Pints With Aquinas - 240: Vatican on Covid Vaccines w/ Jimmy Akin

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

Today, I chat with Jimmy Akin about whether it is moral for Catholics (and anyone for that matter) to get covid-19 vaccines. The main document we will be referencing is "Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines": http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20201221_nota-vaccini-anticovid_en.html Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World: https://sqpn.com/category/podcasts/akin/ FURTHER RESOURCES Excellent podcast by Trent Horn: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/386-covid-19-vaccines-and-the-usccb/id1354647807?i=1000502716188   SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints  Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/   GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show.   LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd   MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Hello, hello, and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and today joined around the proverbial bar table with me will be my good friend, Catholic apologist, Jimmy Akin. Today, we're going to be discussing a recent document put out by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called Note on the Morality of Using Some Anti-COVID-19 Vaccines.

Our plan is to read through this document, which isn't terribly long, it's about one page, one and a half pages, so that you can be really well informed about what the church is actually teaching regarding this. I think sometimes we can hear things and we don't actually kind of see what the church has said herself. So we're going to be reading through that, pausing throughout for commentary, and then we'll do that for about 30 minutes. And then we'll start to take some questions from patrons and super chatters. So if you're in the chat box, it would be great to hear from you.

And, you know, if you disagree with what we're saying today, if you disagree with what the CDF has said, that's okay. More than willing to take objections or arguments or whatever you might have regarding this. I know this is a hot topic right now. And I'm really pleased that Jimmy's here to help us hash it out. If you have not yet subscribed to the channel, do us a favor, click subscribe and then that bell button

because we're at 97 point something thousand right now, and it'd be nice to hit the 100,000 K mark soon. So thank you very much for that. Do us a favor too and click that thumbs up button. And one of the ways you could support this channel, and especially if you enjoy this video, is to share this video on Facebook or Twitter with your friends or whomever, because I think this is going to be a really important episode. Jimmy, nice to see you. Oh, likewise. Pleasure to be here.

How are you doing during this lockdown? Oh, it's been inconvenient. I'll put it that way. Yeah. Especially since I live in California. It's been extra inconvenient. Yes, yes, yes. All right. Well, it's great to have you here. Your podcast, Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, is quickly becoming my favorite Catholic podcast. I'm just saying that to make you feel good. I mean it. Oh, you're too kind. But maybe tell the folks who are watching right now about that podcast if they haven't yet heard of it. Sure. So, you know, a lot of people are familiar with me from my work with Catholic Answers. I'm on Catholic Answers Live regularly.

And, of course, that's a podcast. And I have several other podcasts I participate in, things like Secrets of Star Wars or Secrets of Star Trek, Secrets of Doctor Who. But the main one that's been getting a lot of attention lately is Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World. And this is a podcast. It comes out every Friday. Every Friday we look at a different mystery. These can be natural mysteries, you know, historical mysteries. They can be supernatural mysteries, paranormal mysteries. supernatural mysteries, paranormal mysteries. So we look at things like the Kennedy assassination,

or Bigfoot, or UFOs, or stigmata, or whatever it may be. And we then, we talk about the background to the mystery, and then we evaluate it both from the perspective of faith—what would the Catholic faith have to say about this mystery?—and also from the perspective of reason, what would the Catholic faith have to say about this mystery, and also from the perspective of reason, how we can use reason to try to resolve as much of the mystery as we can. One of the reasons I love your podcast is I know a lot of people who are interested in these conspiracy theories or supernatural mysteries or UFO sightings, like my dad, for example. They wouldn't really be open to listening to a Catholic podcast if I was to send that to them, but they're very much open to listening to your podcast. It almost feels like a covert way of evangelizing people.

Well, faith and reason are important. As John Paul II said, they're the two wings that help the human soul rise to the contemplation of truth, and they're both important, and I want to share, you know, both what reason can tell us about mysteries in the world, as well as what faith can tell us about them, and those two things have a role there, and I hope that people in the audience will take both of them seriously. So yeah, like to— evangelization is the announcing of good truth, you know, good news. It's the enunciation of the truth, and so faith has a role in that. Indeed. And I've put a link in the description below to all of you who are watching. If you

want to check out Jimmy's excellent podcast, just go down there and click it. All right, so today, Jimmy, as I said, we're going to take a look at this note that came out from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the morality of using some anti-COVID-19 vaccines. I'd love your initial thoughts maybe before we enter into this document. And I'd also like you to tell us what is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? I was just going to suggest we mention that because not everybody's familiar. the faith? I was just going to suggest we mention that, because not everybody's familiar. So over at the Vatican, they have a bunch of departments that assist the Pope in governing the Church, and there's a formal name for them, they're called dicasteries, but really that just means departments. And one of the departments is devoted to the doctrine or teaching of the faith.

And so what the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does is it produces documents that evaluate different doctrinal questions. Sometimes they're more theologically-oriented questions. Sometimes, as in this case, it's more morally oriented moral teaching or moral doctrine, and they point out good points and bad points in different positions. And when they publish a document, a public document at least, the Pope approves it, and that means that it becomes part of the papal magisterium. So its documents are backed by the pope's own authority. So could a Catholic hear a statement from the CDF and just reject it and be a good Catholic? If it's a doctrinal statement, one wants to be cautious, because

the Holy Spirit guides the Church, and the Holy Spirit gives the Church teaching authority that comes from Jesus Christ. And so even when the—now, the congregation is not able to issue infallible teachings. It can repeat infallible teachings that have been proclaimed infallibly by a pope or a council. But its own teachings are not infallible, but they are still guided, because they're part of the papal magisterium when the pope approves them. They are guided by the Holy Spirit, not in a way that guarantees all freedom of error, but still you're undertaking a significant risk if you want to say, well, I just don't agree with something that I know

the Holy Spirit is guiding, at least in principle. Any initial thoughts on vaccines in general, perhaps, and maybe some of the things you've been seeing online, people's reactions? Well, so, you know, these days, now vaccines are fairly recent in human history, at least the widespread use of them is really only, you know, a century or two old. And they've done a lot of good. We've been able to control various diseases by vaccines. We've been able to wipe out some diseases like smallpox that used to have a huge toll on human life. smallpox that used to have a huge toll on human life. Recently, there has been questioning of various vaccines, and there is a balance there because vaccines can be done in an unsafe way.

