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Catholic Bioethicist Drops BOMBSHELL: Why You Could Morally REFUSE the COVID Vaccine · Adrian Milag Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a a long and and productive discussion um involving a lot of good Catholic theologians saying, well, it was obviously not ideal that the vaccines had uh links either in how they were produced or how they were tested with abortion-derived cell lines.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: So these are cell lines that began with the abortion of a child.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: The child's cells were taken from these children, and then those cells were immortalized and brought forward throughout.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: So unfortunately, um there were very, very few vaccines that were developed without any kind of link to these abortion-derived cell lines.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, some of them were available in Asia, which was good.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: And in the United States, there was there was actually none available.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what was available for use in the Philippines, but it uh it did cause a problem of conscience for many people because although it was a very remote form of material cooperation, so clearly the individual had no desire for an abortion to take place, etc.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: No complicity with that abortion.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Nonetheless, these these vaccines did have a link, a distant link, not a not a close link, but to these uh abortion uh that took place in the past, and then and then the use of those cell lines.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so people did object unconsciously.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to do that, didn't want to take that vaccine.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was a reasonable object.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: COVID vaccines was that they were all experimental.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: They had been created using new technology.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: There was no knowledge of what the long-term effects would be.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Normally, vaccines are tested for years and years before to be declared safe to understand what all the possible effects are.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So people, in effect, were being asked to take an experimental treatment based on, you know, the assertion that it was safe and effective.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, later on, a lot of the information came out that, well, actually, you know, there were a lot of side effects that were associated with the vaccines.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe they weren't as effective as they were promised.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: So the safety part came under, you know, revision over time that maybe they were not as safe as they thought.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: It still wasn't a huge negative effect, but still significant numbers, particularly myocarditis, so problems with the heart, but other issues as well.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other aspect of this was, you know, how deadly was the COVID disease?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there always has to be a proportionality between, you know, the cure and the disease.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, if the disease has a 50% chance of killing you, and the cure has a 75% chance of killing you, you shouldn't take the cure.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's more dangerous to have the cure than the disease.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think there needs to be some creativity.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think also, you know, what happened during the pandemic, um, many churches were closed, uh, and you know, the sacraments were not being distributed.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Masses were not being held publicly.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um it became very clear that there could be ways to get around it.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: They could have outdoor masses, they could have people going to confession in their cars, right?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: With with an with a safe distance between the priest and the penitent.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: There were different ways to do it rather than simply canceling in terms of the hospital.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Many patients died without any priest able to come to them and give them the last right because they were denied entry into the hospitals.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just a radical violation of people's right.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: The right to have the church present.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so the church in the United States, I think elsewhere, insisted, right?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Look, the priest can wear personal protective equipment and masks and all kinds of different things, and disinfectant and whatever else.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't really denote Let's pray.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer of protection of technology.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, Christ, Sovereign King and throne in heaven, in your love and mercy, I ask that you establish a perimeter of protection with your precious blood around our communication devices and all technology we use and own.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our phones and cell phones, computers, tablets, and other devices, the cameras or webcams, microphones, speakers, displays any and all software, Wi-Fi connection in the air, both my router and the router, the people we are communicating with.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: The cables involved in the transmission of data and the lightweights being used to transfer data.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Cleanse them with your precious blood and drive from from them any satanic influence.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I ask this that you establish around them a sanctuary of your mercy where Satan and other evil spirit or human agency cannot interfere.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I ask, Father, that you will block, bind, and revue, and render impotent any assault of the evil one from them in any way.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Father, so long as these instruments are utilized, we ask you to allow them to enjoy the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Cardo Achutis, Saint Michael the Archangel, and all the holy angels.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: We ask this in your most holy name, the name before which every knee shall bow in heaven, on the earth, and under the earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph Minito, our program Historian Catholico, and what a privilege to have you in our show, Doc.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pleasure to be here.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I saw some uh interview with you in EWTN and some other Catholic channel and discussing, especially during the time in pandemic, about the morality of the vaccine.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I think Dr.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph, uh, we can talk about more on that today, and I know your background.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: As a president and National Catholic Bioethic Center, you're the perfect uh guy for this topic.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you could you could share some background about yourself, Dr.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I'm um Franco-Texan.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in South Texas in the beautiful city of Corpus Christi on the Gulf.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And my mother's French, a medical doctor.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: My father was American, he was uh a theologian and uh a philosopher.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I worked in the pro-life movement for many years after getting my master's degree in Latin American studies.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I worked a little bit in Central America, but then I was kind of an international missionary.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I went to the Philippines actually three times, which was lovely.