The culture shock resulting from such a transformation of our way of life is not new to Traditional Catholics - who witnessed a similar evil sweep through the universal Church following Vatican II, trampling all that had been held sacred and secure for generations, thus paving the way for the present victory of Communist totalitarianism over the nations.
Archbishop Vigano has more than once cited this work of iniquity as a coalition effort between operatives of the "deep Church" and operatives of the "deep State", working together to bring about a New World secular Order over which Lucifer will usurp the Kingship of Christ.
Those who know me will attest to the fact that for 35 years I have been the most faithful supporter and defender of the SSPX, which is why it grieves me now to have to state that on this occasion the superiors have got it very badly wrong.
That we are in fact living through the chastisement revealed by Our Lady in the Third Secret of Fatima is beyond question. Ours is a time largely of apostasy from God, even at the highest levels in the Church, resulting in victories for the anti-Christian forces beyond anything they, or we, could ever have imagined possible.
We know by faith of course that this time of trial will pass, as all such assaults of the devil on the Church and the world have. Our Lady will have the final victory and all will be restored in grace, though we know not how or when this will come about. What we do know is that matters are presently racing to a conclusion in this final battle between the serpent and she who will crush his head, so an end to it is not too far distant.
So much for the black and white of opposing forces in the present supernatural warfare, by which I mean the obvious evil and the obvious good as well as the inevitable happy outcome. But what about the grey areas, those danger zones which, like minefields, have to be traversed cautiously if we are to arrive safely at our destination when the war is won?
One such grey area has recently appeared before us and it threatens to wipe out a good many good souls who, in my opinion, have diverged from the safe path of the Church's traditional and authentic moral teaching in favour of a more convenient, less arduous route only recently mapped out and offered non-authoritatively for alternative use by Modernist Rome.
I write of course about COVID-19 vaccines produced from or tested using the stem cell lines of aborted fetuses and the quite shocking advice of the SSPX hierarchy in relation to their use.
If the faithful needed reminding that no particular institution in the Church is 100% safe from error at a time when the legitimate authorities themselves, the successors of St. Peter and the Apostles, are failing so manifestly in their duty to teach and to sanctify, it is in the SSPX position that such vaccines may be licitly taken in cases of grave necessity where moral alternatives are unavailable.
I first read (and re-read) this astounding and dangerously flawed guidance on the SSPX U.S. website some months back and I couldn't believe my eyes. My Catholic conscience immediately alerted me to the erroneous teaching before me.
I guess many other simple faithful were likewise disturbed by this development and aired their disquiet, for the aforesaid website guidance was quickly taken down and replaced with a message announcing that an SSPX moral theologian was re-examining it together with superiors and would post an update soon.
Well it didn't take long before the same guidance was back up on the website in extended form citing the moral principles of St. Alphonsus, upon which a number of scenarios are proposed for demonstration purposes.
These scenarios are perfectly sound, the problem is that a false comparison is then made with abortion-tainted vaccines leading to the flawed conclusion that in cases of grave necessity a person may licitly benefit from these vaccines based on the principle of "remote co-operation".
To give just a few examples of the scenarios presented on the website: We remotely co-operate in evil by paying taxes, which are used in part to fund abortion, or when we buy medication from a pharmacy that sells contraceptives or when we visit a doctor who prescribes the contraceptive pill.
These are all valid examples of licit remote co-operation in evil because we have no control over taxation or what pharmacies sell or what doctors prescribe to their patients. In other words, our participation is extrinsic to the evil and therefore blameless.
Paying taxes is not objectively sinful, indeed it's a duty. Likewise, visiting a doctor when we are sick and collecting our prescription from a pharmacy are not objectively sinful. The sin is with the politicians who give our tax money to fund abortion and with the doctor and pharmacist who prescribe and distribute contraceptives. So paying taxes, etc., are morally licit so long as we neither approve of nor benefit from those other evils, which are beyond our control.
This is not the case with abortion-tainted vaccines, however, where, assuming full knowledge of the manufacturing and testing process, we have free choice to reject participation in an evil action or to participate in order to benefit from it.
As regards the latter choice, St. Paul laments the mindset of those who say "let us do evil that good may come of it.." (Romans 3:8).
