DEAR
ARCHBISHOP FISHER
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On August 10th, 2021, the Most
Reverend
Anthony Fisher, Archbishop of Sydney, published his 10th
Pastoral
Letter during the Covid-19 pandemic to his bishops and priests
urging them to
undergo vaccination with the vaccines currently on offer.
A copy of that Pastoral Letter, without
footnotes, is set forth in the Appendix.
On Sunday last, I sent to the Archbishop
by email a
letter criticising what he had to say and inviting him to
respond. A copy of that
letter is set out below. Any
response he makes will be published here
in due course.
Michael Baker
September 8th, 2021—Birthday of the Blessed Virgin
________________________________
Dear Archbishop Fisher,
Your
Tenth
Pastoral Letter to bishops and clergy addressing the issue of
vaccination
against the effects of the Covid-19 virus has been drawn to my
attention. Though not
addressed to the laity it contains
a message which you intend to be conveyed to all the Catholics
under your
care. Three criticisms
may reasonably be
made of your initiative. First,
you are
speaking on a topic which is beyond your competence; second, the
advice you
give is incorrect; and third, your letter is likely to have a
schismatic
effect.
The arguments set out below in respect of
the second
issue have been set forth in more detail in a paper published in
April last. In offering the criticisms
in this letter I
anticipate that I am speaking not only for a great number of the
laity but for
many of your diocesan priests as well.
I
Your
office
as a bishop of the Catholic Church is to work for the salvation
of the souls of
those in your care. It
does not involve
the welfare of their bodies save as this is incidental to the
fulfilment of
that duty. It is for
those competent in
the field, men of science and medicine, to advise on what is
best for public
health. If you have any
input in respect
of what they advise it is limited to the demands of moral
principle.
Regrettably, insofar as your letter may be
read as
commenting on the means advised by public health authorities it
fails
adequately to address the contravention of moral principle they
involve.
II
The
advice on
the topic of vaccination you give is incorrect.
It is erroneous to claim (as you do) that the magisterium
of the
Catholic Church supports the use of the vaccines on offer. Such assertion would be
denied inter alios by
Cardinals Raymond Burke,
Janis Pujats and Antonio Canizares Llovera.
It would be denied by Archbishops Carlo Maria Viganò
(former Apostolic
Nuncio to the US), Tomash Peta (Astana, Kazakhstan), and Jan
Pawel Lenga
(Karaganda, Kazakhstan), and by Bishops Joseph Strickland
(Tyler, USA) and
Athanasius Schneider (Astana, Kazakhstan), as well as by
numerous other bishops
throughout the world.
The magisterium of the Church is not
represented by
the private opinions of Pope Francis or Emeritus Pope Benedict
or, if it be the
case, by the opinion held by a majority of the Church’s bishops. Nor is it represented by
rulings issued by
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or other
Congregation, or by the
Pontifical Academy for Life, where those rulings depart from the
Church’s
constant teaching. The
CDF in particular
has demonstrated its inability to address difficult moral issues
correctly,
including attempts in the documents Donum
Vitae and Dignitatis
Personae. The chief reason for this
is the poverty of
grasp of metaphysical principle by the Congregation’s members,
reflected in an
inability to make essential distinctions and a failure correctly
to apply the Principle of
the Double Effect.
Your letter contains a number of other
errors. First, one
cannot in the present cooperate in
an abortion which took place in the past.
It is possible, however, to cooperate in the present with
an evil which derives
from a past abortion. This
is the case
with vaccines that depend for their vigour on cells stolen from
a murdered
child. You are incorrect, then,
to say that—
“[r]eceiving
these vaccines would… normally involve no… impermissible
material cooperation
in the [evil] of… the exploitation of foetuses on the part of
the recipients…
[who]… would be… morally very remote from… the collection of
foetal cells fifty
years ago.”
This assertion confuses the two issues,
the murder of
the child and the utilisation of his cells. It also confuses the
ontological order with
the chronological. It
matters not when the
abuse was committed that
degraded a child to the level of a means for the alleged good of
his
fellows. What matters is
that in using
these cells the makers of the vaccines endorse that abuse.