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh twice to the Manila area, once to Cebu, and uh traveled to 81 countries all over the world, spreading the gospel of life uh with human life international.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I ended up in our uh office in Rome.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I did a doctorate in clinical bioethics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, most famous for the Gemelli Policlinico there, where the Holy Father goes for health care, and um worked very closely on many different bioethical issues, but one of my main issues, the one on which I did my doctorate, was conscience rights for healthcare workers, which ended up becoming very significant for the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to the National Catholic Bioethics Center in 2019.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually started there in July.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was uh serving as as president, and so when the pandemic happened, we had a lot of work, obviously, and a lot of bioethical questions were raised.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: That continued as the vaccines were developed and the many different questions that arose because of that.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so the NCBC tried to maintain a very good and and and solid position based in Catholic teaching.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um the Catholic catechism states very clearly that we have uh a religious duty to form our conscience as well and then to follow the judgments of conscience.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so then the the question arose with the vaccines in particular, um, because of the ethical problems with how they were developed, could a Catholic take those vaccines or not?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a long and and productive discussion um involving a lot of good Catholic theologians saying, well, it was obviously not ideal that the the vaccines had uh links either in how they were produced or how they were tested with abortion-derived cell lines.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: So these are cell lines that began with the abortion of a child.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: The child cells were taken from these children, um, and then those cells were immortalized and then brought forward, et cetera.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: So unfortunately, um there were very, very few vaccines that were developed without any kind of link to these abortion-derived cell lines.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, some of them were available in Asia, which was which was good.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And in the United States, there were, there was actually none available.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what was available for use in the Philippines, but it uh it did pose a problem of conscience for many people, because although it was a very remote form of material cooperation, so clearly the individual had no desire for an abortion to take place, et cetera, no complicity with that abortion.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Nonetheless, these these vaccines did have a link, a distant link, not a not a close link, but to these uh abortion uh that took place in the past, and then and then the use of those cell lines.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so people did object in conscience and say, I didn't want to do that, didn't want to take that vaccine.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was a reasonable objection.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so the NCBC really felt that this was important, that people should have the right to object.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sadly, um many different civil authorities and governments uh kind of overrided the conscience rights of individuals, and some people lost their jobs.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's actually a report today that I saw about uh 8,000 members of the U.S.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Army and you know, military in general were discharged, were forced to leave uh because they refused the vaccine.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh now they're being received back, and they're told that you know that they're receiving an apology that this was done to them and that they had the right, you know, underconscious, particularly because you know it wasn't just a question of the abortion drive cell lines, it was also a question of informed consent.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the basis of bioethics, good bioethics, is the right of informed consent.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what does that mean?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: That means that you have the right to know the uh possible you know side effects, good or bad, of any medical procedure or treatment that is done to you, and that you have to consent in order for it to be done to you.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, in order for one to do a medical procedure on you, now if you're unconscious and unable to give consent, then another person who's your proxy, you know, who's a close family member or a person who's been appointed by you can give that consent.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: But the point is that one cannot be treated without consent.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem with informed consent with the COVID vaccines was that they were all experimental.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: They had been created using new technology.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: There was no knowledge of what the long-term effects would be.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Normally, vaccines are tested for years and years before to to be declared safe to understand what all the possible effects are.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So people, in effect, were being asked to take an experimental treatment based on, you know, the assertion that it was safe and effective.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, later on, a lot of the information came out that, well, actually, you know, there were a lot of side effects that were associated with the vaccines, and maybe they weren't as effective as they were promised.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the safety part came under, you know, revision over time that they maybe they were not as safe as they thought.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: It still wasn't huge negative effects, but but still significant numbers, particularly myocarditis, so problems with the heart, but other issues as well.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other aspect of this was, you know, how deadly was the COVID disease.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there always has to be a proportionality between, you know, the cure and the disease.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, if the disease has a 50% chance of killing you, and the cure has a 75% chance of killing you, you shouldn't take the cure because it's more dangerous to have the cure than the disease.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it wasn't that situation with COVID, but the point is that you know, maybe 1%, 2% of the general population had a risk of dying of COVID.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the risk of dying from the vaccine was less than 1%, but it wasn't insignificant.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And some individuals who really had very little risk because they were strong and healthy, et cetera, felt like, well, gosh, why would I take the vaccine?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so then there was a big argument that was made about the common good, that you should take the vaccine to protect other people, not to protect yourself.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: But again, this ended up being a false argument because it turned out that it wasn't a sterilizing vaccine.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sterilizing in the sense that it kills the disease, that it makes you impossible for you to give the disease to others.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So most vaccines are sterilizing in the sense that once you have the vaccine, you know, you cannot transmit that disease.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: What uh most of these new vaccines did was kind of reduce the severity of the disease, but it actually didn't make it that much less likely that you would contract COVID, and it certainly didn't make it less likely that you would spread it.