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
2). 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 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 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, and
·
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 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 usus antiquior (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 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
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
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