There can be costs to using vaccines. There can be side effects. And it is, in principle, a good thing to test, you know, and give some pushback and say, OK, is this really as advertised? Is it really doing what they say? Is it really as safe as they say? In principle, that's legitimate. But on the other hand, you know, we live in a world where people claim all kinds of stuff that often turns out not to be true. And so sometimes there are claims made, especially online, that vaccines, you know, have horrible side effects. And the evidence really doesn't support that. support that. You know, there are exaggerated claims regarding vaccines. And so we want to push back on those as well. We want to follow St. Paul's dictum from 1 Thessalonians 15, test everything and hold fast to what is good. So you want to not only test vaccine, you know,

pro-vaccine claims, you want to test anti-vaccine claims. And recently, in the last few decades, one of the methods that has been used in preparing and testing vaccines has involved the use of cell lines that go back to children who were aborted in the 1960s. Obviously, deliberate abortion is as opposed to spontaneous abortion or miscarriage. Voluntary abortion is a crime. It is a moral crime. It is the killing of an innocent human being. And consequently, there are significant moral reservations that are to be had and need to be taken seriously about the use of cell lines that come from such aborted children. In more recent times, there have even been more problematic developments where there's

a lot of experimentation on unborn human embryos that are simply created for the purposes of experimentation. They have no plans to let these children live, and they're just going to be killed after the research is done. So there's a really problematic area here, and it's natural that people have been concerned, given the COVID pandemic, about, you know, what about the vaccines that are now being rolled out and that are in development to try to help stop this pandemic? To what extent are they caught up in these issues, and what implications does that have for individual people? I don't want to ask too many questions because I think a lot of this will come up as we read through this document, but it might be helpful just quickly to help us understand what

we mean by cell lines. Sure. So a cell line is, as you would guess, it's a line of cells that go back to some original source. And there are different ways that you can get cell lines. For example, people may be familiar with stem cells, which are being used in research now and may one day give us treatments for various things. You can get stem cells a variety of different ways. For example, you could take a scraping of skin cells, let's say from my palm, and then those cells are not part of me anymore. They're no longer part of my body. But you can encourage those cells to reproduce.

And you could have a first generation of new cells made from a palm scraping. Then you could have a second generation and a third generation. And that pattern of generation stretching over time is what's known as a cell line. And cell lines are very important. They're used for testing. They're used for developing treatments. They're used for a bunch of different things. And you can acquire them different ways. So some ways of acquiring cell lines are legitimate. Like I mentioned, taking a skin scraping, you know, that's one way. Another way of getting a cell line that gets us a little bit closer to the situation of the unborn is things from the placenta. When a child is born, there's this extra organ that the child uses to

feed from the mother's womb called the placenta. The placenta contains a lot of stem cells, and those can be cultivated to produce cell lines. But we didn't originally have all the different ways of gathering cells for the production of cell lines that we do now. And back in the 60s, there were some abortions. In particular, there was one over in Holland where a Dutch doctor had a child that had been aborted and took some cells from the child's kidney and then based a cell line on those cells. And that's known as the HEK, I believe the number is 293, the HEK-293 cell line. HEK stands for human embryonic kidney cell line. And that is still in use, and it's one of the key things that is involved in the debate around the COVID vaccines. All right. Yeah, that's really helpful.

Okay, well, let's dive into this document, and we can stop after every paragraph or so. Yeah, there's like eight or nine paragraphs, and they're short. Yeah, I'm just showing everybody right now just so you can see this is quite a short document, but I think it's important that we go through it. So let's dive into it. The question of the use of vaccines in general is often the center of controversy in the forum of public opinion. In recent months, this congregation has received several requests for guidance regarding the use of vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, which in the course of research and production employed cell lines drawn from tissue obtained from two abortions that occurred in the last

century. At the same time, diverse and sometimes conflicting pronouncements in the mass media by bishops, Catholic associations, and experts have raised questions about the morality of the use of these vaccines. And that's quite true. There have been a lot of people all over the world, bishops and medical moral experts and various groups, including pro-life groups, who have been, you know, monitoring the development of COVID vaccines and, you know, doing their best to apply the Church's principles to these, but they haven't all come to the same conclusions. And so as a result, the CDF, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, got requests to say, hey, can you give us an authoritative application of the established

principles to these new vaccines that are coming out? And so that's what they're going to try to do in this document. There is already an important pronouncement of the Pontifical Academy for Life on the issue entitled Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Fetuses, 5th of June, 2005. Further, this congregation expressed itself on the matter with the instruction Dignitatis Personae in 2017. the Pontifical Academy for Life returned to the topic with a note, these documents already offer some general directive criteria? Right. So the Pontifical Academy for Life is another one of the departments over at the Vatican. As its name suggests, it specializes in biomedical life-related issues. And it more recently has been folded into what's known as the Dicastery for Family,

I think, Culture, Family, and Life. But at the time, it was an independent body when it released these documents. So that's why they're using the name it had at the time, Pontifical Academy for Life. Also, so these are, if you want further background for like, where are the established principles, where has the Church talked about them, those are the three documents you want to go look at in particular. There are some others as well, but these are the three main ones, the two from the Pontifical Academy for Life, and the CDF's own instruction, Dignitas Personae, from 2008.

Okay, and then the last little bit of the introduction says, since the first vaccines against COVID-19 are already available for distribution and administration in various countries, this congregation desires to offer some indications for clarification on this matter. We do not intend to judge the safety and efficacy of these vaccines, although ethically relevant and necessary, as this evaluation is the responsibility of biomedical researchers and drug agencies. Here, our objective is only to consider the moral aspects of the use of the vaccines against COVID-19 that have been developed from cell lines derived from tissues obtained from two fetuses

that were not spontaneously aborted. So not miscarried, in other words. And here they're basically saying, we're going to talk about what's within our competence. We're doctrinal experts, and so we're going to talk about the doctrinal, moral doctrinal implications of using these vaccines. But we're not going to try to judge the scientific question of,

are these vaccines really safe and effective because that's not our expertise. We're leaving that up to the medical experts. Yeah, I think there's a lesson there for video vloggers like myself just to know my areas of expertise, which are nil, and to be humble. So it's a lesson for all of us. Here's the first paragraph. people. So it's a lesson for all of us. Yeah. Here's the first paragraph. As the instruction Dignitatis Personae states, in cases where cells from aborted fetuses are employed to create cell lines for use in scientific research, there exists differing degrees of responsibility of cooperation in evil. For example, in organizations where cell lines of illicit origin are being utilized, the responsibility of those who make the decisions to use them is not the same as that of those who have no voice in such a decision. impossible decision to make. It just has to be no at every level, all the way from the