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So people being asked to do this for the common good was rather questionable because essentially you weren't really protecting other people because they could still catch it from you, and you could still catch it.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the the only benefit really from the vaccine was to make the COVID experience less severe for yourself.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's a good thing, but it's certainly not the common good.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've learned a lot of lessons since then, but there was uh I think a lot of confusion at the time.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that uh very important information, Doc.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I would like to ask what your agenda when you visit here in the Philippines.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, certainly, yeah.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I was doing different speaking tours.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually there for one of the World Meetings of Families that was organized by the Pontifical Council for the Family, which was wonderful.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: We actually had an Asia Pacific conference in Cebu, um, that was the Asia Pacific Conference for Human Life International.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: They do that every other year, and so that was lovely.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: What was my other visit to the Philippines?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was just there kind of on a speaking tour again, seeing some things.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, the different conferences and and speaking tours.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's nice, Doc.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Dr.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Mini, how does the church, uh the Catholic Church, truly understand freedom of conscience when it comes to medical decisions like vaccination?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: So the the main point is that one has to form one's conscience well, so understand what the church teaches and and what the the different ethical and moral issues are, and then one has to obey one's informed decision of conscience.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, part of that formation is to read, to understand, you know, what the church teaches, but also prudentially to seek advice from experts, so either professional experts or you know, medical experts or theological ones, holy people.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a whole um aspect of of the formation of conscience in the catechism, which is very beautiful, saying it's a lifelong task.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we start our moral education as children, our parents normally teach us what is right and what is wrong.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then we also learn, hopefully, from good teachers in school.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: But then, you know, one has a responsibility to continue that formation and it doesn't really stop.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a lifelong formation.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And when it comes to medicine, I mean the number one thing is to avoid intrinsic evil.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there are certain things which can never be done under any circumstance.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so killing of the innocent can never be done as a general rule, right?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And and things like euthanasia and abortion, you know, are therefore completely prohibited and can never be done.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh things like uh direct sterilism or direct contraception, again, completely rejecting God's gift of life and love should should be rejected there as intrinsically evil.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: So some of these things are now presented as medical, and they're not, because they essentially go against life or they go against the integrity of our body.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: So certainly in the case of contraception and sterilization, this is a situation where you're rejecting uh God's gift of of the possibility of children and saying, my will be done rather than thy will be done.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, what the church has always taught in terms of responsible parenthood is that um one one does have a responsibility to not you know procreate in in ways that are irresponsible, but then one has to use a moral means.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you know there's specific circumstances in terms of the health of the spouses or grave economic distress or other things to delay the conception of children, then one should use moral means.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the fertility awareness-based methods, sometimes called natural family planning, all these things are can be very moral, but the the means for an act to be good, it has to have a good object.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to have a good intention, then the means used have to be good, and then the circumstances around it have to be good.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's kind of um an interesting thing is that uh an act can become evil simply based on uh the circumstances surrounding that act.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the person has a good intention, he's using a good means, but because of the way it's all situated, it could become an evil act.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I guess an example of that, you know, maybe you're you're driving your car, which is a perfectly normal, good thing to do.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you see a person that you're trying to help, you know, give them a ride or something like that, and that can be good too.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it turns out that person just robbed a bank and they're escaping, you know, from having committed a terrible crime.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and so then you unwittingly, you know, have committed an evil act because of the circumstances.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's not a moral evil in the sense that you're you're responsible because you didn't know what you were doing, but you helped uh a person escape, right, from from committing a crime.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how the circumstances can sometimes play.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: But uh when it comes to medicine, so one has to reject all things that are evil, and then sometimes there are difficult decisions that have to be made.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um the there's uh something called the principle of double effect, uh, which goes back to St.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Thomas Aquinas.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it says, you know, sometimes actions have good and bad effects.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so then it's a difficult decision, right?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, should should I do it uh or not?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a bad effect as well as a good effect.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, examples of that is a person has a um a leg which is severely infected, maybe has gangrene.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And in order to save the person's life, they may have to sacrifice the leg, they may have to cut the leg off and amputate it.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh now that's an evil, right?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's an evil thing to cut off a person's leg, to lose your leg.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um but if the alternative is to die, and this is the only way to save the person's life, then it can be tolerated as an evil because of the good that is being sought, which is to save the person's life.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: So in it, unfortunately, there are a lot of these gymsticks where you realize that a medication will be doing a good thing, but it will also be harming another part of your body.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so is there a proportionality?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why discernment is important and deciding, making medical decisions based on the best scientific information available, but also on the proportionality between the good effects and the bad effects.