Page 33 - Vaccines

Key principles of Catholic moral theology

patient, of their parent or tutor or at least their presumed
consent in the case of urgent necessity, since the patient
is never an object to be treated, but always and only a
subject whose medical good is to be restored, protected,
or otherwise served, as just noted.

iv. The role of vaccines and the therapeutic
principle
It is clearly within this framework that the proper con-
sideration of the role of vaccination must be located. In
this context, the “competent” patient (actually capable of
judging and deciding in his or her own right), the parent
for an infant, the parent in consultation with the child to
the extent that the child can understand and can make
some level of decision about his or her treatment, or the
legal tutor in other cases, must judge what they should
accept as treatment, but only within the limits of what is
objectively morally right, since no-one ever has a right
to do wrong to themselves or to others. Pope Francis’
remarks in his televised interview and the transmission
of Grignolio noted above, both directed towards the
protection of the health of the individual and of the
community more broadly, may be said to point to a duty
in principle to be vaccinated or to have vaccinated those
for whom we are responsible, but that would be so only
in the case of a vaccine properly and fully approved as
effective and secure by competent authorities, where
there are no contra-indications from allergies, other
medical conditions or therapies, and provided there were
no moral compromises involved in the origin, develop-
ment and production of the specific vaccines concerned.

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