It is never licit, not even in cases of grave necessity, to seek to benefit from an evil action, this is the general moral principle taught by the Church which underpins all others. It is called the principle of the "double effect" and it is expressed thus:
"it is morally permitted, in cases of necessity, to employ an action which simultaneously produces two effects, one good and one evil, provided that: (a) only the good effect is willed, and (b) the good effect does not come from the evil effect."
Clearly, the principle of the “double effect” absolutely forbids the use of vaccines produced from or tested using the stem cell lines of aborted fetuses precisely because the good effect, i.e., medical cure, is obtained by means of the evil effect / action, i.e., the immoral process of using fetal cells from murdered innocents. Thus, the use of such vaccines is always morally illicit.
For comparison purposes, an example of permitted double effect would be to use a doctor’s prescription of strong medication to relieve severe pain in a terminally-ill cancer patient, even if the use of such medication may also have the side effect (evil effect) of slowly shortening the patient’s life. In this case, the good effect, i.e., the present relief from severe pain, is the direct result of the pain medication, and not the result of the evil effect, i.e., the shortening of life. Rather, both good effect and evil effect are produced at the same time from the strong pain medication.
Another example would be, say, a young woman consenting to chemotherapy treatment for cancer knowing that an evil side effect of saving her life may be the loss of her fertility. Again, the infertility is an unwanted and unwilled evil arising from a fundamentally good action.
From these examples and comparisons it is evident that the moral principle of the double effect has to be inverted in order to justify benefitting from abortion-tainted vaccines. The logic is clearly flawed.
But there's also another serious problem with the SSPX advice which tends to undermine the gravity of taking these vaccines. It is the apparent misconception that they have been produced from the stem cell lines of a few fetuses murdered many decades ago, the implication being that those who use the vaccines today are far removed in time from those few heinous crimes.
Not so, according to Pamela Acker, a vaccine researcher and expert, who, in an interview with Lifesitenews, makes it very clear that we are probably talking about hundreds of abortions throughout the various stages of research, development and testing of vaccines. She also suggests that these abortions are not merely historic but current and ongoing, though not made public.
Furthermore, she dismisses the theory that at least some of these abortions are spontaneous, i.e., the result of miscarriage, on the scientific grounds that fetal stem cells are useless for research and development within around five minutes after death.
What she goes on to describe is horrendous, i.e., little babies being removed from the womb by caesarean and having their organs harvested for stem cells while still alive and without anaesthetic, which would disrupt the cells. In light of such abhorrent butchery we can well understand why Pope John Paul II called abortion "a sin crying to heaven for vengeance".
The full transcript of the interview with Pamela Acker can be read online here.
Juxtaposed to the SSPX/Vatican position on vaccines are the individual and collective declarations of a number of the Church's more traditional prelates, unequivocally forbidding Catholics from taking these abortion-tainted COVID vaccines under any circumstances.
What I intend to do now is to quote these prelates at length with appropriate links for online verification of their various statements.
I should here point out that when I cited the opposing position of these prelates to a certain SSPX District Superior he dismissed them as personal opinion influenced more by the gravity of the sin of abortion than by the moral principles underpinning the SSPX advice. However, as I have clearly demonstrated by the fundamental moral principle of the double effect, these prelates are actually expressing the authentic teaching of the Church, not personal opinion, which is why we must listen to them and not to the SSPX which, by its own admission, advises non-authoritatively.
At any rate, here are the relevant quotes which I sincerely hope will convince not only Catholic laity to fully and entirely reject these vaccines, but hopefully make the SSPX superiors reconsider their position and drastically alter their advice.
In a joint letter of Cardinal Pujats, Archbishops Peta and Lenga and bishops Strickland and Schneider, we read:
"In the case of vaccines made from the cell lines of aborted human fetuses, we see a clear contradiction between the Catholic doctrine to categorically, and beyond the shadow of any doubt, reject abortion in all cases as a grave moral evil that cries out to heaven for vengeance (see Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 2268, n. 2270), and the practice of regarding vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines as morally acceptable in exceptional cases of “urgent need” — on the grounds of remote, passive, material cooperation. To argue that such vaccines can be morally licit if there is no alternative is in itself contradictory and cannot be acceptable for Catholics...