CEO of the corporation, of the medical corporation, he needs to say no to these, all of his underlings need to say no to these, individual doctors administering vaccines need to say no to these, nurses need to say no to these, patients need to say no to these. these. Nurses need to say no to these. Patients need to say no to these. Every single person all the way along has a mandate to say no. And if you don't, you are responsible for cooperating in the evil of abortion. And that does not recognize the point the CDF is making here. Now, first of all, these abortions are not occurring now. They occurred back in the 1960s. So the evil of these abortions themselves is over and done with, just like the Nazi Holocaust back in the 1940s that killed so many Jews and others,

that is over and done with. But there's a question of how do we react to things that came out of those evils? For example, one of the things I pointed out in the past is Nazi doctors during the Holocaust did experiments on Jews and others to test hypothermia. How cold can a human being get before the organs start failing and before the person dies? Well, that's actually useful information to have, but you can't ethically get it. I mean, we can't do tests today and see, oh, we just cooled this person down to this level and now their organs are failing. You know, you can't ethically do that. But the Nazis did it. They did it unethically. And so is there some, even though the historical event of the Holocaust is over, can good come out of evil? And we know that, you know, God allows evil in the history of the world, but he brings good out of it. And

this is a point the Catechism makes. It says that God wouldn't tolerate any evil unless he had a way to bring good out of it. And so what modern doctors have done is they've said, well, we're never going to do the Holocaust again. That was horrendous. But we can save lives today by knowing what the limits are for human temperature survival, so that if we see someone's body temperature getting down to a certain level, we better fix that fast. And so modern doctors have been willing to use information that was gathered in a moral, in an immoral way to save lives today. And that's essentially a parallel in some respects to the situation with cell lines derived from aborted children. The killing of those children was a horrendous moral evil, but can lives be saved now as a result of that horrendous moral evil? The difference is that unlike the Nazi

Holocaust, abortion is still ongoing. It's still a plague on our society, and so if you simply say, well, we can use these things with no qualms because the evil is over and done with, you could foster a complacency with respect to abortion that could encourage more abortions. And thus there is an ongoing present evil that could be encouraged by simply treating this like it was a non-issue. And so because there's that ongoing issue, people need to look at their own personal level of involvement. So if you're the head of a medical firm and you have a decision, do I develop my vaccine based on the HEK cell line or one that's not tainted by abortion? Well, if you personally say, oh, I don't care, we'll use HEK. Well, then you are potentially fostering complacency with respect to abortion and continuing further

research that's destructive of human life, because you're the decision maker. You're the one that gets to check the box on the form that says we're using the HEK line. But let's say you're not the CEO. Let's say you're a doctor in a clinic and you have this vaccine that's been presented to you clinic and you have this vaccine that's been presented to you that you had no say in how it was developed, your choice is, do I use it for my patients? Well, you have less responsibility than the corporate decision maker. And if you're a patient, you know, you may not have, you have a doctor, you may be in a managed health care situation where you have to go to a certain doctor and your doctor may not give you a choice of vaccine. So you have even less direct say.

Now, all of us can make our views known to the decision makers. We can all write the heads of the of the different medical corporations and say, do not use this cell line or others like it. But the point the CDF is making is really the decision makers are the ones with the primary responsibility. People under them have lesser degrees of responsibility. Okay. Here's the second paragraph here. And it seems like this is the statement. This is where the CDF is saying that it is morally acceptable. It says, in this sense, when ethically irreproachable COVID-19 vaccines are not available, and then it gives examples of that, it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process? Mm-hmm. And actually, is that all of paragraph two?

Yeah. Oh, okay. I skipped out some of the examples it used. I can keep going on here. No, I just that's OK. We can. So, yeah. Now, you'll notice there are a number of of qualifiers there. So it's not saying they can just be used. It says when ethically irreproachable vaccines are not available, it's morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used these cell lines. So if ethically acceptable ones are available, you want to use those. Now, in a parenthetical remark, it goes on to give some examples. And it says, for example, in countries where vaccines without ethical problems are not made available to physicians and patients, and I'm pretty sure there will be countries in the world, maybe China,

where they don't care anything about abortion on the governmental level. They may just have a bunch of abortion-tainted vaccines, and since they're a totalitarian society, they may say, here are the vaccines, use them. And so in a country like that, where there's no choice given, you could receive the vaccine because you have no choice of a different vaccine. Or the CDF says where their distribution, so this is the distribution of untainted vaccines, where their distribution is more difficult due to special storage and transport conditions, or when various types of vaccines are distributed in the same country, but health authorities do not allow citizens to choose the vaccine with which to be inoculated. So it could be that we do have some good vaccines

available, but they are harder to distribute. Or it could be that you, you know, you're in an HMO, you've got to go to this doctor and the doctor's not given you a choice. Well, then in that situation, the CDF is saying it could be acceptable to go ahead and receive the vaccine. Okay. The fundamental reason for considering the use of these vaccines morally licit is that the kind of cooperation in evil, passive material cooperation, in the procured abortion from which these cell lines originate is, on the part of those making use of the resulting vaccines, remote. The moral duty to avoid such passive material cooperation is not obligatory if there is a grave danger such as the otherwise uncontainable spread of a serious pathological agent,

in this case the pandemic spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. It must therefore be considered that in such a case all vaccinations recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience with the certain knowledge that the use of such vaccines does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion from which the cells used in production of the vaccines derive. It should be emphasized, however, that the morally illicit use of these types of vaccines in the- Morally illicit. Oh, I beg your pardon. Morally illicit use of these types of vaccines. Morally licit. Why can't I say that? Morally licit. There we go. Use of these types

of vaccines in the particular conditions that make it so does not in itself constitute a legitimation, even indirect, of the practice of abortion and necessarily assumes the opposition to this practice by those who make use of those vaccines. So here they're doing a couple of things. The first one is they are explaining the reason why it's okay in these circumstances to go ahead and use a vaccine even if it comes from one of these cell lines. And they make a distinction here between what's called formal cooperation with evil and material cooperation with evil. Formal cooperation

is where you approve of the evil. So if you say, oh, I'm glad there was an aborted baby back in the 1960s. I'm glad they used abortion, and I'm all fine with that. You're formally cooperating with that evil back then by approving it. Material cooperation is where you say, well, I don't approve. I believe that was a crime, but that doesn't mean I'm going to have nothing to do with the situation. And this distinction has been made in moral theology because we live in a world of fallen human beings. Every time you interact with another person here on earth, you're interacting with a sinner, and some of the things that person is going to do will be sinful. If you buy a pizza from someone and you give your

