Page 13 - Vaccines

The existence and the use of

vaccines

a. Some general presuppositions

he fact that for some decades vaccines exist and
are in widespread use, which have been derived
T from cells cultured from aborted foetuses is well
known. It reflects a number of tendencies which stem
from philosophical positions at odds with the tenets and
presuppositions of authentic Catholic doctrine. It may
imply the express espousal of atheism or of radical
agnosticism, but, even where this is not so, it seems to
have roots in the Enlightenment view of a God who
exists, but whose revelation is not acknowledged because
it is deemed to be contrary to “reason”, interpreted by
ideological rationalism as the exclusive criterion for the
recognition of truth. Where Christian believers may be
involved in the production and use of such vaccines, this
may connote a misunderstanding and privatisation of
their faith, effectively dissociating God's revelation of
himself in Christ, his call to us to salvation and his
redemptive act through which we are saved, from the
moral life. The latter may be understood reductively as
some vague sense of a duty of love towards God and
especially towards neighbour, with the latter being
identified concretely as furnishing human beings who
are ill or who are potentially threatened by dangerous,
even lethal, diseases with the vaccines which may render