Rorate Caeli

The COVID-19 Vaccination Debate: We cannibals and the children of Medea*

 

The following commentary regarding recent articles on Rorate Caeli  by Professor Roberto de Mattei and Father Richard Cipolla on vaccines, was written in response to my own conscience in disagreement with them on this extremely important issue and alters nothing of the high esteem and respect I have for both of them in their respective roles as Catholic priest and Catholic historian. I am fully aware that their scholarship and intellectual qualifications are light years ahead of mine – yet I still believe I have something to say about this matter as a reasonably informed and most concerned Traditional Catholic. I have no hard feelings because we differ in our stances on this subject:  just surprise and bewilderment.                                                                                                         F. R.

 


I oppose the position on the so-called licit use of Covid 19 vaccines for Catholics, that Professor De Mattei and Father Cipolla have proposed in their articles on Rorate Caeli over the past 2 weeks .


First, I am not anti-vaccine in principle and have had a few of them in my life.


Second, when I discovered a few years ago the horrific fact that aborted human-fetal cells were being used in or to test vaccines (and other things!) I began to have my doubts even about ‘normal’ flu vaccines – and I did some research on the subject.  What I discovered was enough to make my hair-stand-on-end.  It took me some time to take the horror in: that some human beings were selling to other human-beings, parts of other human beings derived from abortion, to pharmaceutical (and other) companies for scientific use and experimentation. Still today this is hard for me to swallow. In fact when I tell others (including my family) about it  - most don’t want to hear or refuse to believe it. But it doesn’t take much effort to find the evidence for this monstrous reality. Just a click will do – putting in the right key words.  Nonetheless, I have discovered most people (that I know) don’t really want to know or prefer to justify the use of human-fetal-cells ( a result of procured abortion) in the scientific experimentation of medicines -  to save other lives – so they say.


Third,  Prof De Mattei and Father Cipolla present the taking of vaccines for Covid 19 as morally feasible for Catholics,  even if they have been remote-tested on human-fetal cells, in such a way as to open the door and encourage a more general moral acceptance of the use of the cells of murdered babies for medical experimentation. At least that’s the way  their proposition could be interpreted and it is a dangerous slippery slope.


What happened to moral absolutism and the non-negotiables? There has to be moral absolutism in this field – or I believe we are sunk.  And not only me. Many Catholics. Some people are criticizing the good Bishop Schneider for this, when he rightly condemns in absolute terms the use of vaccines from human-fetal-cell-experimentation.  So the absolutists  against a vaccine-derived from human-fetal-cell-experimentation (like myself) are being condemned as intolerant, unreasonable and rabidly anti-intellectual.   I don’t get it.  Isn’t the truth found in absolutes? It is certainly not found in grey areas…

I found the following definition:  


"Absolute truth" is defined as inflexible reality: fixed, invariable, unalterable facts. For example, it is a fixed, invariable, unalterable fact that there are absolutely no square circles and there are absolutely no round squares.”

 

Is it not absolute Catholic truth that human fetal-cells-used in scientific experimentation come from a “human-being” – conceived and loved by God from the very moment of his or her existence – and made in His very image – known to God even before being formed in the womb?  And that any present benefit through vaccines derived from the use of harvested aborted-human-beings, made in the image and likeness of God, has a taste – however remote – of cannibalism about it?


I’m not suggesting that people who partake of these types of vaccines are cannibals, but they are perhaps unaware of the way many types of vaccines are produced and my use of this term 'cannibalism'  is employed in a literary not literal manner in order to provoke. 


Fourth, Prof de Mattei presents his case using as his authority the recent instruction of the Post Vatican II Magisterium (December 2020**) which baffles me somewhat as over the years both he and Father Cipolla have found ample and solid grounds to criticize and challenge the same wobbly Post Vatican II Magisterium. For example on Amoris laetitia.  Is the present Magisterium now to be trusted in so delicate a matter after its moral disasters of recent years?  I will stick with the absolute non-negotiables of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, as this latest “OK” from the present Magisterium would seem to minimize the awfulness of abortion itself and the dreadfulness of experimenting on a live baby at the embryonic stage.    So no thank you very much.


Fifth, Father Cipolla suggests that Catholics opposed to Covid 19 vaccines are creating “a threat” to the Traditional Movement.  I, instead, say that Catholics who  morally absolve the use of human-fetal-remains in scientific experimentation are in fact posing “a threat” to the Catholic Traditional Movement. He suggests that we who are opposed to the use of human-fetal scientific experimentation – remote or otherwise  – are guilty of “rabid anti-intellectualism” and of “threatening the recovery of Catholic Tradition within the Catholic Church”.  Again I see that it is the promoters of waiving moral responsibility about receiving these human-fetal-experimented vaccines against Covid, who point the finger at  Catholics opposed to the same,  accusing them of a “false heroism” as Prof de Mattei writes.  There is nothing heroic, false or otherwise, about being against these types of vaccines.   It is they, on the other hand, who are those seemingly creating division in the Traditional Catholic Movement inside the Church.  And I don’t understand why. The opponents of the human-fetal-experimented vaccine are accused of looking down on the Catholics who wish to take the human-fetal-experimented vaccines, depicted by implication as more rational and more truly Catholic –and in the end – more intellectual. I would say that it is the latter - who started it all – and who,  from a moral high-road, are looking down on the former. There is a kind of gas-lighting going on here that I find somewhat disturbing.


Then there are two more aspects on this serious subject that should be investigated further  from a Traditional Catholic perspective and which were not stressed enough by the two writers in question – at least in the articles I have read.