$10 or $20 for the pizza, someone who works for the pizza parlor is going to receive some of that money and do something with it they shouldn't. Maybe they're going to make a donation to Planned Parenthood. Maybe they're going to buy illicit drugs. Maybe they're going to buy pornography. Someone is going to do something bad with some of the money you give them. And you cannot, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, you can't simply not associate with sinners. You'd have to leave the world. Yeah, I was going to just point that out. People have said and are saying in the comment section right now, look, remote cooperation with evil is still evil. What would you say to that? It's not. The evil is evil. Remote material cooperation is not itself evil. Me giving $10 to a pizza delivery guy who may do something

bad with part of his paycheck is not me doing the evil. What I'm doing is perfectly fine. What I'm doing is paying a guy $10. There's nothing wrong with handing somebody $10. What I'm doing is perfectly fine. What I'm doing is paying a guy 10 bucks. There's nothing wrong with handing somebody 10 bucks. What he then does with it may be evil, but that's his responsibility, not mine. I'm not saying, hey, why don't you go buy some porn with this? I would be if I was encouraging him to do evil, but I'm not. So cooperation with evil is not itself evil, unless you build evil into the cooperation by, say, formally approving of the evil. So this is a well-recognized distinction in Catholic moral theology, and you're not going to be able to feed yourself or live a life in human society, period, including evangelizing, if you say, I'm never going to have even remote material cooperation with evil. So the recognized principles of Catholic moral theology indicate that when it's remote, passive material cooperation,

cooperation with evil can be justified. And that's what we have in the case of these vaccines. But they don't want to—and this is the second thing they do in the paragraph—they don't want to make it sound like it's not a concern at all. And so that's why they add on that extra sentence that it needs to be emphasized that just because it's licit to use these vaccines doesn't mean we can in any way approve of abortion. We can't. Right. And it says this here in the next paragraph. It says, in fact, the licit use of such vaccines does not and should not in any way imply that there is a moral endorsement of the use of cell lines proceeding from aborted fetuses. Both pharmaceutical companies and governmental health agencies are therefore encouraged to produce, approve, distribute,

and offer ethically acceptable vaccines that do not create problems of conscience for either healthcare providers or the people to be vaccinated. Right. So these lines are a concern, even though there are situations that where they can, you know, you can use the vaccines. We don't want to use these if we don't want to be using these. And so here we have the Holy See encouraging government and health care agency decision makers to just abandon these and use and approve other lines that are not tainted in this way. All right, just a reminder to those who are in the live chat right now, we have two short more paragraphs and then we'll be taking your objections, your questions, your protestations. So please stick around with us and thanks for your patience. Here's the fifth

paragraph. It says, at the same time need to pause there because that's a good point. Yeah, feel free to. So what they're doing here is they're saying you don't have to take these vaccines. They're not morally obligatory, at least in the main, they're not morally obligatory. So you've got a choice here, but like all choices, there are going to be consequences. Also, part of what they're doing here is they're giving cover to Catholics who are conscientious objectors in different countries, because now conscientious objectors in different countries will be able to say to their governments, I'm a Catholic, and right here in this document it says I am not obliged to take these. And so they're protecting

the conscience rights of Catholics around the world by saying this. There are some Catholics who do have a fear that they will be obliged by the government, that this will be forced upon them, this vaccine. What do you say to that? Well, that's a legitimate concern that it will vary depending on how totalitarian your local area is. In any case, continues the document, from the ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one's own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good. In the absence of other means to stop or even prevent the epidemic, the common good may recommend vaccination, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed. And that's another good point to pause. So here's the message to the individual Catholic. So here's the message to the individual Catholic.

Don't think it's just about you, because you have a responsibility as a member of society to promote the common good. So you may think, oh, I'm young, I'm healthy, I'm not afraid of COVID, I'm not going to get vaccinated, and all I'm thinking about is me in that calculation. But there are people around you, and if you get COVID, you could give it to them, and all I'm thinking about is me in that calculation. But there are people around you, and if you get COVID, you could give it to them, and some of them might not be in the same health condition as you are. And so what the CDF is saying, you need to think about more than just yourself in making a decision whether to get a vaccine. You need to be thinking about the common good of society and the people around you, because it's not all about you. Now, you've already addressed this, but I know that someone's going to respond to this paragraph and say, oh my goodness,

the Catholic Church is saying that we have this obligation to protect the weakest and most exposed, and they're using that as the argument to say that we should take a vaccine that's been derived from the death of innocent babies. So, you know, we've covered the principles that are involved here. Those are, you know, the abortions that occurred were horrible crimes. However, one, God brings good even out of evils, and if one is not approving of the abortions, just like if one is not approving of what Nazis did during the Holocaust, one can, in principle, take information and things from that horrible crime and use it to save lives today. And what the CDF is saying is, in keeping with these principles that we've been talking about for a

long time, this is not new, folks. They apply here, too. And if you haven't been aware of this previously, you may have a little bit of a learning curve, but this is not new. The popes have approved this. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been talking about this for years, so has the Pontifical Academy of Life. This is consistent with pro-life principles, as well as general Catholic moral principles. It goes back before the reign of Pope Francis to Pope Benedict. That's when Dignitatis Personae was released. It goes back to the reign of St. John Paul II. The general principles go back even farther than that. So this is not new, folks. And this is well-established. These are well-established principles. And the CDF is not saying you have to take the vaccine. It just said it's, in general, not obligatory. in general, not obligatory. But in making the decision, you should think about more than yourself. You should think about society and the other people around you, because love of neighbor

