Catholic Replies
Q. Why are there conflicting readings on how Jesus called His disciples? In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus saw Simon and his brother Andrew out at sea and told them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” In John, when John the Baptist saw Jesus at a distance, He said, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” After this, two of his disciples left to follow Jesus. One of them was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, who told Peter, “We have found the Messiah.” Why is John’s Gospel different? — B.H., Minnesota.
A. Perhaps because John was an eyewitness to the event, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke got their information from other sources. John says that Andrew was one of the two disciples standing with the Baptist when he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” and the other unidentified disciple was surely John himself. Note, too, that the accounts in the Synoptic Gospels are not all exactly the same. Matthew and Mark are the same — they have Jesus walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and calling Peter and Andrew, and James and John. Luke, however, has Jesus put out to sea in Simon’s boat, address the crowd on the shore, enable the disciples to catch a great number of fish, and then call Simon Peter to follow Him and become a fisher of men. There is no mention of Andrew.
The point is that when you have four different persons reporting on the same event, you are likely to get four different perspectives, each one stressing something he considers important. It was the calling of the disciples that mattered, not the exact way it took place.
Take as another example the number of angels who were present after the Resurrection. Matthew and Mark say that there was one angel who appeared to the women at the tomb, but Luke and John say that there were two angels who appeared to Mary Magdalene and the other women. Does it matter which version is correct? No, the important thing is that heavenly visitors were at the tomb after the Resurrection of the Lord.
Or consider the seven last words spoken by Jesus on the cross. Matthew and Mark mention only one word (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), Luke mentions three (“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” / “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” / “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”), and John gives us the other three (“Woman, behold, your son . . . behold, your mother” / “I thirst” / “It is finished”).
Why didn’t each evangelist mention all seven words? Well, Matthew, Mark, and Luke were not there and so relied on the testimony of others. John was at the foot of the cross and, writing some years after his colleagues, apparently saw no need to repeat what they had said, but he did want to fill in the gaps in the record and so recorded three additional sayings.
Q. Wanting to know your thoughts on the various COVID vaccines. Is it ethical to receive them? — J.C., North Carolina.
A. The question arises because some COVID vaccines have their origins in the fetal cells of a baby who was aborted in the Netherlands in 1972. The cell line is known as HEK293. In a statement issued in December 2020 by the U.S. Bishops’ Committees on Doctrine and Pro-Life Activities (Moral Considerations Regarding the New COVID-19 Vaccines), the bishops said three things about the latest COVID vaccines:
“First, at least at present, there is no available alternative vaccine that has absolutely no connection to abortion. Second, the risk to public health is very serious, as evidenced by the millions of infections worldwide and hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States of America alone. Third, in many cases the most important effect of vaccination may not be the protection it offers to the person who receives the vaccination, who may be of relatively robust health and unlikely to be seriously affected by the disease. Rather, the more important effect may be the protection it offers to those who are much more likely to be seriously stricken by the disease if they were to contract it through exposure to those infected.”
Of the three vaccines currently or soon to be available, the statement said, those from Pfizer and Moderna did not use “morally compromised cell lines in the design, development, or production of the vaccine. A confirmatory test, however, employing the commonly used, but morally compromised HEK293, was performed on both vaccines. Thus, while neither vaccine is completely free from any connection to morally compromised cell lines, in this case the connection is very remote from the initial evil of abortion.”
The statement goes on to say that “the AstraZeneca vaccine is more morally compromised. The HEK293 cell line was used in the design, development, and production stages of that vaccine, as well as for confirmatory testing….The AstraZeneca vaccine should be avoided if there are alternatives available.”
So, can a Catholic take either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine? Yes, said the bishops, explaining:
“In view of the gravity of the current pandemic and the lack of availability of alternative vaccines, the reasons to accept the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are sufficiently serious to justify their use, despite their remote connection to morally compromised cell lines. In addition, receiving the COVID-19 vaccine ought to be understood as an act of charity toward the other members of our community. In this way, being vaccinated safely against COVID-19 should be considered an act of love of our neighbor and part of our moral responsibility for the common good.”
However, the bishops said that taking the vaccine should not “obscure the gravely immoral nature” of abortion, nor cause us to become complacent about opposing this evil, nor to become desensitized to the subsequent use of fetal cells in research. They said that Catholics and men and women of goodwill must contact the pharmaceutical companies “to insure the development, production, and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine without any connection to abortion and to help change what has become the standard practice in much medical research, a practice in which certain morally compromised cell lines are routinely used as a matter of course, with no consideration of the moral questions concerning the origin of those cell lines.”
Can a Catholic refuse to take the vaccine? Yes, said the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in December 2020. It said that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and, therefore, it must be voluntary. In any case, from the ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also the duty to pursue the common good.”
Therefore, said the CDF, those who refuse to get vaccinated must take all necessary precautions to avoid “becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical and other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable.”
Fr. Tad Pacholczyk is director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. He has said that it would not be unethical to take a vaccine derived from aborted human cell lines “for a serious reason and in the absence of alternatives.” He also pointed out that using such a vaccine has less connection to abortion than doing business with companies that donate money directly or indirectly to Planned Parenthood, including Nike, Heinz, Energizer, Clorox, Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, CVS, Walmart, Liberty Mutual, Aetna, and hundreds of others.
“To put it another way,” he said, “each time we purchase Tostitos/Frito Lay products, fill our gas tank with ExxonMobile gas, or buy Pepsi products, our contribution to the continuation of abortion is significantly more direct than when we receive a vaccine manufactured with abortion-derived fetal cell lines. Each of these large consumer-oriented corporations makes large financial donations to Planned Parenthood, which promotes and directly performs the killing of unborn children in the United States and other countries.”
Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, who acknowledges that “I’m in the minority” on the matter, has urged rejection of “any vaccine that uses the remains of aborted children in research, testing, development, or production.”
