All current Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson COVID gene therapy injections are immoral because of their connection to abortion and numerous other reasons. Sadly, many who claim leadership positions within the Church believe and teach that the Moderna and Pfizer RNA injections are morally acceptable to receive. The J&J injection may not even be an issue anymore as it was recently taken off the market. Regardless, faithful Catholics need to persuasively respond to these specious arguments.
And right off the bat, to answer the inevitable argument from prideful, insufferable Modernist legalists that I have no authority to address such issues, I don’t need a degree in theology to address this issue or need to wield any apostolic authority to do so because the only principles of moral theology I will discuss are ones most Catholics already agree on and taught by the Church’s Magisterium. At the end of the day, I am simply exercising my conscience by applying common sense to undisputed moral principles. I hope it’s persuasive for those who must make a choice as to whether to receive these injections.
The Vatican, the Pontifical Academy for Life (PALF), and most of the world’s bishops are jeopardizing the souls of millions of people when they publicly proclaimed that the Moderna and Pfizer RNA injections (which they erroneously call vaccines) are morally acceptable to receive. They also managed to cut the pro-life movement off at the knees by effectively telling the world that abortion is not really a big deal.
It also appears after several months of debate that those defending the injections (vax defenders) and those opposed to them are missing the point to some extent, which is why the debates have become so bogged down and stagnated to the point Catholics still are not sure what the right thing to do is. The debates have become exhausting, hard to follow and leaving people confused.
I contend that everyone is missing the big picture. When we take a step back and look at the deceptive arguments made by vax defenders, focus on the real issues at stake, and then expose the ideology driving those who push for everyone to get “the jab”, the morally correct path and response to the RNA injections becomes crystal clear.
Over the course of three posts, I will make three points that should help re-frame the debates and expose with clarity why it is morally unacceptable and devastating to the pro-life movement when the Vatican, PALF, the bishops and other Church leaders and commentators tell the world that these injections are morally acceptable and even obligatory to receive.
The three points I will focus on begins with the deceptive debate tactics used by the vax defenders (PART 1); a common tactic used that I call “legalism.” Second, I will discuss why the moral debate should shift its focus to the scandal the Church and her members cause when publicly approving of abortion-tainted vaccines and RNA injections (PART 2). In the third post, I will focus on the heresy of Modernism and how it is the driving force behind those who rabidly insist the injections are morally acceptable (PART 3).
Defining Legalism and How it Works
The term “legalism” can mean different things to different people in a religious context. Often, liberals and Modernist heretics deride traditional and faithful Catholics as “legalists” when claiming that those who follow the traditions and teachings of the Catholic Church are rigid, unmerciful and uncharitable when it comes to dealing with the sinner. Far from being true, on the contrary, I will show that the liberal Catholic and Modernist is actually the true legalist, but in a different sense.
Basically, when I refer to “legalism,” I am referring to the idea of manipulating the facts and sometimes the underlying moral principles to create the outward appearance that a certain act conforms to a guiding principle or law with the purpose of justifying or defending such an act. While it may be a good skill to learn if one is a zealous attorney in the secular world, when it comes to the Modernist trained in post-Vatican II/Jesuitical argumentation tactics, it usually means applying moral laws or guiding principles in such a way to excuse sin and corruption—that is, they manipulate facts and applicable principles to provide legal cover for bad or even mortally sinful behavior.
Attorneys in the secular world engage in this type of legal argumentation all the time in order to defend or represent their clients. The key to the legalist mindset and thought process is to always begin with the conclusion you want to reach, and then work backwards in order to justify and achieve that predetermined goal.
In the realm of constitutional law, the Roe v. Wade decision was a classic example, although in that case it was the Court itself that improperly engaged in such tactics. There, the Supreme Court clearly wanted to find and define a constitutional right to kill an unborn baby, but there was nothing in the text of the constitution itself to support such an evil and absurd notion. To reach the ultimate desired conclusion, the Court ignored both logic and scientific evidence supporting the notion that life began at conception, and then proceeded to construct out of thin air artificial constitutional concepts (such as the right to privacy) derived from other well-accepted constitutional principles such as the protection against search and seizure without a warrant. In “finding” a constitutional right to abortion, the Court manipulated both the facts and underlying legal principles in order to achieve the predetermined goal they wanted to reach.
Application of Legalism to the Moderna/Pfizer RNA Injections [1]
In order to illustrate how legalism works, I will explain the steps the typical legalist takes when justifying injections developed using aborted babies:
1. Identify the predetermined goal: The goal is to find a way to make receiving the Moderna/Pfizer RNA injections morally acceptable. Why would someone ever want to do this? Because of the Great Reset and Modernist influence within the Church, which I will explain in PART 3.