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And during pandemic, Doc, many felt pressured or coerced.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why does the church consider vaccine mandates morally problematic?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I mean the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, they call the doc the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, really said that, again, there should be great respect for people's consciences, that under normal, ordinary circumstances, one should not force individuals uh to get vaccinated, that it should be a free choice.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that, you know, there should be a discernment that every individual does in terms of the benefits and the possible uh bad side effects, and that you know, these individuals should be free to make a discernment as to what to do.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it is true that there are emergency circumstances that sometimes arise, and in in very emergency situations, sometimes martial law can be imposed, people's freedoms can be curtailed in certain ways.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but at the same time, one should do everything possible to respect uh individuals' consciences and not to impose burdens that are unnecessary.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, this this is where civil authorities have to really have a very strong discernment as to what is what is truly responsible, you know, and and what is required and what is optional.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's actually quite rare to have a situation where one is forced to do certain things that, you know, like a disaster zone, et cetera, where you know you have to put in a curfew where people are not allowed out because there's this fear of looting or a fear of some kind of riots or other things like that.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have to like impose some certain restrictions.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: But again, this should be done only in the direst circumstances and and should be lifted as soon as possible.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when it comes to vaccine mandates, again, you know, this again should not be something that is done in a heavy-handed way and in any way that is not uh imposed by by very, very grave risks.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's a question of discernment.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: But again, people's rights should be respected.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and I always say when when I I did my dissertation on conscience that people's conscience rights aren't a get out of jail free card.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you can say, Oh, I have a conscientious objection, therefore I have no responsibility.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do anything to me, etc.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: It says, Well, look, you don't want to get the vaccine, fine, then you have to, you know, uh engage in social distancing, you have to To take extra precautions and other things because you're not doing this one thing, then maybe you should be required to do other things.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that could be legitimate.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a person says, Look, I want to be a healthcare worker, but uh I'm gonna be in contact with a lot of sick people, and I don't want to take this vaccine because I in conscience I don't want to do it.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: It says, Well, maybe we can put you in another position where you're not gonna be in contact with the sick people so much, you know, and and do other things.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there needs to be some creativity.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think also, you know, what happened during the pandemic, um, many churches were closed, uh, and you know, the the sacraments were not being distributed, masses were not being held publicly.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um it became very clear that there could be ways to get around this.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: They could have outdoor masses, they could have people going to confession in their cars, right?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: With with an end with a safe distance between the priest and the penitent.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: There were different ways to do it rather than simply canceling the sacraments.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of the hospital, many patients died without any priest able to come to them and give them the last rites because they were denied entry into the hospitals.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just a radical violation of the people's rights, the right to have the church present.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so the church in the United States, I think elsewhere, insisted, right?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Look, the priest can wear personal protective equipment and masks and all kinds of different things, and disinfectant and whatever else.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: But you can't really deny access to the patient.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and so things like this, I think, are are important, right?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: One has to understand that there are different ways to get to the same good, which is, you know, to save people's lives, to avoid contagion.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly, that's that's a very important goal.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: But vaccination is not the only way, right?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: There are other ways to provide security and and people's consciences are important.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph, uh what would you say about ibermectin?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have information about that?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is it effective in treating open COVID-19?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's certainly certain doctors who were very, very um impressed with it.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think in some places it was sort of banned, you know, and they were like, you can't do this, etc.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And my my impression was it was it was basically a scientific question.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, does it work or does it not work?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, is it dangerous to use or is it not dangerous to use?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And in general, it seems like it wasn't very dangerous to use.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a very low negative side effect.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: The positive side effect, I don't know, you know, how effective it was.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: There were certain studies that were done that said it was effective, other studies said it wasn't.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of had that possibility, I think, to see if if it could be used or not.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: The thing about science in general is that it's based on experimentation.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to try things and see if it works or not.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and in some cases it does work, in some cases it doesn't, and and that's how science advances.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so it the thing that I didn't really like about the whole Ivermectin debate is it seemed like it was more political than scientific.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: People were banning it because they didn't like those who were proposing it.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And other people were swearing by it, but they had no scientific background.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like, okay, so yeah, the important thing is to do the science as subjectively as possible.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that, Adob.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you also mentioned about Baxin with using fetal lines.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Can you expound or explain the church teaching in cooperation with evil regarding boxing connected to fetal cell line stock?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially, and this is kind of all the the the church, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: When it's cooperation with evil.