Page 53 - Vaccines

Key principles of Catholic moral theology

given advice and warnings where these are justified. Thus,
the instances noted in which certain individuals may need
to be exempted from a specific vaccination and, if possible,
provided with an alternative because of demonstrable
health complications of the kind noted, are one example
of subsidiarity, where the professional expertise in the
given instance of the lower entity of the professional
doctor limits an otherwise unjust and dangerous intrusion
of the higher entity. Of course, it is also the same principle
of subsidiarity which justifies the State’s intervention in
the health of those on its territory, something which
individuals, local doctors and even professional bodies
would be incapable of handling effectively without the
help (subsidium) of the higher entity, here of the State.
However, there is a further instance of subsidiarity of
great relevance for the question under discussion here,
namely the relationship between the State and the family.
Normally speaking, even in questions of health, it is not
for the State to decide what should be done and when,
but either the persons themselves, if adults, or the parents
or guardians or tutors of children and of other persons
not able to judge for themselves. The primary educators
of children are the parents, stemming from their duties
and rights in regard to the bonum prolis.31 The State has
no right to intervene in caring for the health of their
children except where individual parents neglect their
children or where there is an actual epidemic or a real
danger of (a renewal of) an epidemic, when public
vaccination with proven, effective, safe and otherwise
morally unobjectionable vaccines can be required.

31 Cf. John Paul II, Familiaris consortio, n. 37, where he applies the
principle of subsidiarity to education and in particular to sex
education of the children.

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