Mandatory vaccinations vs moral objection

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Sigh…

As I have been unable to reply until this evening due to forum rules I have been forced to sit back and “listen” to the “discussion” that has developed.

I’m disappointed in the way this has turned into yet another polarized discussion with the lives and well being of our children in the middle of a narcissistic debate that would be found in an ugly divorce.

That is precisely what this entire idea of mandating vaccines is: an abusive relationship ruled by a narcissist (those mandating the vaccines).

As I see it, the theology for the Church to allow vaccines in spite of their origin is correct. However, it’s foundation is flawed. It is based on the premises that:
  1. Vaccines do what they claim
  2. No other option exists
  3. Death is an imminent/predictable outcome
  4. The parent strongly protests/advocates against human cell lines
The only situation where this applies in truth is possibly oppressed and resource-stripped parents in developing countries where access to sanitation, hygiene, and healthcare make any illness dangerous and human rights are not secure.

Taking into consideration that Catholicism is a global religion this does not mean that we, as first world parents get to vaccinate or kids without a care and with God’s grace.

Again, it is like justifying abortion for the cases of rape. You are discussing the morality of your first world situation and justifying your decisions on the data/reasoning from people in the worst situations.

To all involved in this discussion I am interested in the MORALITY of MANDATED vaccination requested by the Catholic Church with the fourth point made above being where I’m making my point. I am not interested in discussing the efficacy and safety of the vaccines. I am interested in the Church’s response to the current situation where we have made known our disapproval of the cell lines original used and asked for an alternative. It has not been given and the harvesting of dead babies for future use has not been halted. The moral issue must be addressed.
 
Almostconvert said:
To all involved in this discussion I am interested in the MORALITY of MANDATED vaccination requested by the Catholic Church with the fourth point made above being where I’m making my point. I am not interested in discussing the efficacy and safety of the vaccines.
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Sorry - it’s way to easy to get bogged down, lol!

There was a discussion some time ago about the morality of mandates from a Catholic standpoint. It got heated, predictably, but hopefully you find it helpful. Catholic Teaching and Immunization Policy
 
I actually WORKED for a large vaccine company that provided most of the world’s DPT vaccine as well as most the the flu vaccine for the US and many other vaccines. I just want to say that I have no idea where most of you are getting your “information,” but I’m dumbfounded. Frankly, you’re talking nonsense.

Do some people get reactions from vaccines? Sure. People get reactions from touching poison ivy or breathing air when pollution is high. Some people get a reaction when there is a lot of pollen in the air. I hate to point out the obvious, but if, in a hypothetical example, your odds of dying WITHOUT vaccines was 1 in 10,000, and the odds of you dying after GETTING a vaccine was 1 in 100,000, it shouldn’t take a genius to decide what to do.

I will not bother to respond to any replies. Go back to your conspiracy theories if you want, but please be aware they are on a par with theories about the Abominable Snow Man.
 
Sigh…

Do you have anything helpful to add to the moral question I have posed?
 
Hmm that thread is definitely interesting (and neverending like this one is getting!) but I still can’t seem to find any answer to the application of current events to the Church’s statement. Their letter is from 2005. That is nearly 15 years. Walvax 2 should elicit some type of response and until then the moral ground of mandating vaccination in Catholic schools on Catholic moral teaching is unethical.
 
I don’t have an answer about morality. I think it comes down to prudential judgement. I have problems with mandating vaccines because I believe it begins to take parental authority out of the picture. I do think that schools should be allowed to mandate requirements for attendance.

What bothers me in your situation is that a school would allow religious/moral exemptions for some groups but not other groups. Since the Church has no definitive teaching that I have ever seen and it is left to prudential judgement, I don’t understand that. I don’t know of any Christian church that does not allow for vaccines, especially Christians willing to send their children to Catholic schools. And yet Protestants will be able to take the religious exemption. The logic does not follow.
 