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: So one one doesn't want to cooperate with evil.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: The the the good, we should choose the good and avoid the evil as much as possible.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: However, we do live in a fallen world, and because of original sin and because of actual sin around us, it's almost impossible to avoid some form of cooperation with evil.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my favorite uh example of that is if you pay your taxes, some of that money that you give to the government is probably going to be used for something that's not morally good.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh certainly in the United States, some of it goes to contraception, some of it goes to all kinds of different things that are they're not good.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: So should you not pay your taxes?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, there's a there's a huge evil that arises uh if society falls a decay and there's all government and and nothing, you know, if anarchy is a worse evil in a sense, um, then a remote material cooperation with some some part of your tax money going to to bad things, which you know, we shouldn't be uh resigned to that.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: We should try to get our representatives to vote against evil, and there shouldn't be any money going to birth control, et cetera, with our tax dollars, et cetera.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: But the point is uh if you buy anything in the supermarket, you're giving some money to a company that probably does some things that are bad.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like in the United States, benefits for homosexuality or contributing money to some kind of bad cause, et cetera.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the remote material cooperation is very, very hard to eliminate if you don't live in the state of nature away from everybody else.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, right, we we have a duty to promote what is good.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the big campaigns that the U.S.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Catholic bishops have done, which has been excellent, uh, is to promote ethical vaccines that have no tie to abortion-derived cell lines.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And several of them have been developed over the years, and and people have a duty to protest against um any kind of vaccine that that does not uh conform right to ethical norms.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because what happens?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially, the these cell lines are lines that are created to be immortal.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: So normally uh human body, right, your cells will resupply, will will re will um multiply a certain number of times and then they die.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's about 40 or so divisions, cell divisions, and then your cells are gone.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the cell lines will normally die.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: But uh cancer cells, on the other hand, uh are quote unquote immortal, right?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: They're one of the reasons people die of cancer is that the tumors just keep growing and they they never stop growing, they never stop dividing.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so what scientists have discovered is a way to immortalize, to make sort of like cancer, um, cell lines.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the cell lines that were particularly used to do this, so the HEC 293 line, those H E K human embryonic kidney 293, so the 293rd attempt on this this line was derived from an abortion of a child.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: And what they do is they they make this line into an immortal line, and then they they use it for scientific experimentation.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's used to test uh certain molecules in science.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's also used in the case of vaccines, sometimes to grow the vaccines in a medium of cells.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so these abortion drive cell lines will be used to grow them.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: In the mRNA vaccines that were created, there was actually no medium in which they were grown.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the cooperation with evil was less there, but nonetheless, those cell lines generally were tested using the abortion-drive cell lines.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's still a bad thing because there are cell lines out there that have no link to abortion.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's clearly a choice.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can choose to use uh a completely ethical cell line.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's one it's called Chinese hamster ovary, CHO lines.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it started with a certain kind of hamster thing, originally from China, maybe, and and that cell line was, you know, just created that way.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it has no connection to abortion, right?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's an animal cell line.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's much more ethical than to use one based on an abortion of a child.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: And there are many of these other lines out there, and some companies are actually developing them, which is great.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: So what the church basically said was that one should not cooperate.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and as scientists, right, one should not use these abortion-drive cell lines.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: One should use ethical cell lines.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: The problem, of course, arises when it needs a vaccine and there is no alternative available that hasn't some connection to the abortion-drive cell lines.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: So then, you know, it becomes a discernment in conscience of should I take this under protest or not?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is is the uh proportionate benefit uh somehow in keeping with the cooperation with evil that that I will be doing by doing this.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's a difficult discernment.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, individuals will come out with a different discernment uh depending on on their particular situation and their their own particular conscientious journey.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: But the point is that it is important to realize that there is a problem in conscience and that people need to discern and make a decision.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the church has said, you know, one can discern in conscience for for appropriate reasons because it is a remote form of material cooperation, like paying your taxes and other things of that.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something you intended uh as something that you uh kind of consent to under protest because maybe you absolutely need this.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, right, it people do have a right to say no.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Say, uh, I'm sorry, I would rather do something else that doesn't offend my conscience.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that there's a proportionately grave reason enough to do it.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really an area of freedom for people to decide.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And during pandemic COVID, uh Catholics are really divided, especially on a vaccine, because Pope Francis encouraged uh everyone to take the vaccine.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: So is a Catholic morally justified in declining a vaccine, even if church leaders say it is permissible?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that was it was very important to realize, and and certainly what we put on our website as well, right, is what the church actually taught.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a teaching document that came from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which basically said, you know, people have a right and conscience that they shouldn't be forced to go against their consciences when it came to taking vaccines.