If you're attacked (and yes, it's an attack) by someone in the Church to accept the Covid vaccines against your will, I urge you to read Janet Smith's article: The Fake Theology behind Vaccine Mandates. Janet recently retired from the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. Her impressive academic credentials don't prevent her from writing a spirited and readable essay!
She rightly observes that most arguments rely on authority, not good reasoning. But what authority? The most important point she makes is that the decision to accept or reject a medical procedure is a prudential one.
Therefore, such prudential decisions cannot be made under authority -- no authority can do more than simply offer principles. The principles in the case of the Covid vaccines tend more towards rejecting them than accepting them -- but that is my determination and opinion. Yours might be different. In the matter of a particular treatment, one must decide for oneself (or for one's children or other legal dependents).
Prof. Smith considers it deceptive that those urging vaccination, (and even, incredibly, approving of or enabling mandates), though they rest their argument on authority, fail to cite the most authoritative statement to this effect: "At the same time, practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary." (the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Note on the Morality of Using Some Anti-Covid-19 Vaccines)
However, as she points out: "None of these documents, however, have the degree of magisterial authority to require assent; they are all low-level documents or non-magisterial statements that cannot impose obligations on Catholics."
"Lumen Gentium 25 [cited as authority for getting the vaccines] cannot possibly apply: so far as I know, no respectable theologian has ever claimed that the authority of the papal magisterium extends to whether or not an individual should get a vaccine, any vaccine, let alone an experimental vaccine. The Holy Father is not an expert on the health risks of a virus or the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and even if he were, again, papal authority does not extend to such matters."
Her whole argument should be read by everyone and shared widely with pastors and others pushing vaccines and mandates on the faithful.
I would like to add a few notes of my own:
1. Among other prudential considerations, the implications are obviously dire if we acquiesce to the power of the state to force a medical procedure on the populace, particularly one that infringes on bodily integrity, including even a passive acceptance of other institutions (corporations, schools, medical facilities, and so on) making the procedure a condition of participation.
In this case the procedure is touted as life-saving (something questionable even by the authorities' own metrics and definitions, which change daily) Even the vaccines' manufacturers claim no more than that they will alleviate symptoms -- not that they will prevent death or even transmission), and they do carry significant risks.
In another case the procedure could be overtly life-threatening. It's already established, and scandalously not opposed by our moral leaders, that children can be taken for an abortion or to be implanted with a contraception without parental consent or knowledge.
We simply must be aware of where this power has already led and could lead and not be naive about the larger context.
2. Janet points out:
Yes, the “Note” does speak of the “duty to pursue the common good” but implicitly acknowledges that there may be other ways to protect the common good and also, extremely importantly, that those who have a conscientious objection to vaccines produced from cell lines from aborted fetuses, if they work to protect the vulnerable, need not get a COVID-19 vaccine. [my emphasis]
I must add that the CDF's "Note" overreaches here in imposing an extra responsibility on those refusing the vaccine, as if we don't have positive reasons. Again, these theologians are not medical experts. They are accepting government authority's claims. The burden of protecting the vulnerable falls on all, not only those who do not take the vaccine.
Everyone must take reasonable precautions such as normal (not obsessive) washing of hands, staying home when sick, and not coughing and sneezing on others. Some have pointed out the considerable evidence that it's the vaccinated who put the vulnerable at risk. This is certainly the case for other (actual) vaccines. It's known (though not widely so) that those receiving certain vaccines are responsible for outbreaks of the very diseases their shots protect against.
At the same time, no one has the right not to die of natural causes. Life is about assessing risks and making decisions. We would be paralyzed -- and actually end up endangering others -- if we considered ourselves ultimately responsible for risks to others that we can't actually control.
3. Janet points out that those insisting on the vaccines give "no consideration to the fact that people have no obligation to use experimental medicines or procedures. The Declaration on Euthanasia (section 4) makes it clear that patients may use experimental means but that they need not do so if they judge the risk to be too great."
She is right.
But additionally, it simply has to be stated that one has the right to bodily integrity, and therefore one is not under an obligation to undergo any medical treatment one wishes to avoid. Society may have the right to quarantine a contagious person (but would have to demonstrate the need and be subject to recourse in law). But as far as requiring that someone undergo a procedure such as an injection that violates bodily integrity, no.
4. Pope Pius XI stated in the encyclical Casti Connubii paragraph 70 the position of the Church in her teaching role: "Public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects; therefore, where no crime has taken place and there is no cause present for grave punishment, they can never directly harm, or tamper with the integrity of the body, either for the reasons of eugenics or for any other reason."
Anyone claiming to argue from authority in the Catholic Church must grapple with this statement and the larger support of practical wisdom and conscience that the Church has always maintained.
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