is the second great commandment. Right. It continues, those who, however, for reasons of conscience, refuse vaccines produced with cellulines from aborted fetuses must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons and who are the most vulnerable. So you got to care for your neighbor. If you say, as a matter of conscience, I don't want to take a vaccine, okay, you know, that's fine. But be aware that if you do that, you need to do what you can to minimize giving this virus to other people,

especially those who are vulnerable. So let's say you've got an elderly relative that you see all the time. Well, if you don't want to take a vaccine to protect yourself from getting this, you may not be able to see that relative as often. If you're a nursing home worker and you're working with some of the most vulnerable people, you might need to find another job. You know, it's not that you have to take the vaccine, but what you might need to find another job. You know, it's not that you have to take the vaccine, but what you do have to do is what you can to protect other people. So I understand that you're saying you don't have to take the vaccine, but if someone were working with elderly people or in a hospital, would you say they're under more of a moral

obligation to receive the vaccine? Of course they are. To either take a vaccine or find another way to avoid infecting these people, they have a greater responsibility because to do something, whether it's the vaccine or something else, because they're in contact with people who are very vulnerable to this. Similarly, someone who has grandma living at home, well, that person has more of an obligation than someone who doesn't have grandma living at home. If you're a young person and you're single and you're living on your own and you're not in contact with vulnerable people, you have less responsibility. But everybody has to think about more than themselves. You have to think about who am I in contact with? What are their levels

of vulnerability? And how am I going to address that? You know, there are also those who think that this COVID thing has been blown out of proportion, that it really isn't that deadly, that the numbers have been sort of fixed somehow. This is really a conspiracy. And so I'm not going to take it and I'm not concerned about me, nor am I that concerned about other people because I don't actually think it's as transmissible or as deadly as people are saying it is. What would you say to that? Well, I would say that there has been a lot of media hype on this and that, you know, that's something that needs to be taken into account. On the other hand, it is more deadly than a regular flu. It is more transmissible than a regular flu. And there are certain groups of people, you know, the elderly or people with certain health

conditions who do have much higher fatality rates than other people. And so while I think it's legitimate to, you know, give some pushback to the media hype and to say, okay, look, just because someone commits suicide while they're infected with COVID doesn't mean that that's a COVID death. And just because someone had flu-like symptoms when they died, that doesn't mean that it's COVID if you didn't test them. So, you know, there are, I think it's reasonable to give pushback on some of these numbers, but this is a pandemic and it is killing a bunch of people and certain groups are especially vulnerable and all of that has to be taken into account. All right, here's the final paragraph here. Finally, there is also a moral imperative for the pharmaceutical industry, governments, and international organizations to ensure that vaccines, which are effective and safe from a medical that condemns poor countries to continue living in health, economic and social poverty.

And so they're wanting to make sure that the vaccine is available to everybody all over the world. They're not saying necessarily give it away for free everywhere, but they do want to make sure that people in poor countries have access to vaccines. And that's a laudable sentiment. Then the final little bit of the document, this is the money part in terms of doctrinal authority. It says, the Sovereign Pontiff Francis, at the audience granted to the undersigned prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 17 December 2020, examined the present note and ordered its publication.

It is therefore part of the papal magisterium and has to be respected accordingly. Okay, so that's the answer. So it's fair to say the Church has spoken and that Catholics can get COVID-19 vaccines. Yeah. Well, that has not itself been in question, but in the case of these vaccines that have some involvement from cell lines, they can be used if you don't have a better option in your area or if you're not given a better option. All right. Well, thank you very much, Jimmy. That was really helpful. I think really helpful for everybody to go through that document. Let's take some questions here. Some of these are less serious. This one comes from Samuel Varg, who apparently just wanted to say, Jimmy has an epic beard. He must be wise. Well, God gave me a Y chromosome. I figure, why not make the best of it? Let's exploit the potentials. Now, some of these questions, Jimmy, you may have already covered somewhat, so forgive me

if you need to repeat yourself somewhat. But Ryan Casey says, he's a patron, he says, the responsibility we hold as consumers is very far removed from the fetal cells some companies used from the mid-1950s and 1970s, but they are not completely removed. Does the principle of intrinsic good weigh on matters like this? Well, it does, but in ways that we've covered. When you interact in society, you are going to in some way cooperate with other people who are going to do evil in relation to your cooperation, and you can't simply say, I'm going to withdraw from society and have nothing to do with it. If nothing else, the imperative to evangelize mitigates against that. You need to be involved,

at least the ordinary person. Maybe there's an occasional hermit or anchorite, but the ordinary Christian needs to be engaged and involved in the world, and that is going to mean some forms of cooperation with people who are going to do evil. And some of the evils they're going to do are intrinsically wrong, like using porn. That's intrinsically wrong. So you can't say just because something someone has done is intrinsically wrong means I can never buy a pizza from a guy who's going to go do that. We've got some people in the chat, Jimmy, who are pointing out that we have different people within the church saying conflicting things. So what's a Catholic to do when his favorite podcaster or maybe someone in the clergy says something that kind of conflicts with each other, what are we to do? Seek an authoritative answer, and that is exactly what the Congregation for the Faith has just provided.

Now, as we said, it's not protected by the cloak of infallibility. So one could, and the CDF actually has a document on this from 1990 called Donum Veritatis, The Gift of Truth. It's on the way that theologians function in the Church, and it points out that in exceptional cases, a theologian could raise questions about the form, the prudence, or the timing, or even the contents of a non-infallible magisterial text. But that can't be a matter of course, because the Holy Spirit does guide the Church in the overall exercise of its mission, and these are well-established principles. So I know some folks may be kind of late to the party on this, but this is not new stuff. I was not surprised by anything in this document because really all they're doing is applying established principles that have been taught since, specifically with respect to vaccines, since the days of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Patron Michael Orsini says, I think people need to be careful about not taking the vaccine as a pretext to defining themselves as more holier than thou with regard to their fellow Catholics. Virtue signaling is a real problem. We like to look good. As fallen human beings, we like to look good to other people. We like to flash our virtue and show how virtuous we are. In Jesus' day, one of the ways of doing that was by having really wide phylacteries and really long tassels on your prayer shawl. And Jesus criticized the Pharisees for that outward excessive display of holiness, or what today we would call virtue signaling. And the devil wants to corrupt Christians, he wants to get them thinking in prideful ways, he wants to get them looking down on other people, and one of the ways of doing that

