It was August 18, 2021. I was at a coffee shop in Paso Robles, California. I had kids in college who feared that their institutions might kick them out if they didn’t get one of the experimental mRNA-based Covid “vaccines.” They didn’t need the shots for many reasons, from their healthy age and lack of any co-morbidities to the most important fact of all: our entire family had gotten and fought through Covid and we all had antibodies, easily demonstrated by blood tests we offered to provide from their doctors to the schools. Worse, there were legitimate fears of myocarditis and pericarditis among young people from the Covid shots. I knew of a 19-year-old girl locally whose heart was so immediately damaged that she required a heart transplant. (Yes, seriously. I wrote about it at the time. I worked for four years in organ transplantation.)
In addition to seeking medical exemptions, my kids appealed to an even more important right as Catholic Christians, a sacred right: conscientious exemption. This form of moral-religious exemption is considered more powerful and constitutionally protected in America than medical appeals. In fact, one of my kids in the summer of 2021 was told just that by the school’s powers-that-be. Students would be better served by filing religious exemptions.
But then the news hit that August 18. I read on my phone that morning that the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, head of the world’s largest body of Christians, stated that Catholics not only should get the shot but had a moral duty to do so. He said that “getting vaccinated is an act of love” and “our choice to get vaccinated affects others.”
As happened with seemingly every Francis statement, a debate then erupted over whether Francis in these remarks—and others prior and yet to come—had said that Catholics were “morally obligated” to get vaccinated or had a “moral responsibility.” And was he speaking of a “moral obligation” to “healthcare” generally or the vax specifically?
Yes, you know the drill. How exhausting it always was. Maddening Francis statements like this would be made to the media and created some of the most outrageous moments of his papacy. Every time that Francis grabbed a mic on an airplane we braced ourselves for the tumult to come, not knowing which centuries-old Catholic teaching might suddenly come into question.
Indeed, in a January 10, 2021 interview on Italy’s TG5 news program, Francis had said: “I believe that morally everyone must take the vaccine. It is the moral choice because it is about your life but also the lives of others.” Between that remark in January and what he had just said in August, who could blame the liberals at NPR and elsewhere for headlines reporting that the pope said that Catholics had a “moral obligation” to get vaxxed?
As for Catholics who disagreed and pleaded for exemptions, Francis said: “I do not understand why some say that this could be a dangerous vaccine. If the doctors are presenting this to you as a thing that will go well and doesn’t have any special dangers, why not take it?” The pope insisted: “There is a suicidal denialism that I would not know how to explain, but today people must take the vaccine.”
They “must.”
Of course, many doctors disagreed with that. They wrote medical exemption claims for their patients. My good friend Tom (I wrote about his case just after the Francis statement) had such a physician’s statement because his Covid antibodies were sky high after nearly dying from the virus. His physician said the shot was not only unnecessary for him but could be dangerous. But most HR departments refused such claims, demanding a one-size-fits-all approach. And if Tom sought the added backing of a religious/conscience appeal as a Catholic, he would have no recourse there, especially given that the pope stressed the moral imperative that he get the shot.
For Francis, his words served as a universal checkmate against Catholics seeking exemptions, not to mention for the pope-splainers, who yet again tried to parse his words. There was no denying what Francis was saying at this point. We could re-translate his statements all we wanted. He had obliterated our religious appeals, plain and simple. Every pro-vax liberal Catholic in America, and every pro-vax priest, bishop, cardinal, hospital, university, health organization, charity, or whatever, had enough from Francis to inform any Catholic making a religious appeal that the pope himself was saying no way.
Get the shot! Do you not love your neighbor?
Francis’ Covid remarks were some of the worst and most shockingly ill-informed statements of a 12-year papacy of chaos and confusion that left many of us pope-splainers and defenders frustrated, angry, exhausted. I went through that painful process with my many writings on Covid, here at Crisis (here and here) and especially at The American Spectator, of which I’m the editor. (I wrote so often on the subject because of my medical background. I did work in immunology for the organ-transplant team at the University of Pittsburgh under Dr. Thomas Starzl, the man who pioneered the procedure. And I most certainly don’t oppose vaccination.) Here at Crisis, our editor Eric Sammons (among other writers) wrote about it frequently (here and here), including a piece that I urge readers to consult again, “Have You No Decency, Holy Father?” in which Eric reviewed the distasteful Francis comments on Cardinal Raymond Burke’s near-death from Covid.