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, Pope Francis, as you say, and and many bishops felt that it was a severe enough threat of the pandemic.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: And again, they didn't have the full information generally in terms of how effective the vaccines were, and they didn't have the full information about how dangerous the vaccines could be in terms of negative side effects.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they kind of provided sort of a general encouragement because they thought that was the best choice.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, that was a personal discernment in conscience that they made.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: But everyone's conscience is personal.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, although we certainly have a responsibility to listen to others as we form our conscience, and and the our religious leaders are in the forefront of who we should be listening to, they certainly uh cannot command our consciences unless it's uh an case of intrinsic evil, saying, Look, uh I can tell you under pain of mortal sin, you know, you shall not commit an abortion, you shall not, you know, commit euthanasia, you shall not do this or that.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: But when it came to this, which was a discernment in conscience, people had freedom to decide what they should do.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so one can encourage people towards one decision or another, but one certainly cannot force or bind the consciences of others when it is a matter of discernment rather than a matter of intrinsic evil.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you think is the misunderstanding Catholics have have about the Vatican statement and uncle bit vaccin though?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in general, I think there was a little bit of a false understanding, you know, that the church actually had a strong teaching that you were required to take the vaccine, uh, because that was not the case.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there was a strong encouragement that was that was based on, you know, the Holy Father and and other bishops' discernment, but that's a different thing from saying you have a like a religious duty, say.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the religious duty that people had was to follow their consciences.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and there wasn't, I mean, to be fair, right?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the Pope never said you have a duty in conscience to to take this vaccine.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was a lot of discussion around does one have a religious duty or not, based on the common good.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: As it turned out, the common good argument really didn't hold any water because it wasn't the kind of vaccine that actually helped others.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was really the only kind of vaccine that helped yourself.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of these these questions were being asked.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, I think in the end, the the only teaching document that the church issued was the one from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Everything else, you know, there's a joke in terms of papal infallibility saying, you know, is the Pope infallible if he's guessing which team is going to win at a baseball game?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is no, obviously.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: The limits of papal infallibility are really, you know, proclaiming ex cathedra on a matter of faith or morals, you know, it's only happened a few times in history.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the ordinary magisterium of the church when it comes to determining what what is good or evil uh and being solemnly taught.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: So most matters actually are you know fallible, and and there's certainly areas where one has a very strong duty to form one's conscience.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and this this was a case, again, as I mentioned earlier, about informed consent, where a lot of the information was lacking.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there's kind of a principle of precaution as well, which is you know, one has a duty to be cautious, not to rush into things when one doesn't have enough information.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, an example of that is if you see uh a sack on the road which has something inside of it and you don't know what's in there, your duty is to try to avoid to hit it because there might be a baby in there.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: You don't know what's in that that sack.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the principle of precaution is if you can safely do so, now if you're gonna your choice is to hit the sack or to go into oncoming traffic and cause an accident that could kill people, you probably have to hit the sack, right?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because that there it's an unknown thing, whereas there's a known risk on the other side.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: So again, there's a lot of discernment that is required.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely agreed, Adolf.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh in the age of social media expert, how should Catholics discern among conflicting me medical voices, especially when mainstream and alternative doctors strongly disagree, Doc?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's a difficulty, right?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think one of the big problems that occurred during the pandemic was that there was there was conflicting information.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, sometimes like the official public health information was shown not to be accurate.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the beginning, they were saying, well, you shouldn't use masks, and then they'll, well, you should use masks, and then what kind of masks do people use?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, again, I think there was a lot of credibility that was lost when when messages were given that were lent, then later shown not to be so so accurate.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, there's a real need to be cautious as an individual, right?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Informing your own conscience as to what information you accept as a fact.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, we're we're not all experts, we're not all, you know, public public health experts or or medical experts.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so who do we trust?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's a certain presumption that our leaders will be giving us good information, but sometimes it's shown maybe they're not.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: So one has to also be cautious.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's but there's basically no blind faith when it comes to uh science and scientific information.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a certain amount of you have to find people that you trust and information that you trust and to rely on that to the best of your ability, but it's it can be difficult.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it can be a difficult discernment.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and many followed controversial figures like Dr.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Rashid Butar.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, how should Catholics evaluate medical claims without falling into conspiracy or blind trust?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm not familiar with that doctor in particular, but uh it's true, right, that social media and the internet, many views can be expressed which are not necessarily accurate.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so one one does have to be cautious about what one is accepting.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: There have been a lot of scandals lately in terms of the most prestigious journals, right?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Peer-reviewed journals, et cetera.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to transgender, they were publishing all kinds of things that were in favor of transgenderism and transgender uh interventions, et cetera, which had a very flimsy scientific basis that didn't really show the facts.