Do Catholic Schools Have to Offer a Religious Exemption to Vaccines When the Church Says Vaccines Are Okay?

​Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier recently sent a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops arguing that Florida law “requires public and private schools to exempt students from vaccine requirements” when parents have religious objections. Stressing that he himself is Catholic, Uthmeier told the bishops that Catholic schools must “comply with Florida law and grant religious exemptions to school vaccine policies.”
 
Failure to do so, the attorney general wrote, “could jeopardize eligibility for state educational scholarship programs.”
 
Can Florida do that? Should Catholic schools offer students a religious exemption from vaccine requirements?
 
The Florida law wisely respects the conscience and religious rights of students, some of whom reject vaccines because they have a remote connection to research using cell lines originating from fetuses aborted decades ago.
 
There is little question that non-religious private schools can be required to allow these exemptions. The application of this standard to religious schools is, however, a trickier proposition.
 
The Vatican – which is second to none in its vocal opposition to abortion – allows Catholics to receive vaccines. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith sees “no cooperation with evil” in using vaccines derived from these old cell lines, since receiving such vaccines does not cause or promote future abortions.
 
Thus, no religious exemption can be said to exist under the standards set by the Holy See. Under Florida law, K-12 schools must administer vaccines against polio, measles, rubella, pertussis, mumps, diphtheria, and tetanus.
 
Vaccines are in keeping with Church doctrine, which holds that “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 … especially to protect the weakest and most exposed.”
Attorney General Uthmeier disputes this stance, quoting the Dicastery’s own note that also states that “practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.” Does that settle the matter in the state’s favor?
 
No.
 
Protect The 1st recognizes that the Catholic Church in Florida has clearly vetted these statements by the Vatican and determined that the best policy for its schools is to require the vaccines. “It is not remotely the role of a government official, even a Catholic one, to tell the bishops what to teach or how to run the church’s apostolates,” Rick Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor, told the National Catholic Reporter.  
 
It is certainly not the business of the state to don scarlet-and-ermine vestments and use government coercion to police the internal theological and pedagogical thinking of the Roman Catholic Church and its schools. State intervention in matters of belief, though well-intentioned, is a clear violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion.
 
Perhaps the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops should reconsider its stand and allow those families that want to seek an exemption to get one. But the bishops cannot be compelled to do so.
 
If taken too far, this disagreement could put at risk the education of thousands of students who receive state vouchers to attend Catholic schools. The attorney general may want to find a way to make his point about exemptions without forcing the Church to go to court to defend its right to set its doctrines.

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