  1. Babies are not being harvested to make vaccines. Babies that would already be aborted are used. Is that horrible and immoral? Yes. Does it mean babies are dying to make vaccines? No.
  2. The Catholic church does not mandate vaccines. The Catholic church makes rules about faith and morals. It has ruled that the MMR et al are permissible in most circumstances given the difficulty in sourcing alternatives, the greater good of society and the remoteness of the cooperation with evil. Beyond that, it’s not the Church’s job to weigh in on scientific matters.
  3. Some catholic schools mandate up to date vaccination records. You can’t claim a Catholic religious exemption, as vaccines are not banned by Catholicism. I don’t think this is unreasonable. You shouldn’t really be able to claim a religious exemption at all unless your religion outright bans vaccinations. You have an ethical/moral issue with these vaccines, but it’s not a religious one. So if the school/state doesn’t make allowances for non-religious moral exemptions, that’s what you should have a problem with, in my opinion.
 
ShrodingersCat said:
You shouldn’t really be able to claim a religious exemption at all unless your religion outright bans vaccinations.
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I would agree with this. If the school said no one who isn’t able to provide proof that vaccines are not allowed by anyone in their religion, I would find that logical. It didn’t though. Only Catholics cannot, but a Lutheran or a Methodist would be able to. No protestant that would be ok with their child attending Catholic school would belong to one of the very few christian religions that official oppose vaccination.
 
Almostconvert said:
Do you have anything helpful to add to the moral question I have posed?
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Sigh indeed. Read this (revised in 2019): https://www.ncbcenter.org/resources/frequently-asked-questions/use-vaccines/

It seems to me you should be asking yourself these questions: 1) Am I willing to put my children in unnecessary danger? 2) Am I willing to allow my unvaccinated children to spread disease to those who are unable to be vaccinated (too young, undergoing certain medical procedures, etc.) and to endanger their lives?

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Let’s use a hypothetical analogy: An evil man (let’s call him Bernie Madoff, just for fun) sets up a fraudulent investment company and makes hundreds of millions of illegal dollars that he steals from unwary investors. He takes some of those stolen dollars and donates them to a children’s hospital, which then is able to offer free care to sick children. With me so far? The news breaks about Bernie and his ill-gotten millions. After that, your kid gets sick and you have no insurance. Do you take him to the hospital that was funded by Bernie’s ill-gotten millions? Or do you say, “No, I am so pure that I refuse to accept any benefit from those stolen millions.” I don’t think that is a moral dilemma at all. You take your kid to the hospital and have him treated.

On the other hand, what if some criminal mastermind, for any nefarious reason you can think of, builds a hospital he funds with stolen money, drug money, kidnapping money, whatever. Same scenario. Your kid gets sick. Do you take him to that hospital? Now there IS an ethical dilemma, since the criminal scheme is ongoing–it’s not in the distant past. By taking your kid there you are colluding (to use an overused word) with the criminal mastermind. You are, in some small way, bolstering his reputation and contributing to his criminal enterprise.

In a similar way, yes, there are a FEW vaccines originally derived from tissue from aborted babies 50 or so years ago. For some of these vaccines there are non-fetus derived vaccines. If it makes you feel better, use the alternative vaccine. But there are a FEW (I think 3 or 4) that have no alternatives (yet). On the other hand, to use vaccines produced from fetuses that have been aborted recently…that’s a different story. But frankly I am unaware of any of these that has no alternative vaccine.
 
  1. And yet, babies are being harvested. If you had read the thread we stressed this earlier. The current cell lines are finite. Until the manufacturers create an alternative to that medium, they will need to be replaced. Walvax 2 is the most recent example out of China.
  2. Again, is this really applicable to a first world scenario? What level of harm done by a vaccine is permissable while still mandating vaccination under the guise that it’s for the greater good? Do we sacrifice one child to the vaccine god to save another? Shouldn’t that decision be left up to the parent?
  3. And, as a Protestant considering conversion this is a hang up for me. I could give the Church a pass for their document released in 2005. But it, in my opinion is no longer applicable and needs to be reassessed. Should the Catholic Church begin allowing Catholics to claim a religious exemption due to the continued ties to the abortion industry?
 
