Page 17 - Vaccines

The existence and the use of vaccines

principle, as well as the norms pertaining to scandal,
cooperation in the wrong-doing of others, and the right
and duty of conscientious objection. It concluded that,
since the MMR vaccine had been derived through
gravely immoral acts, with which there could be no
formal cooperation, because that would imply approval
of those acts, the authorities had a duty to make available
vaccines derived from sources involving no such
immoral conduct (and such were or should have been
available in the non-combined vaccines already in exist-
ence). It judged that, in the case where no effective
alternatively sourced vaccine were available, it would
not be immoral for parents to have their children vacci-
nated with the combined vaccine, since the vaccine as
such existed, did not itself provoke harm and did not
depend upon continuing abortions for its supply, but
also that public authorities had no right to impose such
a vaccine, in that parents had every right to undertake
conscientious objection for the reasons given.2
The question has resurfaced in the current pandemic.
In autumn, 2020, Pope Francis stated that the Church is
not an expert in the pandemic. In a televised interview in
December, 2020, he announced his intention to be vacci-
nated himself the following week, stating that “the vaccine
is ethical” and that he could not understand why so many
people were alarmed or fearful about receiving it.3
A new Pontifical commission on the coronavirus
pronounced itself on the subject, mostly by invoking
principles of the social doctrine of the Church (the

2 Fr G. J. Woodall, Statement on the MMR Vaccine, cf. Bishop
James Joseph McGuinness, Bishop of Nottingham, Attachment
to Ad Clerum, 21ˢᵗ October,1994.
3 Cf. Pope Francis, televised interview from Santa Marta in the
Vatican, 28ᵗʰ December, 2020.

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