![]() But none of them is bound by anything another bishop says. All of them are subject to the authority of the pope. Each diocese is overseen by a bishop who is the authoritative pastor and teacher of doctrine for his own diocese.Ĭatholic bishops enjoy a tremendous amount of autonomy inside their own dioceses. The Catholic Church divides the globe into dioceses. The Catholic Church is both a global institution and a highly local one. Jurisdictional distinctions are important in Catholicism. But in reality, the Catholic Church is more complex and much more fragmented than those outside often can see. In one dimension, this is an accurate description of the church, which is a monarchy and does have one central authority in Rome. It is this sensibility that gives rise to media headlines about the Catholic Church’s moral concerns over the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The popular image of the Catholic Church is that it is a top-down organization, one unified voice with one central authority. Still, weighing and balancing everything that is at stake, most Catholic bioethicists, many Catholic bishops and Pope Francis have found that receiving any of the vaccines is “ morally acceptable,” which was the judgment of the Pontifical Academy for Life, a Vatican office that studies bioethical issues.īut there have been prominent Catholic bishops and other Catholic voices who have said that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may not be administered by, or received by, a Catholic. Pope Francis surrounded by bishops in red. ![]() ‘Morally acceptable’īecause the benefit obtained from stem cells that resulted from an abortion is a little bit more direct in the case of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, Catholics have been more hesitant. Catholic moral principles can often help Catholics weigh and balance competing moral priorities. It is shockingly easy to cooperate in evil in the course of daily life. Rarely are our moral choices so clear as these examples, however. To accept a benefit from what is deemed an evil act even at some remote distance can be to cooperate with it in some situations. This example is a little more like the case of fetal stem cells. If I discover that a bank robber has used stolen money to buy me an expensive gift, I have profited from the robbery if I keep the gift and do not report the robber to authorities. The driver has cooperated.Ĭooperation can take many shapes. ![]() Yet, driving the robbers away assures the robbery’s success. The driver might not actually rob the bank or even approve of the robbery. The moral principle involved is called “ cooperation in evil.” To understand cooperation, we might imagine the getaway driver in a bank robbery. Catholic moral theologyįaithful Catholics feel morally bound by the teaching of the Catholic Church that abortion is an intrinsic moral evil – an act which never can have a justification. However, Catholic moral theology obliges believers to be concerned that they might benefit from the abortions that resulted in those initial fetal stem cells. Johnson & Johnson said in a statement recently: “Several types of cell lines created decades ago using fetal tissue exist and are widely used in medical manufacturing but the cells in them today are clones of the early cells, not the original tissue.” The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is somewhat different from the other vaccines because stem cells were used not only to test the vaccine in the lab, but also to produce it. 26, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans released a statement saying that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is “morally compromised as it uses the abortion-derived cell line in development and production of the vaccine as well as the testing.” Four days later, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the national body of Catholic bishops, stated, “if one has the ability to choose a vaccine, Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccines should be chosen over Johnson & Johnson’s.”Ī few days later, Kevin Rhoades, one of the bishops who issued the statement, attempted to clarify things when he said, “There’s no moral need to turn down a vaccine, including the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is morally acceptable to use.” But only hours later, the bishop of Bismarck, North Dakota said the “Johnson & Johnson vaccine is morally compromised and therefore unacceptable for any Catholic physician or health care worker to dispense and for any Catholic to receive due to its direct connection to the intrinsically evil act of abortion.” Questions about whether the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is morally acceptable to observant Catholics due to concerns over use of fetal stem cells in its development have brought the deep divisions within the Catholic Church into public view. What is behind the confusion about Catholics taking the Johnson & Johnson vaccine? Phill Magakoe/AFP via Getty images
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