Erikaspirit16 said:
In a similar way, yes, there are a FEW vaccines originally derived from tissue from aborted babies 50 or so years ago. For some of these vaccines there are non-fetus derived vaccines. If it makes you feel better, use the alternative vaccine. But there are a FEW (I think 3 or 4) that have no alternatives (yet). On the other hand, to use vaccines produced from fetuses that have been aborted recently…that’s a different story. But frankly I am unaware of any of these that has no alternative vaccine.
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This is the ethical question at hand. And should you accept help from the second hospital the criminal Mastermind built and slapped a new name on? The care is still coming from the Mastermind and his current evil funding. The money earned is finding further Mastermind activity.
 
Almostconvert said:
And should you accept help from the second hospital the criminal Mastermind built and slapped a new name on? The care is still coming from the Mastermind and his current evil funding. The money earned is finding further Mastermind activity.
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No. Maybe I wasn’t clear. But there could be exceptions–your kid is dying, the criminally funded hospital is the only one available, etc. It seems to me there is a vast difference between benefiting from some evil act in the distant past and benefiting from an ONGOING CURRENT evil act. You can’t change the past; you CAN change the present.

Take the Sackler family, for example. Owners of Purdue Pharma, makers of oxycontin, and (allegedly!) responsible for the opioid crisis. They gave a lot of money in the past to a lot of museums–the Met in NY, the Smithsonian, etc. Should all these museums refund the donations with interest? That’s absurd. On the other hand, should they accept MORE donations NOW? Of course they shouldn’t.

If you retroactively were hyper-sensitive about “evil” you would be unable to live at all. If you live in the US, the chances are pretty good that your house is on land stolen or purchased under duress from Indians. Going to give your house to the local Indian tribe? Let’s say you live in the South, and your ancestors had slaves. The family fortune was based on slavery. What do you do about that in 2019? Renounce your inheritance from your parents and do penance for the good upbringing you had? You could go on and on and on. This is not “morality,” this is…pick a word. I’m at a loss.
 
Erikaspirit16 said:
No. It’s a public health issue. Say you had ebola…do you think you would have a “right” to wander around a city and spread the disease?
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Smoking is a public health issue. We have not banned it. More children die in swimming pools and from dog bites than vaccine preventable disease and we are filling them in or euthanizing the dogs. I in no way have argued for the right to spread the disease. Let’s not go down that rabbit hole as those vaccinated against pertussis can be asymptomatic carriers. They are spreading disease as readily as everyone else.
VanitasVanitatum said:
What are you trying to imply?
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I am implying that vaccines come with risk and mandating them is placing faith in a product that is causing harm. How many children are we permitting to be harmed by the vaccines meant to help by removing the choice?
Erikaspirit16 said:
Where? Just because some Chinese scientist is messing around in his lab doesn’t mean there are “ties to the abortion industry” by Western vaccine makers.
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Again, the cell lines are finite. Either the manufacturers stop producing, find an alternative, or harvest more babies.

Erikaspirit16 said:
Read what I posted. It was revised THIS YEAR.
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So it appears that the Vatican has not issued a new statement since the one released in 2005, but the NCBC has made a statement that they will remain on the fence about the ongoing abortion ties by acknowledging the existence to the dilemma, but still allowing it. Which I accept, ethically speaking. I do not however accept making mandates. (I apologize if I’m referring to anything incorrectly, I’m still very new to the Catholic hierarchy and actually did not realize that that particular organization held authority).

And again, I find the foundation for the argument flawed:
Almostconvert said:
It is based on the premises that:
  1. Vaccines do what they claim
  2. No other option exists
  3. Death is an imminent/predictable outcome
  4. The parent strongly protests/advocates against human cell lines
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I accept that the Church has allowed for the use of vaccines without moral repercussion. I do not accept that they create mandates in their own institutions.

Heading to bed…
 
Let me try another one before I go to bed:

Cecil Rhodes, in terms of 2019 morals and ethics, was not very PC. He was an imperialist and a racist. Probably a lot more. Let’s say you win a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. Do you decline and say “Oh no, I can’t possibly benefit from the fortune of someone like that!” (who died in 1902)?

On the other hand, say the KKK is offering a scholarship to Oxford, and they award it to you. Do you accept? Only if you are a committed racist. See the difference?
 
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