Amid conflicting media claims about the science and ethics of vaccines, we’re going to explore what the Catholic Church teaches about the ethics of vaccination and vaccine requirements. When – if ever - is a Catholic required to get vaccinated? When might a Catholic claim a religious or ethical conscience objection to vaccination? Can officially sponsored ministries of the Catholic Church – such as healthcare, schools and universities, and social service organizations – require people to be vaccinated as a condition of employment or admission to schools? These are just some of the questions we will explore. In this episode of Ethics on Call we flip the script as Tom interviews our Executive Director, Dan Daly. Dan has been leading the Center’s recent work on vaccines after we received a request from a diocese in the U.S. to provide research to inform their Catholic schools' vaccination policies amidst requests for more exemptions. -------------------------------- The following Vatican and USCCB documents deal with vaccines and are listed in chronological order of publication: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions,” (2008): https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html Pontifical Academy for Life, “Note on Italian Vaccine Issue,” (July 31, 2017): https://www.horeb.org/fileadmin/eigene_dateien/Neue_Seite/2020_/Bilder/Unterseiten/Impfseite/note-vaccini.pdf. Pontifical Academy for Life, “Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Foetuses,” The Linacre Quarterly 86, nos. 2–3 (2019): 182–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0024363919855896. Chairmen of the Committee on Doctrine and the Committee on Pro-Life Activities and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Moral Considerations Regarding the New Covid-19 Vaccines,” (December 11, 2020): https://www.usccb.org/resources/moral-considerations-covid-vaccines.pdf Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Note on the Morality of Using Some Anti-Covid-19 Vaccines,” (December 21, 2020): https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20201221_nota-vaccini-anticovid_en.html#_ftnref3. -------------------------------------- Fact Check: For more information about how vaccines are derived please see the following resources: UK Health Security Agency, “Guide to the use of human and animal products in vaccines,” March 13, 2023: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/use-of-human-and-animal-products-in-vaccines/guide-to-the-use-of-human-and-animal-products-in-vaccines Jianmei Li, Yixin Liu, Jie Dai, et al., “mRNA Vaccines: Current Applications and Future Directions,” MedComm 6, no. 11 (2025): e70434. https://doi.org/10.1002/mco2.70434. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Cell-Based Flu Vaccines,” August 25, 2023: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccine-types/cell-based.html Subscribe to Ethics on Call on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or Simplecast. Visit our website, theologyandethics.org, for more information on the Center for Theology & Ethics in Catholic Health.
