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PENALISING
THE UNVACCINATED
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All civil
power, all
authority, comes from God, even in a democracy.
To govern is to move to their due end those under the
care of the one
governing as a sailor governs his ship by steering it to port
(Summa Theologiae
II, q. 102, a. 2). Significantly,
the word ‘government’ derives
from the Latin noun gubernaculum,
meaning a rudder. The
duty of one who
governs is, then, to
guide society,
not to dominate its members or interfere in their lives as its
modern exponents
delight in doing. A
thing’s ultimate
perfection consists in the attainment of its end (I, q. 103,
a. 1) and the end
of government is the common good of those governed.
Society & the Common Good
The common good of society is not named ‘good’ in
virtue of some perceived
social advantage but in virtue of finality (I-II,
q.
90, a. 2, ad 3). In
other words, it
has to do with man’s end in this present life subordinated
to his ultimate end,
that for which he was created, union with God in heaven. As an individual, man is imperfect, which is why he needs society and the
aid of other men. But
as a person man is
perfect, an end in
himself. Hence society
is a means, not an
end, as the foolish think. Society
exists
to enable a man to achieve fulfilment of the end for which he
was created and
those who govern it may not interfere with, or thwart, that
end.
Society and the common good
are interwoven. Each
is of nature, not of
human will. Man is
social because God
made him that way not because of some ‘social contract’ as
they think who repeat
the errors of the philosophes of the 18th century. The common good is the
increment that accrues
naturally on man’s living in society; it is immaterial, a good of
order, in which all members of society share; it suffers no diminution in being shared.
It is not to be confused with public
goods (buildings, roads, infrastructure etc., which
serve the public good),
or with the public good (government, legislature,
judiciary, etc.), which
are but instruments to be used to foster and promote it.
The common good has nothing to do with the goods of
society’s members
taken individually or collectively, their wealth or health,
save
incidentally. A pauper
shares in it
equally with one who is well-off; the sick man shares in it
equally with the
healthy. It is a
greater good than that
of any individual (II-II, q. 47, a. 10).
It is grounded in charity, the chief source of order
among men (I, q.
96, a. 4), and in general justice, which has the common good
as its proper
object (II-II, q. 58, a. 6). To
man’s
principal end all other ends that arise in society— his continuing existence, happiness in
family life,
social interaction, peace in work and recreation, his health
and wealth—are subordinate.
Modern Society’s Problem
Every
society gets the
government it deserves. The
general body
of the citizenry in modern society shares the religious
debility and ignorance
of ultimate values of those who govern them.
If there is no God, no life beyond the present, then
one must look for
the highest good among earthly goods.
This
leads modern society’s members to elevate goods which are
relative only, personal
health and the general health of the community, beyond their
station.
The Catholic
faithful
should understand this misconception and resist it because it
betrays the
common good and interferes with the personal freedoms of all.
The
SARS-Cov-2 (‘Corona’)
Virus
The Corona virus has all the
characteristics of a
plague. It disables
those who contract
it and it brings death to many, particularly the old and
infirm. Like all
plagues it is passed by contact and
so brings to human association and intercourse burdens which
stifle normal
activity.
Plagues, and the harm that attend
them, have
traditionally been regarded by the Catholic Church as a
punishment allowed by
God for the sinful behaviour of the people. The
appalling moral behaviour that
characterises modern society makes the sins in which the
members of previous
civilisations engaged seem relatively innocuous.
Put another way, if ever an age deserved a
plague it is the present one.
Predictably, members of modern society reject any
suggestion of divine
punishment for their behaviour.
Regrettably,
their attitude is supported by a calculated silence on the
topic by the vast majority
of Catholic bishops, a legacy of the ethos of accommodation
with the secular mandated
by the Second Vatican Council.
In the absence of the guidance that
members of the
Catholic episcopacy could, and should, have given to the
faithful in their
charge—a guidance that must have percolated into modern
society generally—faithful
and unfaithful alike see no alternative to reliance on
practitioners of science
and medicine to provide an answer to the demands it poses. The only answer they
offer is vaccination. But
the vaccines offered present problems.
