Messages from Bishop Nickless

Dear brothers and sisters,

Greetings in Christ!  I hope you and your loved ones enjoyed a safe and restful Labor Day weekend.  As disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are all called to live “in the world, but not of the world” (see Jn 17:14-15).  The world is neither our true and final home, nor our true and highest good.  We are pilgrims, making our way to Heaven on the path marked out by our Savior.

This does not mean that the world is evil.  God certainly created the world in goodness, and His infinite goodness permeates His creation.  Yet everything created is finite, and, because evil is merely the privation of good, finite goods necessarily contain the potential for evil.  This generally means they can be used wrongly as a means or in the intent or taken as an end in themselves.

Our Christian life, therefore, involves an effort to use the finite goods of this world, which are genuine gifts from our loving father in heaven, only in keeping with his perfect and good will.  Everything we do – prayer and worship, work and leisure, baptismal vocation and personal vocation, the “duties of religion” and the “duties of citizenship” – should be both oriented to God as our final end, and also seeking to use the goods of the world in the best possible way.

This path requires constant discernment and judgment about all the details of our life.  It also means that, in practice, it is difficult to avoid making compromises with that potential evil that lurks within our experiences here on earth. We judge and balance worldly goods against each other.  We make necessary distinctions between kinds of goods, kinds of evils, and kinds of participation in them both. 

This is the context in which the church judges the moral permissibility (or not) of using a vaccine against a dangerous disease, which has been developed or produced from cell lines taken from an original aborted child. 

Diseases are part of that potential for evil in our lives in this world.  Getting sick is not a good (although it may include other goods, such as deeper conversion of heart, or growth in charity and humility). Taking prudent care not to get sick is a good (although this, too, may be abused).  If a vaccine can help us not to get sick, it is, in that sense, clearly a good.

In contrast, abortion is clearly an evil. And one of the fundamental principles of morality is that evil may never be done so that good might result. The use of cell lines derived from aborted children perpetuates the evil of the abortion and is not ethical in itself even if the results (such as a vaccine) may be deemed good in themselves.

Those who use such a vaccine (or any similar product) are participating, in some sense, in the evil of the original abortion, and in the evil of the immoral use of cell lines derived from it. The church’s moral teaching gives us the necessary tools to examine what kind of participation this might be. 

Two distinctions are essential: formal versus material cooperation, and proximate versus remote participation. Formal cooperation in an evil means willing the evil itself, along with the original persons who committed the evil. 

Material cooperation means not willing the evil but sharing in the means in some degree.  Proximate participation means direct involvement in committing the original evil. Remote participation means only indirect involvement (in a variety of possible senses).

Disciples of Christ must therefore judge whether the good of using a vaccine, such as any of the current COVID-19 vaccines, to protect their own and others’ health outweighs the evil of participating in the evil of abortion lurking in the background of these vaccines. 

The church has consistently taught in such cases, and has explicitly stated in this case, that the use of such a vaccine is permitted only when the participation can be limited to remote and material only. This is the case for the church’s teaching on the current vaccines against COVID-19.

Material cooperation here means that those using the vaccine consciously do not will the original abortion to have happened and do will there to be morally licit alternatives (which exist in principle, and are being researched in practice, but have not yet been approved for use anywhere). 

We also have a responsibility, if possible, to state clearly what we will and do not will to our medical providers, and if possible, to the vaccine producers to encourage more ethical actions in future. 

Remote participation here means although we are consenting de facto to the immoral means by which this vaccine is being developed or produced, we do not consent in principle, and we are doing nothing else, apart from receiving the vaccine, that supports such immoral acts.

For most of us, it seems likely that this calculation about why and how receiving the vaccine is morally permissible will be convincing, and the good of receiving the vaccine to protect our own health and the health of others will sufficiently outweigh the evil of the source, development, or production of the vaccine, for us to choose to receive it. 

This is why I have been vaccinated, and I strongly encourage you to do the same.

For those, however, who, in accord with a well-formed conscience and with all due prudence about their individual circumstances, deem that the evil of the vaccine instead outweighs the good of being vaccinated, the church supports your judgment. 

Finally, I again encourage all of us to pray and fast faithfully for the end of this COVID-19 pandemic, for peace in this troubled world, and for the salvation of souls.  Please pray for me, so that I may serve you well and faithfully as your bishop and know that I pray daily for all of you.

Your brother in Christ,

Most Reverend R. Walker Nickless
Bishop of Sioux City
 

I join our Holy Father, Pope Francis, and my brother bishops, and all men and women of good will, in condemning once again the persistent evil of racism.  The recent death of George Floyd, unjust and unnecessary as it so patently was, is merely one more example, calling out to God for justice.
 
Prejudice based on race assaults the God-given dignity of the persons against whom it is directed.  It also corrodes the God-imitating capacity to love freely in the hearts of those in whom it lurks.  I echo the words of Pope Francis in saying, “We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.  At the same time, we have to recognize that the violence of recent nights is self-destructive and self-defeating.  Nothing is gained by violence and so much is lost.”
 
Both worldly justice and the salvation of souls require us, not only to denounce this (and every) sin, but also regularly to examine our own conscience, to repent of our own faults, and, by God’s grace, to teach and model virtue and justice. 
 
Millions of men and women of good will, of every race and creed, strive to live with each other every day, without either racism or violence, not only in moments of magnified publicity, such as the many laudable and peaceful protests against racism across the country in recent days, but also, and more importantly, in the ordinary affairs of life.  May God give us all the grace to grow in this way of goodness, freedom, and charity.