under the patronage of St Joseph and St Dominic

By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, remembering Zion;
on the poplars that grew there we hung up our harps. . . Ps 136

THE MORALITY OF VACCINES DERIVED FROM CELLS

OF ABORTED CHILDREN

Download this document as a PDF

  The focus of this paper is whether a man is morally entitled to utilise a vaccine developed, or tested, using body parts or cells derived from aborted human foetuses or human embryos, to counter the effects of the Corona virus.  It is not concerned with a vaccine’s effectiveness, its side effects, whether those vaccinated will not cease to carry infection thereafter, or whether the vaccines can be ‘justified’ by results.  It is concerned only with this moral question.

Regrettably, papers have been published recently by orthodox Catholics whose content has been less than charitable and whose arguments have focused not on the issue (res) but on those who object to taking such vaccines (arguments in personam).  They include claims that the common good of society demands that no one, whatever his personal view, should refuse to be vaccinated, and appeal to parallel issues in a fashion which obscures, rather than clarifies, thinking.

In contrast, two papers have appeared, one by Bishop Athanasius Schneider,[1] the other by English/Italian translator, Francesca Romana,[2] which seem to express the sensus fidelium on the issue.  They are supported by arguments from principle by a group of bishops led by Janis Cardinal Pujats in December 2020[3], and by Don Pietro Leone in April 2021 in a paper entitled ‘Chains of Evil’.[4]  A copy of the latter paper is reproduced in Part 2 of the Appendix.

It is necessary to set out some essential distinctions.

Matter & Form

   In every human act, as in every natural or artificial thing, there are two elements, matter and form.  The matter of an act is that which is available to be determined by the intention of the one acting.  His intention (and its execution) establishes the form, the reality, of the act.  A man in a field swinging his arm may reveal little of what in fact he is doing.  The matter of his act is the swinging of the arm.  Its form, which determines what he is doing, may be discovered from other facts, or from enquiry.  Thus, he may be doing so—

·                  to drive away a wasp that is troubling him;

·                  to signal to his sheep dog to act in a certain fashion—the dog being trained to respond;

·                  to signal to his wife, since he has finished his work, to put the kettle on for tea;

·                  to express his exasperation over the behaviour of some of the flock;

·                  to express (inadvertently) some point he is making to a caller (invisible to him) with whom he is speaking on his mobile phone.

In some human acts matter and form coalesce; what is done admits of only one formality, or signification.  The player who kicks a football (the matter of the act) does so for the end of winning the game.  A man who jumps off a cliff does so for only one reason.  The doctor who operates on a pregnant woman to procure the artificial abortion of her child is an act of this kind.  It is an act against the order of nature and intrinsically evil.

Remote & Proximate Material Cooperation

   A man may cooperate with another’s act, and then he will share in the goodness or the evil of the act.  So others may cooperate in the abortionist’s evil act.  His assistants and nurses cooperate formally.  They intend—whether explicitly or implicitly—as the abortionist intends, to kill the unborn child.  Others may cooperate in a manner somewhat removed.  The supplier who provides instruments or drugs to the abortionist cooperates with him for he provides the means.  He may do so without knowing, or without wanting to know, what they will be used for.  He may lack the intention that goes to the formality of the abortionist’s act; then he is said to be contributing materially.  The taxi-driver who delivers the pregnant woman to the abortionist cooperates materially for without his assistance there can be no victim.  He may not will the death of the unborn child, yet he aids and abets the abortionist.  The caterer who delivers food to sustain the staff of the mill contributes also, if more remotely.  Clearly, the degree of contribution may approach the point where there will be little of turpitude involved.

The Catholic Church distinguishes the degree to which one may contribute to another’s immoral act at the material level as proximate or remote.  Proximate material cooperation is always morally illicit; remote material cooperation may not be.