...The theological principle of material cooperation is certainly valid and may be applied to a whole host of cases (e.g. in paying taxes, the use of products made from slave labor, and so on). However, this principle can hardly be applied to the case of vaccines made from fetal cell lines, because those who knowingly and voluntarily receive such vaccines enter into a kind of concatenation, albeit very remote, with the process of the abortion industry. The crime of abortion is so monstrous that any kind of concatenation with this crime, even a very remote one, is immoral and cannot be accepted under any circumstances by a Catholic once he has become fully aware of it. One who uses these vaccines must realize that his body is benefitting from the “fruits” (although steps removed through a series of chemical processes) of one of mankind’s greatest crimes...
...More than ever, we need the spirit of the confessors and martyrs who avoided the slightest suspicion of collaboration with the evil of their own age. The Word of God says: “Be simple as children of God without reproach in the midst of a depraved and perverse generation, in which you must shine like lights in the world” (Phil. 2, 15)..."
Full transcript available here.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider reiterates the position thus In a separate LSN interview:
"...I repeat, it is the most anti-pastoral and counterproductive, that in this time, exactly in this historical hour, as Catholics will justify their use of abortion-tainted vaccines with the theory of material remote cooperation. It is so illogical, we have to recognize this in this historical hour in which we are living..."
In yet another interview with LSN, Bishop Schneider warns:
"...some bishops, even good ones, are making a huge explanation to me in a sophistic manner, of the principle of moral cooperation only, without your will, without your consent. But this is for me as sophism which cannot be applied to this concrete case, because it is evident to simple common sense that when you know this – that this vaccine is from aborted babies – then you cannot apply this moral principle, or theory, to this concrete case. And therefore we have to be very careful not to be induced into error because of this sophistic argument, even when it comes from good, traditional priests. This is the danger, and we have to resist this...”
Finally, in a May 8 "Appeal for the Church and the World", signed by a number of prelates including Cardinals Gerhard Muller, Zen & Pujats, Archbishop Vigano, Bishop Schneider and other senior Churchmen as well as countless Catholic journalists, physicians, academics and associations, we find this declaration:
"...Let us also remember, as Pastors, that for Catholics it is morally unacceptable to develop or use vaccines derived from material from aborted fetuses..."
In summation. It is the duty of every Catholic to respectfully, but firmly, correct their superiors whenever they stray from the truth. Those who know me will attest to the fact that for 35 years I have been the most faithful supporter and defender of the SSPX, which is why it grieves me now to have to state that on this occasion the superiors have got it very badly wrong.
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Hence, every Catholic with a sense of the faith whose conscience automatically balks at the suggestion that we may, in circumstances of grave necessity, do evil that good may come from it, must disregard this SSPX advice along with that of other Churchmen, be they Traditional or Modernist, Pope or priest, who propose the "remote material co-operation" fallacy in the case of abortion-tainted vaccines.
We are never at liberty to benefit from an evil means, not even when our lives depend on it. This is the authentic moral teaching of the Church and the faith of the martyrs, who could so easily have burned a mere grain of incense before the pagan deities to save their lives using similar argument in their minds, but who chose instead to die a cruel death rather than offend God.
Let us consider just one example of such ardent faith, the martyrdom of the early Christian St. Sophia and her three young daughters, aged 11, 10 & 9 years.
All four steadfastly refused before the Roman emperor Hadrian to burn incense before the goddess Artemis, so Hadrian proceeded to have the children horribly tortured one after the other in full view of their mother.
At length, when the children finally succumbed to the unspeakable sufferings inflicted upon them, St. Sophia was granted leave to take them for burial, the idea of the pagan emperor being that she should live with the torment in her heart.
But Our Lord had other plans. After three days of mourning her beloved children He took her from this world to enjoy eternal beatitude with them in heaven.
Compare this example of heroic faith with that of Catholics today who advise that it is licit under certain strict circumstances to benefit from products made from or tested with the stem cells of brutally murdered innocents. Yes, it is wholly wrong and unacceptable!
