organizations that are flaunting their anti-Christian values, arguably should cease.
For example, when several years ago Target Stores openly flaunted their commitment to unisex bathrooms that allow pedophile men, especially, to enter girls’ bathrooms, my wife and I boycotted Target; we wanted to participate in the movement to harm Target, and Target’s stock price did go down for some time as a result of the nationwide effort not to pinch incense to this particular “Caesar.” Further, in good conscience, we wished to avoid any scandal to any of our family and friends who might inquire of us as to whether we “supported” Target by shopping there — similar to St. Paul’s admonition that eating meat offered to idols that is then sold in the general marketplace might prove to be a scandal to the “weak” who might not realize that we defy the LGBTQ agenda.
That agenda was placed at the forefront of the American conscience by Target’s corporate policy to jab a finger in the eye of traditionally minded Americans, meaning Americans who still hold to the view that a man is a man, and a woman is a woman. When, several years hence no one seems to remember or care much about the controversy of Target’s bathroom policy — which remains in effect, I understand — we do not fear giving scandal to people by shopping there, though we do our best not to do so.
We have come to realize, of course, that shopping anywhere in this mostly pagan nation of ours is to participate in webs of organizations whose nefarious purposes include not only the destruction of Christian civilization, but ultimately the erasure from collective and individual memories even any recollection that there ever was such a thing as Christianity, or that there ever was a Person named Jesus Christ whose followers accepted Him as the very Son of God.
The “memory hole” of 1984 is active; and the left in this country would love for nothing so much as that, in a hundred years, or two hundred at most, there should be no memory by anyone, anywhere that Jesus Christ ever existed! All traces of Christianity will be erased if these people have their way.
In some sense, then — short of living as self-sufficient hermits in the wilderness, unconnected to the “grid,” never partaking in the larger society — we are “stuck.” We have nowhere else to go. Am I exaggerating to think that the larger implications of Bishop Schneider’s admonitions against the “jab” extend to all manner of day-to-day living that affect our ability simply to live?
Might not Bishop Schneider, then, reconsider opposition to the CDF’s recommendation of acceptability of the ethically derived Covid vaccines? That, in the matter of simply providing for our families some measure of reasonable security against a disease which — at least in the early phases of the pandemic — seemed to hold out major threats to our lives, we were reasonable to accept to CDF’s judgment on the matter? And, judging best our own individual life circumstances — in my case, the sole provider for my family, and highly skilled medical professional, by the grace of God able to help others in dire circumstances — decide for ourselves whether to “take the jab” that the CDF deemed morally acceptable?
I leave aside here for now consideration as to the controversies regarding the efficacy of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and quercetin. Given that these remedies were effectively banned from use in this country by the Deep State, I address here only the matter before us: that of Bishop Schneider’s own heartfelt warning against taking vaccines whose origins some decades ago were mired in the utilization of illicit fetal cell lines.
And for one last parting thought, consider, too, this: If participation in economic activities of an overtly nefarious cause is seen as approbation by us of the organization’s evil activities — such as when Target Stores flaunted its LGBTQ agenda — then we are in fact obliged to abstain. I have in mind here the previously harmless activity — decades ago — of buying Girl Scout cookies.
My wife and I, whenever presented with the opportunity to buy Girl Scout cookies, now take the occasion to try to educate the little sales-girl as to the fact that the organization for which she is raising money is engaged in activities that are opposed to true Christian living, and that she should address the matter with her parents, and that she should consider leaving the Girl Scouts for other organizations.
We do not go into great detail with these children, only to turn on a light bulb in their brains that there might be something wrong with the Girl Scouts, and to help these girls realize that not all organizations that purport to be “humanitarian” and “good” are in fact so. Not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the Kingdom. And, “Therefore, if food is a cause of my brother’s falling, I will never eat [Girl Scout Cookies], lest I cause my brother to fall” (1 Cor. 8:13, with a “gloss,” substituting Girl Scout Cookies for “meat”).
And, so, dear readers, in the matter of whether to take one of the licit vaccines against Covid — quite apart from any consideration of their actual necessity in your own individual cases, and apart from any consideration of their efficacy, or lack thereof — we really must come down on the side of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
When the Church teaches about remote material “cooperation,” I believe a better term in English might be “acquiescence.” The Church correctly rules that we who hope to benefit from the Covid vaccine might do so in good conscience, acquiescing in what is presented to us as the only viable option to try to protect ourselves and our families — again, removing from consideration ivermectin and other “prohibited” proposed remedies.
And as for the matter potentially of giving scandal to any among us who might be “weak,” as St. Paul uses the term, believing that by taking the vaccine we are somehow worshiping an idol, I offer this olive branch:
“Give us the benefit of the doubt, dear brethren in Christ; do not think of us that we consciously are supporting the means by which these vaccines reached the marketplace, and that we acquiesce to their provenance only in sadness over evils committed decades ago, while also advocating for such evils to be extirpated from all future research. But realize instead that we abhor all such things, such as worshiping at the temple of abortion — surely, dear brethren in Christ, you cannot believe that we condone worshiping idols? The Church’s highest teaching office has assured us that we give no approbation to the derivation of these vaccines. Surely, you can do so, too.”
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