Cooperation, moral involvement in the evil
committed
by another, has to do with involvement in the evil act either formally, where the
cooperator intends
the same end as the agent, or materially,
where he does not, but is caught up in the evil the agent is
doing. But these
principles must be rightly
understood. The terms
‘proximate’ and
‘remote’ do not refer to time but to reality.
They specify the degree to which a cooperator partakes
in, or profits
from, the reality of the evil done.
Proximate material cooperation is impermissible; remote
material
cooperation may be permissible in certain circumstances.
One who benefits from any of the vaccines
currently offered to address the effects of the Covid-19 virus
cooperates
materially and proximately in a present
evil, the use of cells stolen from an aborted child.
Each of the vaccines on offer, whether in
its
production or in its testing, depends on these cells.
The causality is formal, and ergo
intrinsic, in all cases. To
spell it out: the evil in the cause is
evil in the effect. It
is fallacious to
claim that a vaccine such as the Pfizer vaccine, is less morally
compromised
than others because its reliance on the cells is, as it were,
extrinsic to the
vaccine. The testing may
be extrinsic;
its effect is intrinsic. The
plans of a house are extrinsic to the reality of the house yet conformity with them
determines the house’s integrity.
Foetal
cells used to test a vaccine are extrinsic
to the reality of the vaccine but they determine the vaccine’s
essential efficacy.
The effect of your letter, then, is to
persuade those
who reject abortion to become complicit in its evil by profiting
from its
effects.
Truth is
grounded in the Objective
Your appeal to determinations of bodies
that support
the moral liceity of these vaccines reduces to the subjectivist
principle that
truth is to be determined by opinion—an evil deriving
philosophically from
Descartes and theologically from Luther’s revolt.
If the modern world demonstrates anything it
is that majority opinion on a moral question is more likely to
be wrong than to
be right.
Truth (logical truth) is determined by
reality,
exemplified here by the constant teaching of God’s Holy Church,
which opposes any
cooperation with the intrinsic evil
of abortion whether in its causes or in its effects.
In December last, five Catholic bishops from
Kazakhstan led by Janis Cardinal Pujats, had this to say against
the opinions
advanced by the CDF and the Pontifical Academy for Life on which
you rely:
“[W]e see a clear contradiction
between the
Catholic doctrine to categorically, and beyond the shadow of any
doubt, reject
abortion in all cases as a grave moral evil that cries out to
heaven for
vengeance (see Catechism
of
the Catholic Church n. 2268, n. 2270), and the
practice of
regarding vaccines derived from aborted foetal cell lines as
morally acceptable
in exceptional cases of “urgent need”—on the grounds of remote,
passive,
material cooperation. To
argue that such
vaccines can be morally licit if there is no alternative is in
itself
contradictory and cannot be acceptable for Catholics.”
They went on to invoke Pope John Paul’s
words in Christifideles
laici n. 38:
“The inviolability of the person
which is a
reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its
primary and
fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry,
which is justly
made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health,
to home, to
work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right
to life, the
most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other
personal
rights, is not defended with maximum determination.”
Their conclusion is unanswerable:
“Using
vaccines made from the cells of murdered unborn children
contradicts a maximum
determination to defend unborn
life.”
In the absence of a true exercise of the
Church’s
magisterium concerning them, these tainted vaccines present a
great challenge
to clergy and faithful alike.
Remarkably, opposition to their use is to more likely to
be found among
the laity whose view, adhering to the Church’s constant
teaching, best reflects
the sensus fidelium
on the issue.
Against
the Position you advocate
The clergy, you say, have a duty to set a
good example
for the faithful. And so
they do. But ‘the good
example’ you invoke disturbs
the priorities mandated by the Church, for it shifts the
priest’s primary focus
from the eternal salvation of those in his care to the
subsidiary issue of
their health. This
echoes the first
criticism addressed to you in this letter.