is by getting them to say, oh, I'm so virtuous, I'm distinctive in this way because I don't take the vaccine. Or, the flip side of that, some people will be virtue signaling by, oh, I'm so virtuous, I do take the vaccine. I'm not like those horrible anti-vaxxers. So the devil can work both sides of the street on that, and regardless of the side of the street you're on, you need to say, this isn't about me virtue signaling, how can I be loving? Because love is God's fundamental imperative. Love of God is the first great commandment, love of neighbor is the second great commandment. How can I love God? How can I love my neighbor? What does love indicate I should do in this situation? And it can indicate more than one thing. It could indicate, you know, some people have tried to put

these in opposition to each other, but they're not. It could indicate I'm going to take a vaccine so that I can protect myself and my loved ones and society, you know, the other people around me. you know, the other people around me. And in addition to that, I'm going to write the head of the biomedical company that made the vaccine and tell them what I think about aborted stem cell lines so that I encourage them not to do this in the future if they did it. And I suspect, in the future if they did it. And I suspect, you know, like, so of the three vaccines that are prominent here in the United States right now that have been talked about, and the U.S. bishops have talked about these, there's a Pfizer vaccine, there's a Moderna vaccine, and then there's one by AstraZeneca. And AstraZeneca is the most problematic of them. And AstraZeneca is going to see, hey, there are Catholics who are not going to take our vaccine because of the lines we used. And the more we can amplify that message

to them, the more they're likely to rethink this in the future. So would you say it's important or helpful if somebody's not going to take the vaccine, that they're not just not take it in private protest, but they actually write to the pharmaceutical companies and express why they're not. Yeah. And it needs to be to the decision makers, because if you, let's say you're in a clinic and you tell a nurse, oh, I'm not going to take the AstraZeneca vaccine because I don't approve of it. Great. You know where that's going to go? Into the nurse's head and nowhere else. She's not going to report it up the chain to the decision makers. If you want to have an impact, essentially what we're talking about is a boycott.

And if you want to boycott something, you've got to tell the people why they're boycott, they're being boycotted. So they understand that. Don't leave them to guess if, you know, if you, and don't think, oh, I'm just going to say it on Facebook. The decision makers are not reading your page on Facebook. Not unless you're some kind of celebrity, they're not. And so contact the decision makers. Make your protest effective. Collie, I hope somebody would put together a website that makes doing that easier. Uh-huh.

I'm sure we'll see that makes doing that easier. Uh-huh. I'm sure that would be cool. That would be cool. Nathan Ruffito says, isn't there a difference between the public manifest grave evil of abortion connected to the vaccine and the pizza guy's private sin of watching porn? The reason I use that is because it's very common and people can understand that because abortion is, I would say, also someone questioned the issue of intrinsic good and evil. And both of those are intrinsic evils. Both pornography and abortion are intrinsic evil. Now, is abortion a much worse plague on society overall than pornography today? That's an interesting question. Abortion, the way I tend to look at it is, you know, it kills a third of all Americans. So it, to me, is the black hole that outmasses every other issue. I mean, the only things that

would compete would be something like, let's start a nuclear war that could kill a third of Americans. On the other hand, pornography is a massive, massive problem that, you know, depending on how you look at it, could be leading even more souls to hell. Yeah. So comparing intrinsically grave evils that are both massive plagues on society and saying which one is worse, it's a little tricky. They're both worse in different ways. Okay. This question comes from Teresa Groves, who says, people are unaware that aborted babies are being experimented on now. One scientist recently said he dissected 76 second trimester babies for one vaccine trial. And that's not one of the vaccines we're talking about, but yeah, that illustrates part of the problem, and the Congregation for the Doctrine

of the Faith has addressed that too. If you look in paragraph 34 of Dignitatis Personae, they talk about exactly that, about the evil of experimenting on unborn babies. I have a question. Since you have this wonderful podcast, Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, where you deal with these different conspiracy theories. I've heard some people say things like, well, the vaccine is going to implant a chip in us, or that it's somehow related to the Mark of the Beast. Have you heard that? Oh, yeah. So there are sort of two claims there. Now, they're kind of linked because people want to link RFID chips to the Mark of the Beast, but let's take the issues separately. First of all, these vaccines will not inject you with an RFID chip. This is a misunderstanding based on a story that came out a few months ago where the U.S. government bought some syringes in advance of

the vaccine so that when the vaccines arrive, we'll have a bunch of syringes on hand to do them. And as part of the inventory tracking, so you buy a bunch of syringes, you want to know where they are. The syringes have RFID chips on the outside of them. So we can know where the syringes are as part of inventory tracking. It does not inject an RFID chip into you. We do not have nanoscale RFID chips that could go through a needle at this point. So you are not going to be injected with a chip. Also, this doesn't fit the paradigm of the Mark of the Beast. Now, the Mark of the Beast can be interpreted in different ways, but even if you take it literally, it's a mark either on your hand or your forehead of the number 666. Well, getting an injection in your arm or your butt is not a mark of the number 666

on your hand, right hand specifically, or on your forehead. The back of your right hand or even the palm of your right hand and your forehead are not good intramuscular injection sites because on the forehead, you don't have the muscles there. You don't have big muscles on your forehead to inject. And on your hand, you could mess up your tendons and stuff. That's why they give it to you like in your upper arms or in your butt or things like that. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Let's see here. I would really, this is Mark Price, says, I would really be interested in understanding

the following. Does the benefit for the common good actually have much impact on the morality of the vaccine? It seems to me to turn more on how the remoteness of the cooperation with the original evil acts involved. Otherwise, it is just an argument that the end, a lot of people wonder about this, but as soon as you're not yourself doing the evil, you are not doing anything intrinsically evil. So if you're not doing the abortion, you're not doing the abortion, and any involvement you have is peripheral. And as soon as you're not doing something intrinsically evil, it is in principle something that can be justified for a sufficient reason. And that's why you have to take into account what's the good that is to be achieved for the evil you're tolerating. That is not the same thing as simple proportionalist or consequentialist

reasoning. What proportionalist consequentialist reasoning does is it says there's no such thing as intrinsic evil that we even need to think about. It's only about the consequences. What this form, the Catholic form of reasoning says, is we need to first consider, are we doing something intrinsically evil? And only if the answer is no, it's not intrinsically evil, does the consequence calculus get done. And so that's what's happening here. By taking a vaccine, am I killing an unborn baby? No, I'm not. Taking a vaccine is not intrinsically evil. So I have to ask, what are the costs and benefits of doing this? And that includes the benefits to myself and my loved ones in society, and it includes the cost of potentially encouraging a lax attitude towards abortion. And what the congregation is saying is we need to both be able to achieve the benefits to ourselves and our loved ones in society, and we need to not take a lax attitude towards abortion.