2. Identify and use a principle of moral theology that will make it easier “to prove” receiving the injections is moral: The vax defenders frequently refer to principles governing material cooperation with evil because material cooperation (as opposed to formal cooperation) does not require the intent to perform an evil act (such as the use of aborted baby cells in vaccine development) and therefore could be permitted. It is true that material cooperation with evil is permitted so long as the act is only indirectly connected to the evil. For a person to morally cooperate indirectly with an evil act, four conditions must be met: (1) the act must be good in itself or at least indifferent; (2) its immediate effect must be good; (3) the intention of the agent must be good; and (4) the agent must have a proportionately grave reason for acting.
3. Select the facts and sources needed to fit the moral principles identified above (ignore the ones that don’t): Next, the vax defender does research for factual support to show that the use of aborted baby cell lines in the vaccine development or production process is quite minimal and then finds sources to show how deadly the COVID virus really is. The key here is simply to refer to your favorite sources and ignore any sources that do not fit the argument. For example, cite to studies that manipulate statistics to make COVID look more dangerous than it is and assume for purposes of argument that it is uncontroverted or such common knowledge that it is self-evidently true; as if someone would argue over whether 2+2=4. If it is self-evidently true, any evidence to the contrary must be dismissed automatically because it is not even worthy of debate. The popular term used in these times is “it’s a conspiracy theory!”
4. Apply the self-selected facts (in step 3) to the principles (in step 2) to reach the pre-determined conclusion (in step 1): See how the legalist works backwards? Here, the legalist argues as follows: (1) the act of receiving a vaccination in general is not in itself bad, CHECK. (2) The immediate effect of supposedly becoming immune to COVID and not spreading disease is good, CHECK. (3) The presumed intention of the user is not to promote abortion but to avoid or prevent disease, CHECK. (4) Because COVID is so dangerous and deadly, the injection recipient has a proportionately grave reason for taking the jab, CHECK.
Presto! Therefore, the legalist concludes that receipt of the RNA injections, despite the reality that they were tested on aborted baby cell lines and creates substantial health risks, is moral and the practicing Catholic should not only feel free but be encouraged (or forced) to take the jab! Oh—and by the way—”if you have a problem with that, you are NOT charitable!”
The Problem with a Legalistic Approach
The problem with the legalist approach is that it doesn’t necessarily lead to the truth or even have that as a goal. It takes a predetermined conclusion and works backwards in order to justify that conclusion, manipulating and arguing self-selected facts in order to meet generally accepted moral conditions. By utilizing legalist tactics, almost any evil act can be justified using valid principles of moral theology—including receiving virtually untested abortion-tainted vaccines.
Vax defenders want to reach the conclusion that receiving these injections is morally permissible. They self-select facts and apply them to the principles of material cooperation with evil in such a way to achieve the desired outcome and to “prove” it is perfectly fine for Catholics to get injected.
Oh—and by the way—”if you don’t agree then you are a disobedient unlettered plebian who should not even have an opinion on the subject!”
The problem, of course, is that just about anyone can engage in this type of sleight of hand on any moral question and find a way to make something evil good or make a good thing evil. Neither the Modernist nor his legalistic argumentation has as its goal achieving God’s Will or fulfilling His design. Rather, it conveniently serves to satisfy a human desire or vice. Legalism doesn’t engage in honest analysis of reality, but selectively uses data to achieve a selfish goal.
Legalism also makes it difficult for those who can see an obvious evil in front of them to defend the moral position because the legalist seemingly uses accepted and undisputed principles of moral theology to argue his case. But, as we have seen, this style of argumentation is not designed to reach the ultimate truth of the matter but designed to achieve a personal goal or benefit.
Legalism furthermore allows the debate to get bogged down in minutiae, such as arguing over how often or long ago aborted babies were used in development of vaccines, when the big picture is entirely missed. The Legalist likes to muddy the waters because it distorts or covers up the evil reality of what is going on to make their position more palatable to someone who is repulsed by the evil of killing unborn babies. Notice how these debates over the morality of the injections results in treating the horror of abortion as if it is just another bad thing in life we need to manage, like a bad hail storm? Trust me when I tell you, that is by design. We all become immune, not to COVID, but to the evil of abortion.
At the end of the day, Modernists and those influenced by Modernist thought use legalism to justify immoral acts to achieve a desired outcome. In PART 3, I will focus on the Modernist heresy to expose the motivations behind this effort to legitimize abortion-tainted medical treatment and will show how Modernism in conjunction with the Great Reset has controlled the debate over the RNA injections. But first, in PART 2, we need to refocus on exactly what moral principles we should be discussing and considering in the public square.
[1] The moral principles referred to are taken from the Handbook of Moral Theology by Dominic Prummer. Available at: https://ia803102.us.archive.org/31/items/HandbookOfMoralTheology_201805/Handbook%20Of%20Moral%20Theology.pdf