The competence of the clergy, as your competence as their
bishop, relates
to the salvation of souls. It
does not
include an entitlement to pontificate on the means of their
health. In their
December 2020 statement the five Kazakhstani
bishops offered a comment which is to the point:
“Bodily health is not an absolute value. Obedience
to the
law of God and the eternal salvation of the souls must be given
primacy.”
What is natural is good because it
emanates from God
who is nature’s Author. What
is
artificial—contrived by men—is not necessarily so.
In doubt, then, it is rational for a man to
oppose the artificial in favour of the natural unless it can be
demonstrated
with moral certainty that what it offers will augment the good
provided by
nature. It is to this
principle, it
seems to me, that people instinctively turn on the question of
these vaccines.
Their view is supported by application of
the Principle of the
Double Effect. It
is not lawful to do an act wherefrom flow
two effects, the one good, the other evil, unless four
conditions are
fulfilled. First, the
act is a good act,
or at least morally neutral; second, the good lost by the evil
effect is not
greater than the good of the good effect; third, good and evil
effects flow, at
worst, with equal immediacy, but never the evil effect prior to
the good; and
fourth, the good effect alone is intended.
St Thomas reminds us (Summa
Theologiae II-II, q. 64, a. 7) that moral acts take their
species according
to what is intended.
Suffering oneself to be injected is not
analogous with
eating or drinking which, since they are natural
acts are inherently good. Prima
facie
then, being injected with a drug falls within the category of
the violent and is
evil because what is
violent is against the inclination of nature.
Suffering injection is only redeemed to the level of the
artificial, and the
good, when it is
done for a reason, an end, which is shown objectively to be good
because moral acts take
their species according to
what is intended.
If it be said that it is reasonable to
submit to an
injection with one or other of these vaccines because the act is
done to
protect one’s health and the (collective) health of the
community, the
objection must be faced that health is not an absolute value. A greater good, the common
good of society,
may deny the entitlement to its preservation because, as St
Thomas teaches,
unless a man be well proportionate to the common good he cannot
be good. A vaccine that depends on
elements of the
body of a murdered child eo
ipso
offends the common good for it implies that a person—an end in
himself, body
and immortal soul,—may be used as a means for the welfare of
others. It should not be
necessary to point out to
you that it is a breach of logic (as of moral principle) to
claim that one may
serve the common good by an act that entails its breach.
It may be thought that you are justified
in arguing
that a priest’s failure to submit to vaccination may impede the
ability to
perform his ministry of attending the sick and dying.
The answer to this is that it is not licit to
do evil that good may come of it, not even the good of the
eternal salvation of
a soul. The
administration of the
sacraments and the attendance by priests on the faithful (and unfaithful, for that
matter) is
commanded by Almighty God Who will not allow human regulation to
impede the
execution of His salvific will.
The media and politicians generally have
adopted the
position that the only rational response to this virus is
vaccination. They have
as little regard for moral
principle as they have for the rights of Almighty God who made
them to be
subject to the dictates of the moral law.
They join in labelling those who reject their position
‘anti-vax-ers’
when the opposition of most people is not to vaccination in
general but to vaccination
with these vaccines. As
with every slogan, this one tells only
half the truth. And as
with every
slogan, those who repeat it act as if it expressed the whole.
It is impossible to get a hearing in any
newspaper for
an argument which points up the evil of their provenance.
The proprietors, reluctant to disturb the
complacency of their readers out of fear of adverse effects on
future sales,
simply refuse to publish an opinion which may disturb that
complacency by
reminding the populace of the ravaging effects of abortion in
their midst. The media
(and politicians generally) reflect
the atheistic zeitgeist.
The Catholic faithful are entitled to hope
that their
bishops would demonstrate that their faith is the very opposite
of this and
would teach, to faithful and unfaithful alike, that if the
society in which
they live is to survive it must abandon its serial indulgence in
moral
degradation. Your letter
is a blow to
that hope for the Catholics of New South Wales.
You say that you have engaged, alone and
with others,
to raise ethical concerns and emphasise that protecting physical
and economic
health is not all that matters.