Returning to the point: The pope said that we had a moral duty to get vaccinated. And with that, Mr. and Mrs. Catholic, your religious appeals were dead. Alas, take the shot and accept the moral and physical consequences, or lose your job, get kicked out of the military, get booted from your college. Francis labeled you a moral failure and threat to your fellow man. You were not loving your neighbor.
Of course, it is crucial to remember that Francis’ position flatly contradicted his own Vatican and groups like the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Unlike Francis, those groups had long carefully studied these moral concepts in great depth. They were staffed by individuals with advanced degrees in bioethics, philosophy, medicine, developed over the course of decades in conferences and peer-reviewed papers. In fact, I had crafted religious appeals for my children based on some of these. Here’s the July 2021 statement that I wrote for one of my kids, which was added to the medical appeal we submitted:
My religious appeal is a simple and straightforward conscientious objection. My choice to not be vaccinated against my will is a matter of conscience and free will. I am Roman Catholic, and my Church backs this. In December 2020, the Vatican released an official statement that affirms: “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation.” That document says that vaccination “must be voluntary.” The Vatican says that forced vaccination is a violation of freedom of religion and conscience. This is officially affirmed by the American bishops. My Church firmly stands behind this. This is my sincerely held religious belief. It is an ethical-moral-religious objection.
That was what we sent into the college. But alas, boom, then came Francis’ statements. I told my kids: “The pope himself just pulled the plug on your religious exemption.”
Of course, he pulled the plug not only for my kids. Millions of Catholics worldwide were sunk with no recourse, no protection. Over subsequent months, I got numerous emails from Catholics who felt they had no hope. I heard horror stories from those who lost jobs. When they filed appeals based on their conscience and faith, they were dismissed by an HR bully who informed them that their own pope said they had a moral duty to get the shot. Their pope undermined them.
It must be underscored here that the pope’s top American enforcer in this campaign was Cardinal Blase Cupich. Immediately upon Francis’ August 17 statement, Cupich and his Chicago diocese—as well as the diocese of Philadelphia—sprang into action. This was captured in a sad headline by the National Catholic Register: “Chicago, Philly Archdioceses Tell Priests Not to Provide Religious Exemption from COVID Vaccines.” The article stated:
The archdioceses of both Philadelphia and Chicago have instructed their clerics not to assist parishioners seeking religious exemptions from receiving COVID-19 vaccines.
An Aug. 18 letter from Fr. Michael Hennelly, Vicar for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said that neither the archdiocese “nor its parishes are able to provide support, written or otherwise, for individuals seeking an exemption from the vaccine on religious grounds.”
“Parishioners surely can determine their own actions, but it would be important to clarify that they cannot use the teaching of the church to justify such decisions, which in their essence, are a rejection of the church’s authentic moral teaching regarding Covid vaccines,” the cardinal wrote.
“There is no basis in Catholic moral teaching for rejecting vaccine mandates on religious grounds,” he said.
Cardinal Cupich wrote that “In fact, the Holy See has clearly stated that receiving the Covid vaccine is unquestionably in keeping with Catholic faith, and even has urged people to be vaccinated as an act of charity and out of respect for the common good in fighting the pandemic. Our moral teaching, while ever respectful of the rights of individuals, always keeps in focus the common good. Not doing so distorts Catholic doctrine.”
Cupich went further. He pressured the bishops and National Catholic Bioethics Center to go against their informed understanding of the Church teaching on conscience. He went to battle against a July 2 NCBC statement that no Catholic should have opposed. That NCBC statement noted that it “does not endorse mandated COVID-19 immunization,” citing the December 2020 statement from the pope’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stating that “practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”