Someone who goes by the name of Ignatius of Loyola is taking— I've heard of him. Oh, yes. Don't think it's the one you've heard of, but he's taking issue with what you're saying quite a bit here. He's saying material cooperation with evil is and always has been immoral. Mental gymnastics does not change that. And then he followed up by saying peripheral involvement with evil is never a good thing. Well, I would say that you are disagreeing with St. Paul, among other figures. You're also disagreeing with the longstanding teaching of Catholic moral theology and the Church.

So I'm a little surprised someone named Ignatius of Loyola would do that, because the historical Ignatius of Loyola would not have done that. In fact, a lot of these decisions, a lot of these principles about cooperation stem from traditions connected historically with Ignatius of Loyola. In fact, Jesuits are rather famous for carefully parsing questions like this. But, forgetting Ignatius of Loyola for a moment, St. Paul. If you read 1 Corinthians and also Romans 14—it's not as explicit in Romans 14, but it is explicit in 1 Corinthians—St. Paul considers the question of, can you eat meat that was sacrificed to an idol? Well, sacrificing an animal to an idol is intrinsically evil, idol is intrinsically evil, and idolatry was a major plague on first-century Greco-Roman society.

Nevertheless, Paul says you don't—in 1 Corinthians 5—you don't have to stop associating with idolaters because you can't leave the world. And he considers what happens if you are invited over to a dinner party, and someone is serving you meat that originally was offered to an idol. Well, okay, this is meat from this animal that was sacrificed to an idol. Can you put it in your mouth and integrate it into your body? Notice this is a fairly close parallel to what we have with cell lines. St. Paul says that because an idol is ultimately nothing, and even though the act of worshiping an idol is intrinsically evil, you can eat this meat as long as you're not leading people into further idolatry by encouraging it or approving it or things like that. And that's essentially the same thing that the CDF is saying here. You can use materials that came from an intrinsically immoral act to do good today, like preserving the health of your bodies, provided you avoid saying, oh, this doesn't matter, it's okay. In the same way, St. Paul says, you can consume material for the health of your body that came from an intrinsically evil act,

as long as you don't say, hey, idolatry is okay. As long as you make your Christian opposition to idolatry known, you can still eat that meat. I think some people are confused, including myself, about what exactly is being sort of injected into us, say, if we take this vaccine. I think some people have this kind of idea that there's part of the baby in there, and I'm somehow taking part of that baby into me. So there are different kinds of vaccines. They work different ways. So there are different kinds of vaccines. They work different ways. In the case of the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine, there is no part of an aborted baby that is going into you, none at all. The only involvement that the HEK cell line had with those is they used it to do a test to see, is this vaccine safe? So they had

like some HEK cells and they exposed them to this vaccine to see what the effect was. But they don't have any of those cells in those vaccines. So you are not receiving part of an aborted baby when you take those vaccines. I have to read this one comment from Jonathan the Melkite, because I think it sums up how many people feel right now, including myself. He says, I dig the logic, Jimmy, but it still feels gross. Because it is. It is gross. But, you know, that's actually biology is gross, and medicine is gross. Doctors have to learn to do autopsies, and that's gross. And the fact that abortions were involved here makes it even more gross.

But squeamishness aside, physicians are a good thing. Read Sirach 38. It's a chapter that God is devoted to the praise of the physician under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Free—were you finished there? Sorry. No, yeah. Free Nation Radio says, if the baby that was used in the development of the AstraZeneca vaccine was aborted five years ago instead of 50 years ago, would you have a different opinion on the morality of the vaccine's development? It would affect things. I mean, he's asking for a personal opinion. It would affect

things somewhat, but the fundamental distinction is the baby was not killed back in the 1960s or if it was five years ago the baby was not killed to produce this vaccine. The baby was killed for other reasons. And then presumably the mother donated its body for medical research and so the timing doesn't make an intrinsic difference. The proximity in time has some effect, but it's a lower consideration than the fact that that an intrinsically evil act was done and is now over. Okay. Anthony Demarest says, what are your thoughts on forced vaccinations? Is such a governmental position against liberty justified given the grave issue? I would say yes. People should not be forced to be vaccinated. That doesn't mean the government can't reasonably encourage people to get vaccinated on a wide range of different things, but I think there need to be conscious exceptions. And that applies not to this, but to every vaccine. In order to

achieve herd immunity, the government simply does not need every single person to get vaccinated. If you have 95% of the population vaccinated against a given pathogen, then you have achieved herd immunity and you will not have a pandemic of that. So the government simply does not need everybody, every single individual without exception, to be vaccinated against anything. Therefore, there should always be conscience exceptions. therefore there should always be conscience exceptions. Yeah, a lot of these are just sort of repeats now, but let's see. This person, Joe, says,

Matt, I don't believe it's safe to take this vaccine. The media is incredibly corrupt. They say the vaccine is safe, but there's been no proof in society if it's safe. Well, I would say a couple things. First, the media is really corrupt, and I don't blame people for wanting to push back on that. The media needs pushback. And in fact, it needs a lot more pushback than it gets. At the same time, you know, you have to test things from both perspectives and say, well, OK, just like the media may be making baseless claims, people on the other side who hate the media can be making baseless claims just because they hate the media. And so we need to

test both of these positions. Now, in fact, there have been safety studies done. That's part of the trialing process. Whenever a vaccine is rolled out or any, you know, a drug is rolled out. They have various stages of testing, and one of the stages, actually, really, it covers more than one, but specifically, one of them is focused on how safe is this. And that has been done. Now, it hasn't been done for everybody. From my understanding, the vaccines for COVID have not been tested yet on pregnant women. That's my understanding, too. But if you're not a pregnant woman, if you're just part of the general population, there have been safety studies that have been done. In fact, some vaccines over in Europe that showed safety problems had to get rethought because of precisely this. They do

safety trials. So there are safety trials that have been done. If you don't think they've been sufficient, okay, you could say, well, I'm going to wait a few months and see as they roll out. I mean, I don't have to be one of the early adopters. I can wait a few months and see if massive problems crop up and maybe I'll get one later. Bekaloo19 says, Jimmy, why don't we take the capitalist approach and boycott all vaccine development until fetal cell lines so that the vaccine makers create ethical vaccines?

