A Catholic AG is challenging bishops over vaccines. He may not like the precedent.

(RNS) — Down in Florida, the Catholic attorney general is in a dustup with the state Catholic bishops conference over the issue of school vaccinations. On July 31, state A.G. James Uthmeier sent the bishops a letter saying, “it has come to my attention” that Catholic schools might refuse to grant religious exemptions to vaccination requirements in the coming school year. This, Uthmeier points out, would violate a state law mandating allowance of such exemptions.

The state’s top legal officer then declares in his letter that “as a Catholic, I am confident 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” (using a misleading claim). What follows are quotes from Thomas Aquinas, recent popes, the Catechism and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wielded to make the case that the bishops’ policy is, by their own religious lights, wrong. The letter concludes by asking the bishops to “please state clearly the religious grounds” for the policy.

Uthmeier is entitled to ask the bishops for a doctrinal statement, I suppose, but under constitutional law he’s not entitled to judge its sufficiency. Other than asserting that a religious doctrine is not sincerely held (which it plainly is in this case), under Florida’s 1998 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, he is obliged to assert a compelling state interest in having state law override a religious free exercise claim.

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This would mean claiming the government has an overriding interest in enabling parents’ religious liberty to trump the church’s. Uthmeier evidently didn’t want to go there. What he did do, however, was threaten that a failure to comply with the state’s vaccination exemption law “could jeopardize students’ eligibility for state educational scholarships” via a voucher program currently accessed by 88% to 95% of all students in Florida’s Catholic schools. 

In their response, the bishops (in an Aug. 7 letter from the executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops), while insisting that they are under no obligation to “justify to your office their position on Catholic teaching and their reasons for the current vaccine policies,” stated that their policy is “rooted in the desire to protect the common good and to encourage the proportional benefits of utilizing vaccines.” The rest of the letter is devoted to an enunciation of the church’s religious liberty rights, including its authority under Florida case law to override a statutory claim asserted by a parent seeking admission of an unvaccinated child to a Catholic school.  

Under the circumstances, Uthmeier’s huffing and puffing would seem to have more to do with political posturing than anything else. In that, it bears some resemblance to what happened when then-Archbishop of New Orleans Joseph Rummel ordered the desegregation of archdiocesan schools in March 1962. This drew the ire of Leander Perez, the arch-segregationist Democratic boss of nearby Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes.

“I am a lifelong Catholic and will continue to be so regardless of Communistic infiltration and the influence of the National Council of Christians and Jews upon our church leadership,” Perez declared. With the help of allies in the Louisiana Legislature, he threatened to cut off state benefits to Catholic schools, such as free textbooks, lunches and bus transportation, and called for a boycott of Catholic schools and a financial boycott of the church.

After Rummel warned (as he wrote) “certain members of the Church against any further attempt through word or deed to hinder his orders or provoke the devoted people of this venerable archdiocese to disobedience or rebellion, in the matter of opening our schools to all Catholic children,” he excommunicated Perez and two other leading segregationists. 

Far be it from me to tell Catholic bishops what to do. But if Uthmeier pursues his campaign and tries to deny state tuition vouchers to students at Catholic schools, I suspect that Archbishop Rummel, were he heading the Florida bishops conference today, would excommunicate him, too.

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