Vaccination
with Vaccines
currently offered
The problems include—
- the
certainty that they are derived, in their manufacture or in
their testing, from
cells taken from aborted foetuses.
- the
fact that none has had the extensive testing normally prelude
to approval for
universal use,
- doubts
about their long term efficacy which seem to be increasing
with the passage of
time,
- doubts
about their side effects which include the deaths of many who
have been vaccinated,
- doubts
about whether it is reasonable to accept them when there are
active forces
abroad who seem bent on ignoring, if not suppressing,
information of the collateral
harm they bring,
- doubts
about future long term side effects in the advice given by
some doctors that
the vaccines may aggravate, rather than reduce, the effects of
the virus.
To Catholics, and to all who
understand how
critical it is not to contravene the moral law, the chief of
these concerns is
the first.
In
his encyclical
on the origin of
civil power, Diuturnum
Illud (June 29th,
1881) Pope Leo XIII repeats St Thomas’s remarks (at
n. 24) on the place
of fear in our moral lives:
“From
an overmastering
fear many fall into despair, and despair drives men to attempt
boldly to gain
what they desire…” On
the Governance of
Rulers I, 10
This
sheds light on the
motivation of those who urge vaccination with questionable
vaccines. It is fear
that has driven them to act so
precipitately and fear that presses the populace to adopt
them. The great
concern, one that has been mentioned
by the suitably qualified, is that this precipitancy may
result in harm
unforeseen in the vaccinated, a harm greater than any that the
virus may work. One
can envisage how people will turn on those
who have urged vaccination if such harm should eventuate.
The
Catholic Church’s Position
In Diuturnum
Illud Pope Leo XIII says the following about the
deference due by man to
the civil power of the state:
“There is one reason only why men should not obey
and that is when what is demanded of them is openly repugnant
to the natural or
the divine law, for it is unlawful to command, as it is to
perform, any act
which violates the law of nature or the will of God.”
[n. 15]
Because
of the moral
turpitude involved in the provenance of the vaccines on offer,
if for no other
reason, the state has no entitlement to exert compulsion on
its citizens to
undertake vaccination with them.
Nor can
it be tolerated that compulsion should be imposed by moral
means through those in
public office inciting the populace to ostracise those who
refuse
vaccination. The
principle binds all, those
engaged in critical offices such as priests, doctors, nurses,
health workers, etc.,
as well those employed in less critical ones, such as bus and
taxi
drivers. Anyone whom
the state or its
functionaries seeks to compel to take any of these vaccines is
morally entitled
to refuse to do so.
It
is a matter of immense
regret that current members of the Catholic episcopacy, far
from highlighting
the above principles to faithful and unfaithful alike as
correctly reflecting
the demands of the moral law, join with those governing in
urging vaccination.
The
bishops’ appeals to rulings
issued by Vatican Dicasteries which depart from the Church’s
constant teaching against
any cooperation with the intrinsic evil of abortion are
scandalous, as are
their assertions that such defective rulings emanate from the
magisterium of
the Church. What the
bishops impart is
not moral principle but ‘the party line’ which reduces to
this, that the
teachings of the Second Vatican Council reflect the Church’s
constant teaching. That
so many of them do not do so, but are
heretical, is demonstrable.
Division
among the Faithful
It
is remarkable the division
that exists among the Catholic faithful over the acceptability
of these
vaccines. The division
does not follow
necessarily the lines of demarcation between those who follow
the liturgy of
the Mass according to Paul VI (the novus
ordo) and those who adhere to the millennial Roman rite
(whether directly under
the explicit authorisation provided by Pius V in 1570, or
indirectly via that
allegedly provided in the Apostolic Letters Ecclesia
Dei and Summorum
Pontificum, now
purportedly abdicated by Pope Francis’s motu
proprio
Traditionis Custodes). The
division
is reflected among those of traditional inclination in the
contrasting
views of historian Roberto de Mattei and theologian Don Pietro
Leone. The Society
of
St Pius X allows there may be excuses for its priests
using one or other
of the vaccines, while certain of those within the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter oppose them categorically.