In the current debate it is asserted that the offensive act is the aborting of the child.  The cooperation in the act by scientists utilising the child’s body parts or cells in the constitution, or testing, of a vaccine is either formal (if they intend the death of the child to assist their research) or material (if they intend only that the ‘products’ of such operation should not be ‘wasted’, but used to assist their work), but their material cooperation is not less than proximate, and is morally culpable.

But what is the position of the person who takes one of the vaccines so produced?  Is he not also—if much more remotely—cooperating in the original immoral act?

Distinction among Acts

   There are two distinct acts under consideration, the original act of murdering the child, and the consequent act of utilising the child’s body parts or cells.  It is impossible that one taking the vaccine could be cooperating in the original act because that act is complete, and one cannot cooperate in an act which is past.  However, he is cooperating in the second act because the vaccine derives from parts of the child’s body.

In the paper The Morality of Preserving Human Embryos published on this website 10 years ago,[5] we criticised the views of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its Instructions Donum Vitae (February 22^nd, 1987), and Dignitatis Personae (August 9^th, 2008), on the status of human embryos conceived ‘in vitro’ and preserved cryogenically.  We argued that there were two evil acts involved: the one, their artificial conception; the other, their preservation in existence artificially.  The second of these evils, a species of tyranny, would continue while ever the embryos were preserved in existence, and the CDF was in error in refusing to admit a solution to this evil in conformity with the Principle of the Double Effect, with proper interment of the embryos’ remains.[6]  A corollary of this second evil is that it would continue in a subsidiary fashion if any parts of the bodies of these embryos were retained.

The Uniqueness of the Human body

   One may not deal with the body of a human being as one might deal with the body of a brute animal or with a material thing.  The reason is that the human body partakes of the character of the person (an immortal soul) which vivifies it, for body and soul constitute one suppositum, or substance.  As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said in February 1987, “[man’s] whole being bears the image of the Creator…”[7]  Pope Pius XII set out the moral limits of dealings with human corpses in addresses he delivered to medical specialists in the 1950s—see part 1 of the Appendix.

The Immorality of Cooperating in the Utilisation of Cells or Parts taken from Aborted Children

   The utilisation of body parts or cells of aborted children is a present act which continues as long as vaccines which rely on them are used.  It is, as Don Pietro Leone says, a physical process or continuum, whose formal element, eo ipso immaterial, establishes its ontological reality.[8]  One who knowingly takes such a vaccine is engaged in proximate material cooperation in an ongoing evil whose grievousness reflects the intrinsic evil of its source.

The following examples may assist in understanding the issue.  If I knew someone who had stolen goods belonging to another man, I would be morally prevented from joining with the thief in their enjoyment—I would be sharing, materially, in his breach of the seventh commandment.  If I knew that the thief had also murdered the man from whom he had stolen the goods I would, a fortiori, be morally precluded from joining him in their enjoyment.  I would not be guilty of the murder, but would be in the position of an accessory after the fact, wilfully complaisant about its commission.  A fortissimo, I would be morally precluded from receiving from the murderer some part or other of the murdered man’s body!  If this example seems far-fetched, let the reader ponder the hypothetical case of an unscrupulous physician or surgeon offered the whole, or part of, a murdered man’s skeleton.

The question has been raised whether vaccines which do not, in their development or production, rely on foetal cell lines, but use them in the ‘confirmation’ phase (to ensure they work), are defensible.[9]  The reader may think the issue a matter of splitting hairs but it should be addressed.  The plan of a building under construction is not part of the building yet it determines its structure.  In its reality as a set of sheets of paper, it is extrinsic to the building.  Insofar as it is a plan (plan, elevations, sections) of the building it exemplifies the building’s formality and is intrinsic to it.  Analogously, cells derived from an aborted child that measure the effectiveness of a vaccine are extrinsic to the vaccine.  Yet because they assist in determining whether the vaccine conforms to the designed end, they operate formally and are intrinsic to it.[10]  Does the vigour, or essence, of the vaccine depend on the cells?  It does.  Their usage, therefore, has an intrinsic influence, and the vaccine is tainted.

