Crisispoint podcast episode: What is the teaching of the Church on abortion-tainted vaccines?

[Gnarwhal]

This episode felt relevant given the discussion in another thread about vaccines derived from abortion cell lines. This is a solo episode with Eric Sammons in which he goes over documents and statements from a couple of organizations within the Vatican including the CDF about vaccines over the past 20 years or so.

It's 30 minutes long but a good listen. He's always been a very charitable and balanced commentator on even the most controversial issues. He always seems to make the proper distinctions.

 

[zippy2006]

I have read Sammons but never listened to him. In his writing I have found a fair amount of strawmen and misrepresentation, and this video isn't so different.

If we look to Thomas Aquinas as our model, one's arguments should always take into account the strongest counter-arguments and not resort to strawmen. How does Sammons frame the counterarguments? He gives 1) an isolated assertion from a random bishop, and 2) a tweet from Pope Francis. He goes on to compare Magisterial documents to these tweet-level characterizations.

This is a pretty difficult topic, and I'm not sure which side is right. But if you look at the recent Catholic literature the lion's share of argumentation comes from the pro-vaccine side. There are so many pro-vaccine arguments on the market that it is hard to understand why Sammons didn't provide any of them. Sammons' account of the Magisterial documents isn't too bad, but if we look at things beyond tweets we find that the Church is not oversimplifying the issue nearly as much as Sammons leads us to believe.

A much better starting point than tweets would have been the recent USCCB directives, which are much more nuanced:

• Answers to Key Ethical Questions About Covid-19 Vaccines
• Moral Considerations Regarding the New Covid-19 Vaccines