The
reason for this division
is that no
authoritative expression of
the magisterium of the Catholic Church has been issued so as
to bind the
faithful irrevocably. The
fact is
that there is no body capable of performing the task and, it
could be argued, there
has not been for upwards of 40 years.
Neither
is there in the present incumbent of the Chair of St Peter one
prepared to
exercise the Church’s supreme authority for the welfare of the
faithful.
Given
the documented
incompetence of Pope Francis; his utterance of statements
which contain material,
if not formal, heresy; his refusal to execute the duties of his office by
resolving
issues put to him formally by certain of his cardinals; his
allowing it to be
published in the Annuario
Pontificio
that he is no longer to be considered the Vicar of Christ; and
his engagement
in an explicitly schismatic act in Traditionis
Custodes, this is hardly surprising. What does not so much
surprise as beggar
belief is the attitude of the Church’s bishops who, when
almost everything
about the government and direction of the Catholic Church is
dysfunctional, conduct
themselves like characters in Hans Andersen’s fable The Emperor’s New Clothes as if all was well.
The
Insidious Effects of Vatican II
How
is this blindness to be
explained? In a paper
he gave at the
Catholic Identity Conference in the United States on October
24th,
2020, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former Apostolic Nuncio
to the United
States, said this:
“For sixty years, we have witnessed the eclipse
of the true Church by an anti-church that has
progressively appropriated
her name, occupied the Roman Curia and her Dicasteries,
Dioceses and Parishes,
Seminaries and Universities, Convents and Monasteries.
The anti-church has usurped her authority,
and its ministers wear her sacred garments; it uses her
prestige and power to
appropriate her treasures, assets, and finances.”
His
conclusion from the lessons
of recent history of the Church is eminently reasonable. He has elsewhere referred
to this entity as
the Church’s ‘counterfeit’. Because
of
the way its exponents are besotted with the resort to
democracy promoted by the
Council, it seems appropriate to label it ‘the Synodal Church
of Vatican II’. If its
existence be admitted - a ‘Church’ operating
in parallel with the true Church which hides its true identity
in the Church’s
shadow - it is reasonable to argue that when its votaries
claim they are
exercising the Church’s magisterium they are in fact
exercising the Synodal
Church’s counterfeit of that
magisterium. It is
this faux authority to
which so many appeal to justify their refusal to follow the
Church’s constant
teaching against cooperation in moral evil.
Unlike
the Synodal Church,
the Catholic Church is a divine institution.
God is its Head, God is its enlivening
Spirit, God its reason for existence.
If
there had existed a body capable of exercising the Church’s
magisterium, and
that body had done so definitively by the time when the Corona
crisis arose,
governments around the world would be on notice that no
vaccine which relied in
any way on cells stolen from an aborted child was to be
regarded by the
Catholic faithful as acceptable.
The
stifling effect on scientists and medical specialists would
have altered the focus
of their efforts as well as striking a blow against the
abortion industry.
Proposed
Division of the Populace into the Vaccinated and
Unvaccinated
It
is argued that it is
fitting to inhibit the freedoms of the unvaccinated because
they are more
likely to contract and transmit the virus than the vaccinated. But facts show that the
vaccines’ powers are
limited, that the vaccinated can become re-infected,
and that vaccination does not prevent them infecting others. Hence, the grounds
advanced are uncertain at
best. In any event the
argument it is easily
answered. Since the
use of tainted
vaccines involves a breach of moral principle, there can be no
lawful basis for
penalising those who refuse them.
There
is another matter: to
penalise those who refuse vaccination is to interfere with
their freedom of
conscience.
If
a state was to move to
divide the populace by depriving the unvaccinated of the
exercise of their
human rights, the action would fitly be compared with the
treatment accorded
the Jews by the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s.
But the moral position of those who object to
vaccination with tainted
vaccines is stronger. For
the Jews
suffered because they fell foul of Nazi ideology; but the
unvaccinated will
suffer because they have refused to engage in an immoral act.
Michael
Baker
September
14th,
2021—Exaltation of the
Holy Cross
[Reissued
with slight
amendments, June 15th, 2025—Trinity
Sunday]
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