BC Catholic
Reproduced with permission
Alan Yoshioka
Paul Schratz’s Aug. 26 column, “Conscience versus vaccination passports,” objected to mandatory vaccinations on the grounds of Catholic teaching on the primacy of conscience.
Conscience rights in Canada have been under attack for years. So it is understandable for social conservatives to be on high alert for any further threats to our legitimate and intrinsic rights. However, certain watchdogs don’t know how to stop barking.
The section of the Catechism on conscience (1776–1802) indeed merits prayerful consideration. Truly, we must not be compelled to act contrary to our conscience (CCC 1782). So even those of us who strongly favour vaccination should pause to think through policies recently announced by several provinces.
Any restrictions must be rationally related to risk. A passport governs access to certain activities, while a mandate applies to certain categories of people; the latter, being more intrusive, requires a stronger rationale. Accommodations (such as testing) for the unvaccinated (for medical exemptions or those who refuse) would affect how fair any passport system or mandate might be. My point here is that conscience rights concerning vaccine hesitancy must not be considered in isolation from our broader moral obligations.
Schratz quotes the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which wrote in December 2020, “Practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary. In any case, from the ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good” (emphasis in original).
The principle of the common good is one of the four pillars of Catholic Social Teaching. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church(164–170) explains that the state has an essential role to play in justly harmonizing the interests of different social actors. Not infrequently the state must exert pressure on citizens who on their own show little concern for their neighbours’ well-being.
Now, by virtue of our dignity as creatures made in the image of God, we have an intrinsic right to bodily integrity. Barring extreme circumstances, we therefore have a right to be informed about the risks and benefits of medical treatment offered to us and to refuse treatment.
Social media feeds are awash with expressions of impatience and even hostility towards people who have not been vaccinated, sometimes as if they all were rigid COVID denialists. A small minority, tragically, have been misled to believe fantastical notions such as that the pandemic is a hoax. Most people’s reasons for hesitation, though, are a good deal more mundane and relatable, as Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd has pointed out.
Research suggests relatively high rates of vaccine hesitancy among persons who have immigrated within the last 10 years, Indigenous persons, and certain racial minorities. In B.C., ethnic Chinese men and women aged 18–34 top the chart at 28% hesitant.
Some hesitating people are unconvinced that the vaccines are effective. Some are troubled by the risk of side effects. (Serious clotting and heart disorders are treatable and thankfully quite uncommon.)
It is true enough that the COVID vaccines simply haven’t been around long enough for any potential long-term adverse events to emerge. Any previous vaccines that have caused problems in the long term, however, have exhibited clear signs of trouble within a few months of being administered, and such disturbing safety signals simply haven’t shown up among the more than 3 billion persons worldwide who have received at least one dose since December.
Many people have no strong objection to the vaccines; they just haven’t felt a sense of urgency.
A keen concern among many readers of this paper, though, has been a remote material connection between abortions that were performed decades ago and cell lines used in production of some vaccines and testing of others. In response, the CDF has consistently and authoritatively declared that when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available it is morally acceptable to receive those such as the four currently authorized in Canada.
We have a duty to form our consciences well, in conformity with the truth. So Catholics should be very wary of anyone who attempts to bind them to a stricter standard than the Church requires. Manifestly, a minority of Catholics have rejected authoritative teachings (see CCC 1785) in favour of an alternative Magisterium. Certain strident commentators on Church affairs, appealing to a small number of clerics sympathetic to their cause, have promoted scrupulosity about the vaccines with little regard for the hundreds of thousands of deaths that the vaccines could have prevented worldwide and countless more deaths that could still be prevented.
They strain out a gnat (Mt 23:24). Father Matthew Schneider, LC, has argued that anyone sincerely refusing the COVID vaccines on grounds of remote cooperation with abortion would also need for consistency’s sake to refuse almost all the leading prescription and over-the-counter medications, and to boycott all goods made in China. (The latter is a commendable target, but it’s well nigh impossible to meet.)
The CDF cautions that those who do refuse vaccination for reasons of conscience “must do their utmost to avoid … becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable” (emphases added).
The risk to public health can be reduced through alternative measures such as masking, frequent asymptomatic testing, and mobility restrictions. Unfortunately, many people who refuse vaccination also balk at such alternatives. Too often they rationalize their practices by cherry-picking biased or even completely bogus research that tells them only what they want to hear (see 2 Tim 4:3-4).
Sadly typical of such selectivity is Jay Cameron’s comment in the same issue. He asserts that a vaccine mandate per se is unconstitutional, which is hard to fathom, given that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not treat rights as absolute: rights, rather, are “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
Catholic teaching, along with the Charter, calls us to broadly consider all the issues at hand. Conscience is not a warrant for unfettered autonomy but a call to responsibility and virtue (CCC 1792, 1781).