Pope Francis and the Rights of the Living

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The day before the FDA approved a new Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, the Archdiocese of New Orleans published an unsigned statement urging Catholics to be wary of the new vaccine, because it apparently used fetal cell lines with connections to decades-old abortions. And yesterday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged Catholics to avoid taking the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine and to choose alternatives from Pfizer or Moderna instead.

Seriously?

Back in December, the Vatican’s doctrinal office already made clear that the urgency of containing the virus outweighed the remote connection to fetal tissue, and that Catholics could use such vaccines in good conscience. Presumably the millions of people at risk of dying in the pandemic have a right to live, too.

This is a fine moment for Francis to weigh in again. The pope has already called getting vaccinated an ethical obligation. It’s an opportune moment for the pontiff to defend the right to life for the living, and limit the church’s extreme anti-abortion stance.

One other thing this pope has been exceptionally good at: subordinating the imperatives of capitalism to those of humanity. In his encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” signed last October, Francis said that the rights of property “can only be considered a secondary natural right” when compared to human dignity.

If the bishops want to do something useful in the spirit of their pope, they could call on all vaccine makers to put their patents in the public domain for all countries for the duration of the pandemic. In the celestial balance, that should weigh far more heavily than fetal tissue.

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