    1) It is no secret that the Covid 19 pandemic measures, which include mass-vaccination, are now being used as a political means (in the form of control and possible vaccine passports)  to reset the Western nations and a new global economy. It is so easy to find confirmation of this plan. Just go to the World Economic Forum site  - and you’ll see our elite masters, Klaus Schwab and his motley crew –Prince Charles included – happy to be at our service – to save us from the ‘black-death’ of the Covid 19 virus and in the process “reset” the world! And mass vaccination is a big part of it all. ***see link below They  see the virus as a “window of opportunity” to reset the world in such a way that according to Schwab in about 10 years or so “we will possess nothing and be happy”. Whether they will pull this madness off or not is debatable. It depends also on us though. But the fact is, this mentality is being spread everywhere. And the International, Global Vaccination Program is part of the Big Plan. Governments, the mass-media and advertising are hammering on it day and night.  How can it be denied?  And I don’t believe for one minute that Prof de Mattei or Father Cipolla want to be a part of this.

 

However, in Italian schools the World Economic Forum’s “2030 Sustainable Development Plan” is being taught (I’d say hammered on) at all levels. It’s part of the curriculum. This is not conspiracy theory – this is conspiracy fact. And anti-Covid 19 vaccinations distributed globally are part of this wonderful future and great reset…

 


1)        2)Which brings me to the last point which I address on tip-toes and I’m open to correction and criticism – since I’m not competent to discuss it in depth – but as a Catholic I have gleaned enough knowledge of it I believe to inform my conscience.


Prof. De Mattei and Father Cipolla with their insistence on the moral liceity of the above-mentioned vaccines seem not to be concerned too much that these so- called Covid 19 Vaccines (AstraZeneca, Johnston and Johnston, Pfizer, Moderna etc.) whether or not they contain human fetal cells or have used them in their production,  are not proven vaccines - according to some doctors and scientists. That is, they haven’t been tested over a sufficient period of time for their effectiveness and side–effects to be evaluated properly. Prevention of infection is not guaranteed as more vaccinations are suggested after some months from the first dose, and masks are still to be worn and social distancing is still to practiced! 


Plus the constant harping on vaccines anti-Covid 19 overshadows other valid cures for the Virus.  Again – you can find the information easily about these other medicines and treatments online. Also the Covid 19 situation cannot be compared to the past success of the Polio or Smallpox Vaccines. And I admit I do not know how these 2 vaccines were produced. But I sense we are on a different parallel here. From what I understand, Covid 19 is a highly contagious nasty virus, especially dangerous for a small minority, but not as devastating as these two diseases were for the general population at one point.


My question is: do Father Cipolla and Professor de Mattei not realize that with the expressing of their positions on the moral liceity of receiving human-fetal-cell -experimented (however remote) vaccines against Covid 19 that they have created more perplexity and aided, unwittingly, the enemies of Christ in their delirious obsession to vaccinate the entire planet?  By their stance, it might seem that they have bought into the current totalitarian political climate of the anti-Catholic “Great Reset”. My question is basically rhetorical as I don’t really think they have at all  – but with their position on this issue, truly  “confusion now hath made its masterpiece.” And here again I'm being provocative. 


Let me conclude my comment with 2 excerpts from “Noi Cannibali e I figli di Medea” a magisterial article written by the great Italian journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci in 2005, for the daily Corriere della Sera , when the bill for experimentation on the human embryo was being debated in the Italian Parliament.  Fallaci, a non-practicing Catholic, but a Traditional Catholic at heart**** was dead-set against this law being passed and in her usual marvelously scathing prose thrashed the proponents of such a law and defended the defenseless with the fierceness of a lioness shielding her cubs. 


My friends, Ratzinger is also right when he says that in the name of Science, grave wounds are increasingly being inflicted on the rights to Life.  He is right when he says that with the experiments on human embryos, the dignity of Man is vilified – actually negated. He is right when he says if we don’t want to lose respect for Man we need to demystify scientific research, demythologize Science, that is - quit thinking about it as an idol or divinity.” 

And:

Every dictionary defines Ethics the part of philosophy which treats of Morality: of what is good for Man, of what is good to do or not good to do. In fact, Ethics generally inspire the laws of a non-barbarian or not completely barbarian Nation and until recently in the West we have managed pretty well with this. The trouble is that in the Modern Age, Ethics gave birth to a degenerate child called Bioethics.  Also according to the dictionary, Bioethics is a discipline dealing with moral, individual and collective problems connected to the advancement of studies in the genetic field and of the technology related to the formation of vital processes…”


However, confronted with the Idol of Science, rather - the Divinity of Science, confronted with Scientific Research, Bioethics gets caught with its breeches down all the time. [In the beginning]stances are taken and vetoes, condemnations [are proclaimed] … But then everyone begins to close their eyes. To have it both ways, advancing compromises, which in reality were consensus. It is their strategy. Their way of being Politically Correct. At the start they shouted scandal, declaring certain things offend decency. Then they begin stammering that it requires more reflection, that scientific research cannot be cancelled, that you cannot go back, and they retract their original stances. They retract their vetoes, their condemnations. Indeed, they even render themselves accomplices to the crime. Always with the pretext of therapeutic purposes …of course….     (Translation: Francesca Romana)

 

* a Title coined by  Orianna Fallacci in her article: http://www.mpvroma.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Noi-cannibali-e-i-figli-di-Medea.pdf -  Here it is used as a literary phrase to provoke.


** https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2020-12/vatican-cdf-note-covid-vaccine-morality-abortion.html


***https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/how-we-can-vaccinate-the-world-against-covid-19/


**** Orianna had a priest at her death-bed and admired Cardinal Ratzinger’s thought and writings. She had a brief audience with him as Pope Benedict XVI just before her death on September 15th 2006. She was a great Italian thinker and writer whose voice is sorely missed here in Italy.