The Common Good

   It has been asserted that the common good of society may demand that citizens undergo vaccination with vaccines so tainted; that an individual’s reservation or refusal to take such a vaccine ought not to avail against his moral obligation to consider the well-being of the community at large.  This is nonsense.  Society exists only for the good of its members and its principal good is their eternal salvation.  As the five bishops said in December 2020, “Bodily health is not an absolute value.  Obedience to the law of God and the eternal salvation of the souls must be given primacy”.[11]

The common good of society demands that anything which operates to condone, whether directly or indirectly, the killing of even one of its members is reprehensible.  Vaccines so tainted offend this principle fundamentally.    

Authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

   Don Pietro Leone expresses his reservations about the authority of the CDF as representing the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.  He says:

“[I]n the past two generations divergence may be found in the Magisterium between positions which correspond more or less accurately to the Faith and to Reality, and it is our duty to adopt the position that corresponds more accurately to them, both in this field and in general.”

The CDF’s incompetence in the serious moral matter of the preservation of frozen human embryos referred to above exemplifies Don Pietro’s concerns.  The Catholic faithful can have little confidence that any utterance of the CDF on a moral question will represent the position of the Catholic Church.

The irregularity in the CDF’s conduct testifies to the truth of the claim of Archbishop Viganò, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, in an address on October 24^th, 2020:

“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.”

This counterfeit of the Catholic Church is a Modernist imposition promoted by the Second Vatican Council.  Insofar as the CDF is infected with its errors its advice will continue to be un-Catholic and erroneous.

Conclusion

   Don Pietro Leone speaks to the point when he describes the process extending from the extraction of the child from the mother’s womb and culminating in the vaccination as a chain of evil whose magnitude “renders it capable of sustaining a demonic charge over time”.  When one observes the division, even among orthodox Catholics, over the causes at work, the nescience of the majority of society over the immensity of the evil in their midst, the preoccupation of society’s members with public health to the exclusion of moral principle involving pressure to conform, and the incompetence of the Church Dicastery which ought to be giving definitive moral guidance on the issue, one is entitled to conclude to the influence of the demonic in our midst.

Michael Baker

April 27^th, 2021—St Peter Canisius

_____________________________________

APPENDIX

Part 1

Pope Pius XII, Allocutio to a group of eye specialists on May 14^th, 1956[12]

“It is necessary to condemn a morally erroneous judgement which… consists in putting the corpse of a human being on the same plane as that of an animal or even of a simple thing.  The dead body of an animal can be used in almost all its parts.  The same can be said in regard to the dead body of a human being considered from a purely material aspect, that is to say, from the standpoint of the elements of which it is composed.  For some people this attitude constitutes the final criterion of thought and the ultimate principle of action.

   “Such an attitude implies an error of judgement and a rejection of psychology and of the religious and moral sense.[13]  For the human corpse deserves to be regarded entirely differently.  The body was the abode of a spiritual and immortal soul, an essential constituent of a human person whose dignity it shared.  Something of this dignity still remains in the corpse.  We can say also that, since it is a component of man, it has been formed ‘to the image and likeness’ of God, which extends far beyond the general vestiges of resemblance to God that are found in animals without intelligence and even in purely material and inanimate creatures.  In a way the words of the Apostle apply even to a corpse: ‘Do you not know that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit Who is in you?’  (1 Cor. 6: 19)

   “Finally, the dead body is destined for resurrection and eternal life.  This is not true of the body of an animal and it proves that it is not sufficient to visualise ‘therapeutic purposes’ for a proper evaluation and treatment of the human corpse.