With
respect, it would be difficult to put the obligations of a
Catholic bishop more
ineffectually. You go
on: “We must also
consider… people’s spiritual needs including the need to
congregate for
worship”. Any Protestant
pastor might
express himself as blandly. A
priest of
the Catholic Church should be focused on the eternal salvation
of the members
of his flock to the exclusion of every other consideration. You say: “there is no ‘solution’ to this
pandemic that does not involve everyone, from every section of
our community…” This
repeats the secular mantra and ignores a
rightly directed Catholic response.
You
will be familiar with the principle of St Augustine in his Enchiridion ad Laurentium (c. XI), the Principle of Finality of Evil:
God,
since He is supremely good, in no wise would allow something of
evil to be in
His works were He not good and omnipotent even up to this point,
as to bring
forth good even from evil.
The Corona virus in all its permutations
past and
future, only exists, only troubles the peoples of the world,
because God allows
it that good may come of it. What is that good?
It is their eternal salvation.
The Catholic Church has traditionally
regarded a
plague, and the disruption of human life that attends it, as
evils allowed by
Almighty God as punishment for sinful behaviour.
St Gregory the Great in the 6th
century and St Charles Borromeo in the 16th organised
processions
and exercises of penance which assisted in bringing to an end
plagues that had
killed great numbers of the people under their care, far greater
numbers than
those who have so far died of the current virus.
The moral evils committed today, both in
degree and in
extent, put the evils committed by past populations in the
shade. Regrettably, the
authority today of Catholic
bishops in the public domain has largely been lost, one of the
effects of
accommodation with the secular endorsed by Vatican II.
It will be a brave bishop who refuses
publicly to follow the dictates of secular authorities and
appeals to the
authority of God over their heads but that is what he is called
to do: that is
what his oath of office entails: that is why he wears red!
III
Your
letter
has a further consequence, perhaps unforeseen; it attacks the
unity of the
Church. One Catholic may
differ from
another on a temporal issue: generally they do.
It has been said with justice that Catholics disagree
with each other on
almost everything except their religion.
In supporting the taking of these vaccines you have lent
the authority
of your office to a position on a temporal issue.
This is likely to divide the faithful into
those who think this is the position of Christ’s Church on the
matter—when it
is not—with those who know that it is not.
The division is already at work.
The writer has been advised by a Catholic friend of her
concerns of the
effects this split in opinions is likely to have on a coming
social
gathering. Another has
reported the view
of a priest of the Diocese of Parramatta who has indicated to a
member of the
faithful in his care that he will not hear the confession of
anyone who had not
been vaccinated. One
would hope that you
address this issue with expedition.
_________________________
One would hope that you will reconsider
your position
on all the three of the issues mentioned and publish a fresh
pastoral letter in
which you correct the errors in the present one.
Yours in Our Lord,
Michael Baker
______________________________________-_____________
APPENDIX
Responsibilities and
Opportunities for the
Clergy in Time of
COVID-19
Tenth Pastoral Letter
during the COVID-19
Pandemic
Feast of St Lawrence,
Deacon and Martyr, 10
August 2021
Dear brother deacons, priests and bishops,
Vaccination
of
the Clergy
At a recent meeting of NSW Bishops, some bishops
expressed concern about the degree of “vaccine hesitancy” within
their
communities, and even amongst some clergy, and asked what they
might say to
their people. I shared
with them my
reasons for believing we should encourage our people, and our
clergy in
particular, to be vaccinated and I’d like to share those reasons
now with you,
as my brothers in the ministry of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Why should we encourage people to receive the
vaccine
and why should we do so ourselves? First,
because the magisterium favours the use
of these vaccines. The
Pope, several
Vatican dicasteries, Bishops Conferences around the world, the
Australian
Bishops and I personally have all taught that:
·
The use of vaccines in
general
is morally permissible and is morally warranted for the
protection of the
recipient’s life and health, for the prevention of transmission
to others, and
for the common good The use of the COVID-19 vaccines is to be
encouraged for
these same reasons
·
It is very
disappointing that
cell-lines ultimately derived from aborted foetuses have been
used in the
production of some COVID-19 vaccines (the Oxford/AstraZeneca and
Johnson &
Johnson vaccines), or in their development and testing (the
Moderna and
Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline vaccines) or in related research (the
Pfizer and Novovax
vaccines); pharmaceutical researchers and manufacturers are
strongly encouraged
to produce vaccines with no morally compromising use of foetal
cell lines
·
Receiving these
vaccines would
nonetheless normally involve no formal cooperation or
impermissible material
cooperation in the evils of abortion and the exploitation of
foetuses on the
part of the recipients; the recipients would be chronologically
and morally
very remote from the abortions and the collection of foetal
cells fifty years
ago; and the recipients have no desire to profit from these or
to have these
repeated
·
Where they have the
option,
some will prefer the Pfizer vaccine to the AstraZeneca on the
basis that it is
the less morally compromised.
