Florida’s Catholic Attorney General, Bishops Face Off Over Vaccines

Florida is a “school choice” state, allowing parents to pay for private school tuition with state-funded education savings accounts. But Catholic school children in the state are not given a choice enjoyed by their public school counterparts: the right to refuse vaccines based on religious convictions.

The policy has put the state in the spotlight in an unlikely debate about religious freedom, as Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier goes head-to-head with the state’s bishops over their refusal to grant vaccine exemptions.

Uthmeier is a devout Catholic with three children; he and his wife teach religious education at St. Thomas More Co-Cathedral in Tallahassee.

In an open letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops on July 31, Uthmeier noted that Catholic schools in “at least one diocese” in the state will refuse to grant religious exemptions for vaccine requirements this year, and called the policy “concerning.”

Florida law “requires public and private schools to exempt students from the vaccination requirements” if a parent has a religious objection, he continued.

“But as a Catholic,” Uthmeier added, “I am confident that the teachings of the Catholic Church do not require Catholic schools to compel students to take vaccines derived from the tissue of aborted children against the sincerely-held religious objections of their parents.”

He went on to cite the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which stated that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation.”

“Having no legitimate religious reason to refuse granting religious exemptions to the taking of abortion-derived vaccines, Catholic schools in Florida should comply with Florida law,” the attorney general said.

Failure to do so “could jeopardize eligibility for state educational scholarship programs,” Uthmeier stated, requesting that the bishops’ conference respond by August 7th.

Florida Bishops’ Conference responds

In a letter of response issued August 7, Michael Sheedy, the executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB), stated that the bishops disagree with the attorney general on the interpretation and application of Church teaching.

That interpretation is “exclusively vested, by United States and Florida constitutional law, in the bishops of Florida’s dioceses,” he added.

The letter continued by laying out the structure of the Church’s teaching authority, with the Pope as supreme authority, followed by the bishops, priests, and then the laity.

The Florida bishops’ refusal to grant religious exemptions to vaccines is “rooted in the desire to protect the common good,” Sheedy said, and to “encourage the proportional benefits of utilizing vaccines.”

The letter cited a 2017 document from the Pontifical Academy for Life stating that the use of vaccines derived from aborted fetal stem cells does not signify formal cooperation with abortion.

It stopped short of saying that parents have a moral duty to vaccinate their children, noting that “if a parents’ sincere conscience does not allow them to vaccinate their children against diseases prevented by vaccines associated with abortion-derived cell lines, then those parents are free not to vaccinate their children.”

Those parents are also “free to choose a different educational path,” including homeschooling, Sheedy stated.

He went on to cite “the Church’s constitutionally protected authority to govern its internal affairs” under the first amendment.

“Government officials may no more determine the content of Catholic teaching than Church officials may determine the content of Florida law,” he said.

The bishops “will not succumb to affronts on religious freedom,” Sheedy said.

Miami’s Archbishop responds

In an August 14 column on the archdiocesan website, Miami’s Archbishop Thomas Wenski, president of the FCCB, called the attorney general’s action “an unprecedented and unexpected ‘overreach’ by a state official that intrudes upon our religious freedom.”

“The bishops, not a state functionary, decide how to interpret and apply Catholic principles and theology,” Wenski said.

“The Church does not force or coerce parents to vaccinate their children. No one must go to a Catholic school. At the same time, we do try to accommodate those children whose physicians indicate that a medical exemption is necessary.”

“Our Catholic schools are following the law,” Wenski said, but said the bishops welcome the opportunity to dialogue.

A spokeswoman for the Miami archdiocese confirmed that the vaccine policy “is not a new policy” for the state’s Catholic schools.

Florida law

Florida state law requires that “each district school board and the governing authority of each private school shall … require each child to have on file with the immunization registry a certification of immunization,” but adds that this provision “shall not apply if the parent of the child objects in writing that the administration of immunizing agents conflicts with his or her religious tenets or practices.”

The Florida Department of Education’s website also states that it “does not have jurisdiction over private schools.”

It continues, “Legislative intent not to regulate, control, approve, or accredit private educational institutions, churches, their ministries, religious instruction, freedoms, or rites, is explicit. The owners of private elementary and secondary schools in Florida are solely responsible for all aspects of their educational programs …”

A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education did not respond to a request for clarification by the time of publication.

Uthmeier: A ‘Religious Mission’?