…

   “Generally speaking, doctors should not be permitted to undertake excisions or other operations on a corpse without the permission of those charged with its care, and perhaps even in the face of objections previously expressed by the person in question.  Nor would it be fair for the bodies of poor patients in public clinics and hospitals to be regularly destined to the service of doctors and surgeons, while the bodies of wealthier patients are not…

…

  “Almost two years ago, on September 30, 1954, We expressed these same ideas in an allocution to the Eighth Congress of the International Medical Association… [in the following terms]:

’In what concerns the removal of parts from the body of a dead person for therapeutic purposes, a doctor is not permitted to treat the corpse in any way he wishes.  It belongs to the public authority to lay down suitable regulations.  But even the public authority may not act arbitrarily.  There are legal regulations to which one can raise serious objections.  One norm, such as that which permits the doctor in a sanitorium to remove parts of the body for therapeutic purposes, even though any question of profit is excluded, is inadmissible because of the possibility that it might be interpreted too freely.

   ’It is also necessary to take into consideration the rights and duties of those whose obligation it is to assume responsibility for the body of the deceased.  And, finally, the demands of natural morality, which forbid us to consider and treat the body of a human being merely as a thing, or as the body of an animal, must at all times be duly respected.’”

______________________________________

Part 2

DON PIETRO LEONE: CHAINS OF EVIL

The question of the vaccination against the ‘Corona Virus’ by foetal ‘cell-lines’ concerns the legitimacy of participation in moral evil.  In the following we shall present:

I.  the three relevant moral features to the practice;

II.  an observation about the Magisterium; and

III.  a closer analysis at the evil involved.

___________________________

I   The three relevant moral features to the practice are:

a)  The nature of the evil;

b)  The closeness of participation in the evil;

c)  The possible justification for such participation.

a)  The Nature of the Evil

The evil that is typically envisaged by those who would wish to legitimise the vaccination, is the evil of abortion.  The abortion is sometimes considered to be:

i)  solely of a spontaneous nature (i.e. a miscarriage);

ii)  of a restricted number, perhaps comprising only one;

iii)  the only evil involved [abortus ipse Ed.].

We shall look at each claim in turn.

i)  The Possibility of using a Miscarriage for Vaccines

Such a possibility is non-existent for, as Dr. Gonzalo Herranz, Professor of Hystology and General Embryology at the University of Navarre, in Spain, explains: to obtain embryo cells for culture it is necessary to proceed by ‘dissecting it [the embryo] while still alive’. [1]

ii)  The Possibility that the Abortions are Few in Number 

As to the number of the original abortions, we reply that they should be rather estimated in their hundreds or thousands. [2]  We refer in particular to the ‘HEK 293-line’. [3]  A number of other lines have also been shown to involve multiple abortions 4.

iii)  That the Only Evil behind Vaccination is the Abortion

This is untrue.  The full evil involved may be described as follows: before being murdered, the child is extracted from the womb, not baptised, operated on alive without anaesthetics, parts of his body stolen, worked on, and trafficked for financial profit, and the rest of his body disposed of like common refuse.  Here there is not one grave evil, but ten:

1.  Extraction of a child from the womb before birth;

2.  Denial of baptism, so debarring him or her from Heaven;

3.  Torture;

4.  Theft of body parts;

5.  Murder of the child;

6.  Disposal of the rest of the body;

7.  Manipulation of body parts;

8.  Marketing of body parts;

9.  Desecration of the child in instances (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) and (viii);

10.  Violation of the child’s rights in all instances.

b)  The Closeness of Participation in the Evil

Because it is claimed that the abortion is the only evil in issue and that this evil existed in the past, probably, indeed, in the distant past, it is argued that the participation [5] can only be remote and passive.  We note that the term ‘remote’ in moral theology possesses a moral sense, signifying the lack of direct moral involvement in the evil concerned.

We reply that the co-operation is not remote and passive, but proximate and active, for the evil in question in fact consists not in one single past event, but in the proximate and active participation in a process which extends from the original abortion to the very act of injection itself.  This process is not simply a concatenation of discrete and isolated events, but a continuous, unbroken chain extending from the extraction of the child from the mother’s womb and culminating in the vaccination, as the last link of the chain.  We call this chain a ‘chain of evil’ corresponding to the ‘cell-line’, in virtue of the moral value that supervenes upon the physical continuum.