We could avoid all the moral compromise. I think that would be great in the ideal. That doesn't solve our question. The question is, how do you get everybody on board for that right now? And is this the time when we have a pandemic to launch such a boycott? It would have been better to launch such a boycott at the beginning before these vaccines were developed. I mean, that was really the time when the decision makers were making decisions and, you know, were subject to being persuaded. But the fundamental problem is a logistical one. There are all kinds of evil in the world, and we could boycott them to try to achieve change, and we would have some success in that regard. But how do you make it happen in practice? We can't boycott everything

at once. And even within the Christian community, we can't get everybody on the same page. And even with people who do boycott, a lot of people boycott silently and thus thwart the purposes of a boycott because the people being boycotted don't know why you're not using their product. You have to tell them. If you want to make your boycott effective, tell the people you're boycotting why you're doing it and that you're doing it so they don't think, oh, our commercials just haven't been attractive enough for these people. A lot of people are saying kind of one-liners like this that I think would get a lot of retweets on Twitter, but they're not necessarily backing up the claim. So this

person here, Sonny and Chad Forever says, probably not his real name, I'm not going to listen to any government telling me to inject foreign material into my body. So that's something that kind of sounds kind of. Okay. It sounds kind of macho. Yeah. It sounds a little bit virtue signally there. But foreign material, well, then you're never going to take an injection.

I hope you never get diabetes or any other illness that needs an injection. Yeah. Okay. Look, this has been great, Jimmy. Why don't we begin to wrap this up? I appreciate your time. We might just have one more question because one more question just came in. But before we get to that question, yeah, maybe just kind of give us your concluding thoughts on this. It seems like we have a lot of Catholics who look at our Protestant brothers and sisters and say, look at all of the confusion over there in Protestantism. They don't kind of have this one guiding principle or unifying figure. But sometimes it feels like we Catholics are beginning to act like Protestants. When the CDF comes out and makes a statement like this, we dismiss it and instead listen to somebody else, maybe a bishop or a priest or a YouTube celebrity?

We are all fallen human beings, people who are pro-vaccine, anti-vaccine, everybody is fallen. We all have a tendency to have confirmation bias, where we hear claims that feed our preferred narrative and that we then don't challenge, we need to challenge. We need to challenge claims of other people's positions, and we need to challenge the claims of our own position as part of the reasoning process. We also need to recognize the Holy Spirit guides the Church. These are not new principles. These are not striking new positions. These are things that are well worked out. The principles themselves, as we covered, go back to the Bible in St. Paul. So if you have a, this is intrinsically evil, it's impossible view, you are not thinking with

the Church, and you're not thinking with the Bible. You need to have a sanity check, and the CDF has provided that by giving an authoritative application of the principles that we've had for a long time to this question. If you have a problem with that, because you know the Holy Spirit guides the Church, you need to do some soul-searching. You need to be open to what the Church says. You need to ask, could I be wrong? Are there counterexamples? Can I think of counterexamples in my own life? Do I ever give $10 to a pizza guy knowing he may go buy porn with it? You need to think about, if I tried to apply the principle that I want consistently across all areas of my life, would I be living the way God wants me to? And in terms of making decisions about what am I going to do, you need to decide, you need to think not only in terms of what's good for you, but what's good for other people, because love is

God's fundamental priority. Don't worry about virtue signaling on Twitter or in social media chat streams and showing how holy you are. Think in terms of love. How can I best love God? How can I best love other people, both the unborn and the people who are alive right now? Because those two things are not in opposition. As the documents from the United States bishops and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have indicated, you can do both things. You can both protect other people, whether that's through the vaccine or isolating yourself or something. You can protect other people, and you can protect the unborn by voicing your opposition to abortion in an effective way, not just tweeting about it

or Facebooking it, but sending a communication, a letter. It could be a tweet, but getting in contact with the decision makers and telling them how you're making your decisions. We've touched upon this, but I think it's important to just kind of go over one last time. I mean, there are many different levels of authority within the Church, and it seems reasonable to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that if I hear a particular prelate saying one thing, another prelate contradicting him, maybe I prefer to listen to this one than that one, you know, what's a guy to do? There's a higher authority called the CDF,

isn't there? Yes, that's why the CDF exists, is when there's a lack of clarity on lower levels, they, with the authority of the Pope, address the question authoritatively. And so that's what we have. That's the reason that they put this out. Jimmy, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. If people in the chat right now could do me a favor and click subscribe, you won't miss out on great content like this coming up. Thank you so much for being here, Jimmy. And one final time, let us know about your excellent podcast, which I have linked to in the description below so people can check it out. Oh, thank you. So Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, like I said, we cover mysteries, both natural and supernatural mysteries.

And we've got some discussion of COVID coming up. This Saturday, I'm going to be recording an episode that will air later in January about the World Economic Forum that meets at Davos, Switzerland every year in January. And this year at their meeting, even though it's not in Davos for once, they're going to be talking about a program they have called The Great Reset to reset the world economy in the wake of the COVID pandemic. There are a lot of people who are really skittish about the Great Reset and what they're really trying to do. Is this just a global power grab?

And there are various theories. Some people have even claimed, and this is without basis, but some people have even claimed that the World Economic Forum released COVID so they could do the Great Reset. Well, that's not true, but there is reason to be concerned. So check out Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World if you want to find out more about that. That's great. And somebody just paid, you know, he can do that as a super chat. This is Benjamin Handelman. He just wanted to know you're amazing and thank you for being amazing. So I better read that. That was very kind.

Oh, thank you so much. By the way, we also got a lot of great comments, Jimmy. I was just reading the more provocative ones. Oh, sure. We need to know how to respond to some of these things. Yeah. Thanks so much, Jimmy. My pleasure.