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there was even a scandal that broke in the United States of a scientist who had received, I don't know, a huge amount of money to do a study on the effects of sex changes and gender transitioning, et cetera.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: And when the study actually came out showing that it was not positive, that it did not have good effects, then the scientist refused to publish the results because she did not want to give propaganda, quote unquote, to those who were against transgender.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: So she was lighting the results.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: So again, you see where politics sometimes gets involved in science and people's political agendas as opposed to just the truth, right?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: The objective facts.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so people were complaining, right, that uh certain studies were not allowed to be published because, again, they weren't politically correct and they didn't follow the newspaper or the difficult sometimes to get good solid scientific information.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the areas where Catholics need to be very involved because it's important uh that the facts be known and the facts be looked for.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there's no research done in certain areas which require research.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite areas right now, so is a tubal pregnancy.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: So an ectopic pregnancy, uh, very dangerous for the life of the mother if the child does not implant in the uterus and set implants in the fallopian tube.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this can be a real life-threatening situation for the mother, and it can be necessary to go in and remove the fallopian tube.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, the child does not survive that operation.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, Catholics for a long time been saying, well, wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a way to save the life of the child rather than, you know, do this operation to save the life of the mother and have the child die indirectly.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not directly killing the child, but removing the tube does end up killing the child.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: So wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a way to go in and take the embryo out and then place them in the uterus and make them survive?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody was doing research on this ways to do this.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: So now there are researchers, Catholic ones in America, who've started animal studies and they've shown that it is possible.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think this study was done with mice or rats, one of the two.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, animals, they were able to transfer an embryo from the fallopian tube to the uterus and have have that little animal embryo survive.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if it's possible to do it with animals, then they might be able to try it now with monkeys or higher level animals, and then eventually, you know, save human lives.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: It should be going, right?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Finding ways to save lives rather than just being content with sacrificing children when there's an ectopic pregnancy.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Why shouldn't there be a way to save the life of the child?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is you know the sort of area which is important.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: And people should be going into scientific research, and there should also be a lot of uh studies, I would say, um, that are published that you know currently are having difficulty being published because not that they're bad science, but simply that they're not politically correct.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of work to be done in that whole area.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: So though for Catholics who suffered vaccine injury or felt medically medically betrayed, how should the Catholic Church respond pastorally and morally?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, apparently everyone needs to be treated to be to receive health care.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a human right.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh there needs to be acknowledgement of the fact that there was there was and there is vaccine injury, sometimes you know, as being denied.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: There was there was a terrible thing in America where people would receive vaccines, they would fall sick, you know, and need like treatment, etc.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was not recorded as a vaccine injury because they weren't considered vaccinated until 12 days or something after they had received the vaccine.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: So even though the injury happened immediately after the vaccine, and there was pretty clearly, you know, a link there, that was not considered a vaccine injury because enough days had not passed.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, some of these things were were, I think, disingenuous and and not scientifically valid.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, you know, that these types of things were were happening.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's important to acknowledge that individuals, you know, have a right to health care, that they should be compensated when when they're injured, and the truth should always be respected.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And do you believe the church was prepared for the moral challenges of the pandemic?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: What should it prove for the future, Doc?
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think everybody was very surprised by the severity of the measures that were put into place because of the pandemic.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: In in some senses, you know, I I remember half my family's in France, but individuals in France were under more.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Restrictions during parts of the COVID pandemic than during the German occupation in the Second World War.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, was that really justified?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: People were allowed to go to Mass during the German occupation.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: People were allowed to go, they had to get passes, but they were allowed to go more than three miles from their homes during the German occupation.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: But they weren't allowed to go to Mass.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't allowed to go far distance from their house during parts of the pandemic.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's it is important to realize that again, you know, the cure cannot be worse than the disease.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: That human rights don't disappear simply because there's an emergency.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, I mean certain certain freedoms can be curtailed in an emergency situation, but one has to be very, very cautious about that.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it was important and is important for the church to recognize that the rights of the faithful are important.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the rights to the sacraments are important, the rights to conscience are important, that they these things, you know, have a high priority.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just public health.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing, too, I I think that a lesson that needed to be learned, there was a zero risk, zero tolerance for risk.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, this is completely irrational.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: So if you get out of bed in the morning, you're taking a risk.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you stay in bed in the morning, you're taking a risk.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to the bathroom and take a shower, you're taking a risk.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you get into your car, you're taking a risk.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't do that, you're also taking a risk.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way to avoid risk.