“I did not realize the Catholic Church had a ‘religious mission’ to force vaccinate students over the religious, conscience, and medical objections of their families—including vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines,” Florida’s attorney general said in an Aug. 17 X post.

Uthmeier called his exchange with the state’s bishops “healthy and essential,” but expressed doubt about whether “a private school that doesn’t follow state laws protecting parental rights and deeply held beliefs” should receive state funding.

Uthmeier told EWTN news this week that many Catholic families in his state have come to him, noting the irony that their convictions on immunizations are protected in public schools but not in Catholic ones.

Abortion and the vaccine industry

Much of the focus on vaccine hesitation today centers on health reasons. But some Catholic parents refuse certain vaccines because they were derived from aborted fetal cell lines.

Fetal cell lines are groups of laboratory-grown cells originally derived from human fetal tissue obtained during an abortion. They’re used to grow the viruses needed to manufacture vaccines, including measles-mumps-rubella, shingles, smallpox, chickenpox, and most COVID-19 vaccines.

While the Vatican has made it clear that taking those vaccines doesn’t equal formal cooperation with abortion, it’s also clear that abortion played a big part in creating them.

In just one example, at least 99 elective abortions were reported in the research and production of the rubella vaccine: 32 from fetal cell lines that failed, and 67 from attempts to isolate the rubella virus.

Ethicists frequently state that the abortions that allowed scientists to create our vaccines happened long ago, and no new abortions will be needed. That’s not necessarily true.

Cell lines are created by culturing cells in such a way that they continue growing and multiplying in laboratory dishes, sometimes for long periods of time. But a little publicized reality of the vaccine industry is that cell lines don’t last forever. That’s true even for so-called “immortalized” cell lines like HEK293, the cell line that is used in the production of some COVID-19 vaccines.

Eventually, scientists will no longer be able to sub-culture the cell line and will need another cell line. And at that point, they will most likely turn to the abortion industry yet again.

Even today, there is a continued demand for human fetal cell lines. A new fetal cell line, Walvax-2, was created in China in 2015 because of the age and diminishing supply of the MRC-5 cell line, which is used in the chickenpox and MMR vaccines, among others. Walvax-2 involved nine abortions. Ultimately, a baby girl of three months’ gestation supplied the cells for the cell line.

Because of abortion’s role in the development and production of vaccines, many parents who refuse abortion-derived vaccines do so not only to distance themselves from the horror of abortion, but to prompt the development of morally acceptable alternatives.

Advocating for meaningful change

Yvonne Bontkowski told EWTN news that while Florida’s bishops have framed the discussion as one about religious freedom, “This is the first time I have ever seen where the state isnʼt asking the Church to violate its teaching, itʼs asking the Church to honor it.”

Bontkowski heads Children of God for Life, which has been advocating for ethical vaccine alternatives and supporting and educating parents for over 30 years. Among the many resources on the organization’s website is detailed information on which vaccines were derived from aborted fetal cell lines.

Although the Church has determined it can be morally permissible to receive such vaccines under certain conditions, it says Catholics still have a moral duty to resist the use of aborted fetal tissue in vaccine research and production, and to advocate for ethical alternatives, Bontkowski said.

And it has affirmed that Catholics may exercise conscientious objection to those vaccines, she said, citing a 2005 document from the Pontifical Academy for Life.

“It is up to the faithful and citizens of upright conscience (fathers of families, doctors, etc.) to oppose, even by making an objection of conscience, the ever more widespread attacks against life and the ‘culture of death’ which underlies them,” the document states.

“The pharmaceutical industry understands the significant influence of the Catholic market, both in the United States and worldwide,” Bontkowski told Catholic World Report.

“For that influence to translate into meaningful change, it must be supported by a clear, united statement of support and action from Church leadership.”

When existing vaccines are seen as morally acceptable and permissible by the Catholic Church, “manufacturers have little incentive to act,” Bontkowski added. “A stronger, more explicit position would help create the urgency needed to encourage the development and availability of alternatives that better align with Catholic moral concerns.”

It’s true that schools must protect the health of their students. But “while vaccines are widely used as a public health measure, no medical intervention is without limitations or risk,” Bontkowski said.

“For that reason, individuals and families should be able to form and follow a well-informed conscience when making decisions about medical products, interventions, or procedures, consistent with the ethical principles reflected in the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives.”