This chain is a real entity, consisting, in scholastic terms, of both a material and a formal element: the former being the part of the child’s body, and the latter being the intention of the abortionist and/or scientist who procured and developed it for medical and mercantile ends.  Furthermore, the continuity of the chain and the magnitude of the evil that it bears, renders it capable of sustaining a demonic charge over time.

Even if no part of the child’s body is any longer present in the final vaccine, as in the case of some types of product, the intentional element that we have mentioned above will still exist, and thereby still forms a chain over time, albeit of a purely spiritual nature.

As for the claim that the abortion in issue probably occurred in the distant past—in which case the co-operation would be even more remote (at least on the temporal level)—we note that abortions accompanied by all the evils enumerated above are being carried out in the present, as the document ‘The Voice of Women...’ relates. [6]  It points out that cell-lines have an ‘expiry date’ and that manufacturers ‘have a strong incentive to create new ones’; it records that abortionists have ‘admitted to amending surgical procedures so as to ensure that some body parts are left intact and usable by researchers’.

c)  The Justification for the Participation in the Evil

Because those that advocate vaccination hold that there is no evil to it, they do not hold that it requires moral justification, and state that its possible effects on the person vaccinated is purely ‘a matter of science’.  But if, as we have argued, there is evil in it, then it does require a moral justification, or justa causa, and such a justification needs moreover to be proportionate to the evil in question.

The justification typically given for vaccination is the preservation of the health of the person vaccinated, or of those with whom he or she will come into contact.  This justification is, however, without substance. 

As to the argument concerning the health of the person vaccinated: Dr Michael Yeadon, former Vice President and Chief Science Officer for ‘Pfizer’, warns in a recent address to American Frontline Doctors: ‘Please warn every person not to go near top up vaccines.  There is absolutely no need to use them... If someone wished to harm or kill a significant proportion of the world’s population over the next few years, the systems being put in place right now will enable it.  It’s my considered view that it is entirely possible that this will be used for massive-scale depopulation’. [7]

Indeed there is already much evidence of the negative effects of the vaccination.  A recent letter sent to the British Medical Journal by a London based Consultant, Dr Polyakova states: ‘The levels of sickness after vaccination is unprecedented and staff are getting very sick and some with neurological symptoms which is having a huge impact on the health service function.  Even the young and healthy are off for days, some for weeks, and some requiring medical treatment.  Whole teams are being taken out as they went to get vaccinated together’. [8]

As to the argument concerning the health of those with whom the person vaccinated will come into contact: it has not been scientifically established that injection prevents a person from carrying the virus.  The Chief Scientist of the ‘WHO’, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, opines: ‘At the moment I don’t believe we have any evidence of any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on'. [9]

Even if positive effects of the vaccine have been claimed by the media, we have seen that negative effects are undeniable, and we may say at the very least that its effects have not yet been established with scientific certainty.  We conclude that vaccination cannot be justified on health grounds.

Conclusion to Critique

Our critique of vaccination for the current global virus has shown the invalidity of the three assumptions on which it rests:

-  that the only relevant evil is abortion;

-  that the participation in the evil in question is remote and passive;

-  that vaccination may be justified for health reasons. 

We conclude that vaccination cannot be justified morally.  Whether it can be excused is another matter.  The Church desires heroism of us, but will not condemn us if we fail to practise it.  She teaches that moral responsibility in general can be lessened, or even removed, by fear, violence (including psychological pressure), or by ignorance.  How indeed can we blame the elderly for taking the vaccine, believing all they see in the media, under pressure from family members, and fearful of death; or employees threatened with redundancy; or Catholics of good will docile to the recent statements of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (‘CDF’), to the judgments of religious orders and congregations, and even to the Pope and the Queen of England?

II  The Magisterium

Someone might object that our critique does not correspond to the Church Magisterium of the CDF in regard to vaccines, which states that it is licit to use such vaccines if no others are available and if  the person vaccinated disapproves the original abortion.  We would however reply with the ‘Women in Defence of Unborn Babies...’ (op.cit.) that: ‘We humbly suggest that such statements... are based on an incomplete assessment of vaccination and immunology...’

