I challenge any Catholic, active, fallen away, lay, clerical, or a religious brother or sister to point out where vaccines go against Catholic teachings.
Yes, one’s conscience may trump all, but, if one has received vaccinations before Covid, where was their conscience then?
I can claim a personally held religious belief that is not in line with the religion to which I belong while ignoring my church the same way a student objects to having to take a test because it “goes against my religion”.
There are some conservative Catholic bishops who ignore their own religion for the sake of political favor, and many of these may have to resort to selling “indulgences” in the form of religious exemptions to the covid vaccine.
Having scared the bejeebies out of the poor in the opening centuries of Cristianity who seemed to be held to a higher requirement to follow religious teaching to avoid eternal damnation than the ruling class, the church assuaged some of the fears of the people that they might inadvertently condemn themselves to hell by omission, commission, or an uninformed action, by offering a way to avoid punishment in hell, or shortening the time they would need to be in purgatory, a mini-hell, to burn off any sins that are clinging to their souls.
An Indulgence, according to the Catholic Catechism is
” a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints.”
Sin is like a grass stain. You can wash the garment until it is clean, but there is always some residual traces of the stain, no matter how many times you might wash it. God, apparently, in spite of his omnipotence, may forgive your sins, but just can’t get the whole stain out, so it’s off to purgatory so you can enter the celestial starship Enterprise after you have been decontaminated from even the slightest foreign microbe you might have picked up.
Originally, you could get indulgences by performing an action to receive it, usually altruistic and often inconvenient, but free of charge. For convenience, a prescribed prayer would do, or a pilgrimage, all free of any charge.
In the years before the Middle Ages, this was very beneficial to the community as to get an undulgence people would engage in the Corporal Works of Mercy (Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the prisoners, bury the dead, and give alms to the poor) thus addressing social needs like churches are supposed to do.
However, soulless clergy found a way to make money by selling indulgences for cash to naïve peasants, and could charge whatever would benefit their own pockets.
Liken it to the Televangelists who promise God’s love and eternal reward if you send in a “love gift”, money. The more money, the better your are with God.
By the 16th Century this corrupt practice was getting out of hand, and it worsened when the pope, in collecting the funds needed to remodel and improve St. Perters Basilica in the Vatican, adopted the selling of indulgences scheme church wide.
In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales the Pardoner exemplifies the duplicity when it came to church teaching.
He begins his tale boasting how he has been able to fool people with his spiel, false credentials, and use of some Latin words, follows this by stating the theme of his tale is “money is the root of all evil” and, after telling the tale to illustrate this, ends his it by asking his fellow travelers for silver and gold to have their sins totally cleansed.
Donations, theoretically in proportion to a person’s finances, called for a good advertising campaign, and like any consumer products were pushed with clever slogans and sales pitches.
I am sure “Buy or Fry” would have been applicable
The priest with the indulgence business in Germany was Fr. Johann Tetzel, credited with the saying, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs,” and whose preserved coffer is the size of an average coffin. It was this priest’s corrupt practices that got Martin Luther to nail his the 95 Theses on the church door hoping to start a rational discussion, but accidentally beginning the Protestant Reformation.
A internal papal investigation found Tetzel innocent of any wrongdoing as the money kept rolling in, but did elicit an empty statement that the Church has never taught that money remits sin. However, the selling of indulgences continued as neither pope nor bishops stopped the lucrative practice.
This practice eventually was officially ended and forbidden, but it wasn’t until Pope Paul VI that the whole indulgence thing was straightened out and returned to original practice that extra points could be gained by works of mercy.
Oh, and the Protestant Reformation played a big role in this.
Perhaps, now, however, indulgences and the official paper that said you paid for it may have come back with a new form and purpose.
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They did not use aborted fetuses, so, the Catholic Church’s stand that Catholics can reject certain vaccines that are developed or produced using aborted fetus tissue does not apply.
COVID-19 vaccines are, therefore, morally acceptable and there is a “duty,” “responsibility” or “obligation” to be vaccinated, mainly because it would be for the good of the neighbors Jesus told His followers to love.
Yet, some Catholics continue to claim the vaccines are morally compromised and that is grounds for a religious exemption, and they are supported in their objections by some bishops who have acknowldeged that a person’s conscience can cancel out church teachings and who actively support Catholics in requesting “religious” exemptions from vaccine requirements on the basis of Catholic teaching on the primacy of conscience.
The often quoted line from St. Augustine, “Conscience is a law of the mind” leaves out the further requirement that it must be an informed conscience. Otherwise, it’s just a notion.
Where info is offered it cannot be ignored while claiming a decision is based on conscience while ignoring that the conscience must be INFORMED.
As a Gay man, my conscience has told me that my being so, whether active or not, is perfectly fine, but the same church authorities who support the rejection of vaccines as a matter of conscience because it is correct to do so and that decision must be respected have turned me away because my conscience does not match what they believe.
Catholic organizations who encourage people to get religious exemptions have made templates available making it easier to explain your conscience.
One such template begins,
“To Whom It May Concern,
I am a baptized Catholic seeking an exemption from an immunization requirement. This letter explains how the Catholic Church’s teachings may lead individual Catholics, including me, [name], to decline certain vaccines.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that a person may be required to refuse a medical intervention, including a vaccination, if his or her informed conscience comes to this sure judgment. While the Catholic Church does not prohibit the use of any vaccine, and generally encourages the use of safe and effective vaccines as a way of safeguarding personal and public health, the following authoritative Church teachings demonstrate the principled religious basis on which a Catholic may determine that he or she ought to refuse certain vaccines”
It goes on to explain,
“vaccination is not a universal obligation and a person must obey the judgment of his or her own informed and certain conscience. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs that following one’s conscience is following Christ Himself.
Ending with,
“Therefore, if a Catholic comes to an informed and sure judgment in conscience that he or she should not receive a vaccine, then the Catholic Church requires that the person follow this certain judgment of conscience and refuse the vaccine.”
Note in the sections cited, it is not merely conscience, but informed conscience, and some of that information that could inform the conscience should be given by the bishops who support the ban by agreeing with the uninformed that Pfizer and Moderna are based on aborted fetuses without correcting their error.
A pastor is to lead and encourage, and to correct any misinformation so that one’s conscience can be an informed one.
When students objected to taking a test on religious grounds, I would require them to bring the relevant teaching from their church to this effect in the morning, and as none could, they would have to take the test, but not the same as the other kids, but a modified one so it would not be that they bought another night to study that the others did not have.
As things begin to get dicey with the meeting of religion and politics, template letters just might not cut it, and as the Catholic bishops have become more supporters of Trump than Christ, they may find themselves in a position to have to write a personal, non-template letter. This will cut into their time and scheduled activities, so the obvious thing would be to require a donation to get such a letter and pay a penalty for th inconvenience of having to write it, or at least sign one written by a secretary, and, once again, we will need a medical Martin Luther to make this practice stop once begun.
And you know, as well as I do, that if clergy see a way to make money, they will use it. and, just as with indulgences, there is money to be made.
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