Secondly, it is the elderly (and other especially
vulnerable people) who are most at risk of dying from COVID-19
and so they
should have some priority in the distribution of the vaccine. Those who care for them
should also have some
priority. But piety
towards our elders
(and other vulnerable people) should make those who are younger
especially
unwilling to expose them to the risks of contracting COVID-19. This means that the young and
healthy, who
might not be afraid for themselves, should nonetheless avoid
contracting the virus
as much or more for the protection of others with whom they
might come into
contact as for themselves.
Thirdly, the clergy as pastoral leaders in their
communities, have an even greater duty to set a good example in
this regard. The Pope,
most or all of the Bishops of
Australia, and most of the clergy have given this good example.
Fourthly, a normal part of the ministry of the
clergy
is to visit the sick – in hospitals, aged care facilities and
their homes. Although
vaccination certificates are not yet
mandatory, they will surely become mandatory before too long in
hospitals and
aged care facilities, as flu vaccine certificates are already;
the same may
also come to apply to home visitation. For
a clergyman to refuse vaccination in these
circumstances would render it impossible for him to perform
important parts of
his ministry.
Fifthly, even were there no such legal or social
expectation, the clergy have a responsibility to protect their
priesthood and
thus their life and health, and not to endanger the life or
health of the
people to whom we minister, especially the most vulnerable. Whilst it is true that
vaccination does not
guarantee that a person will not contract and transmit the
virus, it does
substantially reduce the risk of transmission.
Sixthly, unlike the previous lockdown and lockdowns
in some other jurisdictions, the Government has this time around
allowed clergy
to leave their presbyteries and to visit homes to provide
pastoral care. We must
exercise this freedom wisely and be
sure to reduce the risk of infection to ourselves and to others
by ensuring we
are vaccinated, are tested whenever appropriate, use masks, and
practice
personal hygiene and social distancing measures etc.
I am aware that many people, clergy included, have
misgivings about the COVID-19 vaccines: the changing and
sometimes confusing
medical advice, the politicisation of the vaccine rollout, the
fact that they
are not 100% safe or 100% effective, the fear that they have
been
insufficiently tested and may have side-effects as yet unknown,
the unjust
distribution of the vaccine, the fact that foetal cell-lines
were used in the
ways described above – all these reasons and more are given for
people’s
hesitancy about receiving the vaccines. The
internet
and social media are awash with extreme claims for and against
the
vaccines. But the fact
is: few vaccines
ever protect 100% of those who receive them and none is without
risk. The annual flu
vaccine protects most people,
but some still get the flu, and some of those who do, die; but a
much higher
proportion of those struck down with flu have not been
vaccinated, and when
they get it they get sick and/or die and/or transmit it to
others. On presently
available evidence it would seem
to be that vaccination significantly reduces the likelihood of
contracting
COVID-19, the likelihood of suffering symptoms and especially
serious illness
if one does contract it, the likelihood of hospitalisation and
early death as a
result, and the likelihood of transmitting it to others. Very few of those who are
dying of COVID-19
were fully vaccinated. Nevertheless
people
should not be coerced into vaccination but should be able freely
to
decide. Those who are
nervous or unsure
about whether to be vaccinated should discuss the matter with
their GP so that
they know what is the best course of action for them.