If we express dissent from such CDF statements, it does not, however, mean that we reject Church Magisterium in this field.  For in the past two generations divergence may be found in the Magisterium between positions which correspond more or less accurately to the Faith and to Reality and it is our duty to adopt the position that corresponds more accurately to them, both in this field and in general.

In the matter in question, the more accurate position is, we consider, that of Pope John Paul II, above all in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, in which he takes an unconditional stand for human life in the face of what he calls the ‘culture of death’ within modern society.  Of course he does not address the question of vaccines explicitly, but nevertheless he affords us the moral principles necessary for resolving the issue.  The principles are the following:

a)  Sins against unborn life are of an extreme gravity;

b)  They form part of ‘structures of sin’ in society;

c)  Catholics must make a stand in defence of human life.

a)  Sins against Unborn Life are of an Extreme Gravity

The Pope’s solemn condemnation of these evils, which by its formulation appears to enjoy infallible status, reads as follows: [10]

“… by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, in communion with the Bishops… I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.  This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.  No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church.

“This evaluation of the morality of abortion is to be applied also to the recent forms of intervention on human embryos which… inevitably involve the killing of those embryos.  This is the case with experimentation on embryos… This moral condemnation also regards procedures that exploit living human embryos and foetus… either to be used as ‘biological material’ or as providers of organs or tissue for transplants in the treatment of certain diseases.  The killing of innocent human creatures, even if carried out to help others, constitutes an absolutely unacceptable act.”

b)  Such Sins form Part of ‘Structures of Sin’ in Society

[Pope John Paul] speaks [11] of a ‘reality, which can be described as a veritable structure of sin.  This reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity, and in many cases takes the form of a veritable culture of death’, a culture excessively concerned with efficiency which constitutes ‘a war of the powerful against the weak’.  In this way a kind of ‘conspiracy against life’ is unleashed, ‘a conspiracy which amounts to ‘scientifically and systematically programmed threats’ against life.  Amongst those implicated in this conspiracy are international institutions which promote contraception, sterilisation and abortion, and the mass media which promote the same evils, as well as euthanasia, as ‘a mark of progress and a victory of freedom’.  Enormous financial resources are invested in research into methods of abortion....

c)  Catholics Must Make a Stand in Defence of Human Life

The Pope speaks in these terms: “... the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example the right to health, to home, to work, to the 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.” [12}

Conclusion

We may apply these three principles to the case of the vaccination by saying that the treatment of unborn children in the ten ways that we have listed above is ‘absolutely unacceptable’; that the process by which it occurs forms part of ‘a veritable structure of sin’ in society, involving ‘international institutions which promote contraception, sterilization, and abortion, and the mass media who promote the same evils’ where ‘enormous financial resources are invested’; that Catholics must make a stand in defence of human life at this its most vulnerable stage.  When and where, indeed, can Catholics stand up in defence of human life ‘with maximum determination’ if not here and now?

III  The Evil in Question

The evil in question, as we have said above, is the evil of a process: that of the extrication from the womb, debarment from Heaven, torture, depredation, murder, disposal, manipulation, trafficking, infringement of rights, and desecration, of innocent and entirely defenceless children.

On account of the gravity of this evil, participation in it cannot be compared to the use of organs provided by donors, or to the cannibalism of the survivors of the Andean plane-crash; on account of the proximate and active nature of the participation, it cannot be compared either to participation in the evils of a Communist régime by the purchase of a mask made in China, as has been submitted, or to the participation in the evils of the modern state by paying taxes.

Furthermore, the evil should not be seen solely in reference to any given individual in isolation from its context, but rather, from the view-point outlined in Evangelium Vitae, as an integral part of an entire global structure of sin, promoted by Masonic, anti-life organisations such as the ‘WHO’ [13], as well as by the entire industry parasitic upon abortion: not only that of vaccination for the treatment of the macabrely-named ‘Covid 19’, but also of more than 20 other illnesses [14]; and not only the industry of vaccination, but also that of commodities such as flavour enhancement [15] or whatever else may, as we write, be being gestated in the corrupt breeding-grounds of perverse and darkened hearts.

