In July, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier informed Catholic schools that if they wanted to continue receiving funds from the state’s school voucher program they will have to start giving religious exemptions to students whose parents requested them. There are a bunch of issues at work here.

First the AG, who says he’s Catholic, has made his own decision that the vaccines trigger a religious exemption. There are many problems with his approach, most importantly that he is not a subject matter expert on either vaccines or Catholic teachings. That hasn’t stopped him from trying to rewrite Catholic vaccine teaching:

Citing church-affiliated statements, Uthmeier’s letter argues vaccines aren’t a “moral obligation” and should not be compelled if they are derived from fetal tissue.

The Catholic Church is strongly against abortion, but its stance on vaccines derived from fetal tissue is more nuanced. The Vatican has said it is “morally acceptable” to use cell lines from aborted fetuses if there are no other alternatives available.

Under Florida law, the following vaccines are required for K-12 schools: Polio, measles (rubeola), rubella, pertussis (whooping cough), mumps, diphtheria and tetanus.

The rubella vaccine, a part of the MMR vaccine, was created using the cell lines of an aborted fetus but is permissible because there are no other alternatives to prevent the contagious and deadly disease.

Second, the DeSantis administration is hellbent on destroying vaccine compliance by challenging organizations with long time compliance record. The current Florida surgeon general is a nutburger with extra nuts who edited a Covid study to make it align with his quackery.

Catholic teaching on vaccination is pretty straightforward:

The Catholic Church strongly supports vaccination as a way of promoting the common good, especially when it protects those who are most vulnerable, such as the elderly, people with weakened immune systems, and children.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has stated that when no other means are available to stop a serious epidemic, receiving a vaccine can be an act of charity and justice: “Vaccination may promote the common good, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed.”

Importantly, those who refuse vaccination for reasons of conscience must take every other possible precaution to prevent the spread of disease—especially to those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. Refusing both vaccination and public health precautions can become a form of harm to others, which contradicts the church’s call to protect life.

As the Pontifical Academy for Life said in 2017: “We believe that all clinically recommended vaccines can be used with a clear conscience. . . . The moral responsibility to vaccinate is reiterated in order to avoid serious health risks for children and the general population.”

The disagreement hinges, of course, on money. 87,000 students in Florida’s Catholic schools receive money through the state’s school voucher system and Uthmeier is threatening to withhold that money from the schools if they don’t allow non-medical exemptions. The simplest solution is for Catholic schools to stop taking public money if that money comes with stipulations that violate Catholic teaching. It’s really the only option the Florida church has.

And I understand that the influx of taxpayer dollars is a powerful incentive for Catholic schools, especially as red states like my own state of WV have redirected hundreds of millions to billions of taxpayer dollars into private schools, generally with lax supervision and almost no reporting requirements. But that isn’t an excuse for Catholic schools to violate Catholic teachings.

I should note that I attended Catholic schools for 12 years. My parents are old school Democrats who never expected to receive a dime of taxpayer money to use for tuition. I did ask my dad once why he didn’t try to get a refund for his tax money and in return I got a very patient explanation about the importance of a good public education system.

And then there’s the unintentional irony of a party that constantly screams about religious freedom single-mindedly seeking to force a religious group to change their policies to align with the policies of a secular state. But by now we’re used to the hypocrisy of the right.

I’ll leave you with this: