I Invite the Bishops Opposing the Use of Covid Vaccines to Retract. By Josef Seifert
I wish to add some words on the deeply moving and magnificent document signed by Bishop Schneider (whom I hold in highest esteem for his prophetic words and mission) and other bishops. This document urges us, under threat of serious sin, to absolutely refuse receiving vaccines that make use of cell-lines derived from aborted babies, because to do so would entail a material cooperation with the evil of abortion and fail to manifest a clear rejection of the terrible crime of abortion.
As I stated in my article, I agree a 100% with all said in this document on the crime of abortion and the need to witness to the truth. I also agreed with their conclusions including the moral wrongness of the vaccine, until I studied Professor de Mattei’s (a world-renowned champion for life) new book The Liceity of the Vaccine.
I do no longer agree with their conclusions that the use of the anti-Corona vaccine is sinful, however, for the following reasons:
1. To use a cell-line developed from a cell in the body of a murdered person is no cannibalism because a cell of his body is not the murdered person, and we do not even eat or use his cell but other cells developed from it. If I am murdered and a medical research team can develop from one of the cells of my body a vaccine, I shall be happy and not think that this has anything to do with cannibalism. Nor does such a good use of a cell from my body imply any approval of the crime to which mankind owes my cell.
2. One cannot cooperate in any way with a past crime formally or materially. Therefore, using this vaccine is no cooperation with abortion at all, also not the remotest material cooperation.
3. God often uses evils to create great goods, which is one sign of his omnipotence. This lies also at the center of divine revelation: God used the adultery and murder committed by King David to give mankind his descendants including Jesus Christ. To accept gratefully this good effect has nothing to do with a lack of rejecting the crime of adultery and murder.
4. God used the greatest of all sins, the murder of Jesus and the betrayal of Judas to give mankind the greatest gift of all gifts: redemption and the sacraments. To accept these gifts has nothing to do with approving the crime of Jesus’ crucifixion.
5. It is incoherent to demand abstaining from this vaccine if we do not abstain from a large number of other vaccines and medications that have been developed from cell-lines of aborted babies and saved millions of human lives; we would demand that countless people die rather than using any of these vaccines that all of us got as children or drugs against high blood pressure and uncounted others.
6. It is impossible for man, and therefore no obligation at all, to abstain from any action that includes a remote material cooperation with evil, such as to buy drugs in a pharmacy that also sells abortifacients (practically all pharmacies do), or to buy a product made in a communist and murderous state such as China with its forced abortion, and millions of other cases. To demand such a radical protest against all evils and a radical stop of any, however remote, material cooperation with them is humanly impossible to fulfill and puts a load on people too heavy for any man to carry.
7. The Magisterial teaching of the CdF and Pope Francis who signed this document, which affirms the moral liceity of using this vaccine is in keeping with documents and decisions taken by Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II. Thus, to contradict this teaching of the present Magisterium that is in full harmony with previous Church Teaching is to create a kind of counter-magisterium and independent magisterium, which a Catholic should not do nor follow.
8. If this appeal to all men not to use the vaccine, as long as no others are available, may contribute to many deaths, it involves a grave responsibility for many lives lost for an incorrect ethical and religious reasoning.
Therefore, I invite the bishops who issued the moral verdict on the use of the vaccine to retract this statement, and I applaud again Professor de Mattei’s superb book which taught me, through its careful and subtle reflections that are in full harmony with natural and revealed truth that many persons and I can in good conscience receive this vaccine and might even, for the sake of our own and many other lives, have a moral obligation to do so.