In a word, we are speaking of a social and universal structure of sin: that of the treatment of man as an object to be used, abused, and disposed of at will.  This structure, which is the materialistic, hedonist legacy of the ‘self-deifying atheism’ of the present age, is being built, like some defiant monster of modern architecture, on the ruins of what was once that resplendent mansion of holy matrimony, established by Christ Himself  to perpetuate His love for the Church in Christian couples, for the procreation and sanctification of children.

Of this mansion there now remains little more than the sexual instinct, together with its delicate, fragile, and ever more rarely blossoming flower of human life: both increasingly channelled to inhuman, heinous abuse.  It is to protect this inchoate human life and to rebuild holy matrimony to its former glory that we must stand up, strong in the Faith and in the trust in Divine Providence [16]: to break the world free from the ‘money-changers of dead bodies’ [17] and from the paralysing chains of Satan.

+ Don Pietro Leone, on the Feast of St. Hermenegildus, King and Martyr

FOOTNOTES

1  in Italian scientist Pietro Croce’s book ‘Vivisection or Science?’, 1991

2  Life Site News, Feb. 1^st 2021

3  … and that doesn't mean that there were 293 abortions, but for 293 experiments you need far more than one abortion.  And we're talking about probably 100’s of abortions'.  Life Site News, Feb. 19^th 2021

4  The WI-38 came from the 32^nd abortion; WI-26 from the 20^th; WI-44 cell from the 38^th; The MRC-5 line required 5 abortions; WALVAX2, the most recent aborted foetal cell line, came from the 9^th; RA273 from the 27^th abortion, which led to 40 subsequent abortions. Life Site News, ibid. 

5  or ‘co-operation’ which is the term typically used in the debate.  But co-operation in the original evil by performing a later act is of course logically impossible, since co-operation entails simultaneity.

6  ‘The Voice of Women in Defence of Unborn Babies and in Opposition to Abortion-tainted Vaccines’ https://edwardpentin.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/STATEMENT-The-Voice-of-Women-in-Defense-of-Unborn-Babies-and-in-Opposition-to-Abortion-tainted-Vaccines-WORD-DOC.pdf

7 https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/former-pfizer-vp-to-aflds-entirely-possible-this-will-be-used-for-massive-scale-depopulation.  In this connection we mention a dictum of the celebrated media magnate Mr Bill Gates in 2010: ‘If we really get to work on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health service, we could lower that [world population] by perhaps 10 or 15 %.’

8  https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n810/rr-14

9https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronavirus-vaccine-prevent-transmissions-2020-12?op=1

10  Evangelium Vitae, part I

11  ibid.

12  in Christifideles Laici 38, quoted by Cardinal Pujats of Riga in his ‘Statement on Vaccine Immorality’ of December 12^th 2020, signed by four other distinguished prelates

13  The ‘WHO’ has a history of anti-life machinations through vaccination: 'in 2015, Vatican Radio charged that the UN organisations 'WHO' and 'UNICEF' were again executing vast international programs of depopulating the earth by using vaccines to surreptitiously sterilise women in Third World countries… The 'WHO' inoculated more than 130 million women in 52 countries with this vaccine, permanently sterilising some very large percentage of them without their knowledge or consent.' https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/a-cautionary-tale-about-the-who/

14  including chicken-pox, heart-problems, measles, mumps, hepatitis, cancer, and typhoid, cf. Children of God for life https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/vaccineListOrigFormat.pdf

15  ‘Senomyx’

16  How could God not provide for his children who refused to co-operate in this evil? 'Faith fears no famine' says Tertullian, On Idolatry ch.12).  Or how, by contrast, could a Catholic present it as a health remedy or safeguard, in other words as an act of Divine Providence? 

17  Aeschylus, Agamemnon 437

______________________________________