Some argue that we should vaccinate only the
vulnerable in the community, and allow the young and healthy
(clergy included)
to go about their lives as usual. However,
this
would still put at risk older people who for whatever reason
have not been
vaccinated, and even some of those who have been vaccinated but
are still at
risk. It has also become
clear that if
the virus runs free in the community, more and more variants
will emerge, some
of which may be resistant to current vaccines, and this will
endanger more lives.
The only solution is to
reduce the
spread of the virus among the younger and fitter part of the
population, while
continuing to apply particular measures to protect the elderly
and most
vulnerable. What I am
saying is that
there is no “solution” to this pandemic that does not involve
everyone, from
every section of our community, and indeed every nation and
community across
the world.
As you know, I have now publicly engaged alone or in
conjunction with other bishops or other faith leaders not just
to promote
vaccination, but also to raise the ethical concerns and to
emphasise that
protecting physical and economic health is not all that matters.
We must also consider
people’s liberties and
consciences, their need for friendship and thus for
person-to-person relations,
the goods of learning, aesthetic experience, excellence at work
and so on, and
of course people’s spiritual needs including the need to
congregate for
worship. In considering
vaccination and
other measures at this time, public officials should take all
these things (and
more) into account. And
so, of course,
will we. But I ask you,
my brothers, to please
get vaccinated.
Pastoral
Care
by the Clergy
As discussed at our recent Zoom clergy conference,
we
won a major concession in the present lockdown in that clergy
have been given
permission to leave their presbyteries and visit homes for the
purposes of
giving pastoral care. This
is a very
significant opportunity that we must avail ourselves of fully,
without
exploiting it inappropriately or endangering people in the
process. Here are a
couple of examples of the pastoral
creativity that I understand some clergy are presently
exercising.
First, where it is safe to do so, some priests have
been offering their daily Mass in a parishioner’s home as part
of a pastoral
care visit. This has allowed some people in parishes the great
blessing of Mass
and to receive Holy Communion. Of course, many will miss out but
it is a great
consolation to some. You or your staff could contact families 4
directly asking
if you might offer Mass in their home on the occasion of a
pastoral visit; or
you could call for parishioners to volunteer their home for this
purpose.
Please be conscious of the importance of vaccination, masks,
hygiene measures
and social distancing and remind such families that they may not
invite people
from outside their household to join. We must make the best use
of this freedom
at the least risk to self and others.
Secondly, some priests have visited parishioners at
their invitation or ‘on spec’ and offered them Confession and/or
Holy Communion
and/or a spiritual chat. Many would, I am sure, appreciate such
an initiative
from you – more, perhaps, than welcome us to their homes in
ordinary times. You
could invite parishioners to book you in for a visit.
Thirdly, I understand that some priests have offered
themselves as a walking companion for parishioners needing
exercise, and have
used the opportunity to hear their Confession, have a spiritual
talk or render
other pastoral assistance and compassionate care. I commend this
to you as
another possibility. In regards to the Sacrament of
Reconciliation, this cannot
be done over the phone or video, the penitent must be in the
presence of the
priest to validly receive this sacrament.
Fourthly, as we saw last year and have seen again
this year, you men have many good ideas of your own about how to
reach out to
your people in this hour of need. I understand that depression
and loneliness
rates are up dramatically, that people are anxious not just
about health but
about their financial security, relationships and more. We want
to be there for
them. With a little ingenuity we can find new ways of being so.
I ask you, my
brothers, to keep thinking of ways and applying yourselves
generously. And I
know that you will continue to offer Mass and other prayers for
the safety of
our people and an end to this pandemic.
I am enormously proud of the clergy of Sydney in
their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Proud, and also
grateful. Thank you my
brothers. You are an inspiration.
St Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr, pray for us!
Yours fraternally in
Christ,
Most Rev. Anthony Fisher
OP, DD BA LlB
BTheol DPhil
Archbishop of Sydney
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