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so these kind of like zero risk policies that were popular.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody has to stay home.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody leave their house.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's not a zero, zero risk policy.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you stay home, you're still at risk, right?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Many people suffered mental health crises.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: Many people, you know, were uh facing addiction to internet and other things because they couldn't leave the house.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: There was, you know, domestic abuse and physical abuse going on because people got so frustrated and they were, you know, physically violent with each other.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the point one has to always have a proportion between the risks and the benefits.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there's just, you know, uh, no zero risk policy.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: So one has to reduce risk, and that's certainly a good thing, you know, but at the same time, uh, one can't have this illusion, right, that that one can put a zero-risk situation in in place.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and so I think there was kind of the public health uh propaganda in a sense, right?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: That that by creating a complete lockdown of society, we were going to reduce risk to zero.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that just wasn't the case.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we've learned that lesson now, which is good.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned about taking sacrament during the pandemic.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I noticed that after this pandemic, we changed the way we we receive holy communions, especially in our country.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: I see most people receive it by by hand.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: So uh what do you think about that, Doc?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is it really safe in taking communion in hand rather than in the tongue?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh it it is certainly possible to distribute the sacraments uh safely on the tongue.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Then the question is, you know, is it is it more safe to receive holy communion in the hand?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good public health question.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, I think it's it's also kind of kind of a discipline of the sacraments, right?
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: That that one shouldn't impose.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something that the Pope Pius XII said, which I thought was you know very very good of him and and important.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: He says the the church should never impose burdens beyond what is absolutely necessary.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's a very good policy, right?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: That that individuals who really, really want to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, imposing them to receive it in the hand.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: Is that absolutely necessary?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: I d I don't think so.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and vice versa, right?
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: An individual who really wants to receive in the hand and he's only being given it in the tongue.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: The church is basically allowed a lot of freedom there.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't see any you know public health reason why it can't be distributed either way.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's you know, I I think it's kind of a pastoral question, really.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: But but again, going back to that that question of the church imposing minimal requirements, it seems like there should be a lot of freedom there.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that clarification, Doc.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: And let's talk about human dignity, bodily, bodily integrity, and moral theology.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, how does the church understand bodily integrity and why does it matter in medical ethics, Doc?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh it really goes down to our belief that our the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that the baptized faithful is no longer our own, but we belong to Christ.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this is why suicide is never never allowed, is because it's it's kind of throwing away the gift of our life.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: The point is that we we don't call ourselves into existence, right?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: Our our conception happens without us, and God creates our soul.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so we don't have this kind of you know complete control over life and death, that this really does belong to God.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so our bodily integrity, again, our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, we were required to respect that body and not to harm ourselves.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why it's considered a grave sin to take you know dangerous drugs or to abuse our bodies with uh too much alcohol or you know, to mutilate our bodies by cutting off parts of our bodies, except again in these exceptional circumstances I mentioned, right, of amputation to save the person's life, etc.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: But there are there are all kinds of different ways in which we can violate the integrity of our bodies and and we shouldn't do that.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: Our bodies are good.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there was a uh a heresy in the 13th century, in particular, a Cathar heresy, which claimed that you know the soul was good and the body was evil, and that one should, you know, try to escape the body.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so they actually had a sacrament which was basically a form of euthanasia, right?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: But the idea was that you shouldn't reproduce, you shouldn't have children because you're trapping souls and bodies, and and people should should neglect their bodies and and try to you know free liberate their souls.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of a very old heresy going back to the Manichaeanism, even earlier on of the first centuries, and and and this kind of dualism.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the church said very much the human being is body and soul, and both are good.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's important that we respect the body.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so, again, when it comes to transgenderism, this is one of the problems.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: Transgenderism uh affirms, right, that one can have a different soul that's not in the right body to become female as a solution, right, to this gender confusion that I have.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the church is very clear saying no, God puts puts your soul and your body together, and you don't have the wrong soul for the wrong body, and and both are good.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have to respect that.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that's really kind of the principle of integrity, right there, is that one has a strong religious duty to respect one's body and to take care of it.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so, how does the Catholic Church view procedures like cosmetic procedures such as no sleeps, leaf filers, or bed body enhancement surgery stuff?
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there's there's definitely a problem if one is trying to become uh superhuman, right?
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: The kind of transhumanism, the kind of body enhancement where individuals are trying to become better than healthy.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: And in some cases, you know, the very extreme cases, maybe sacrificing healthy body parts for you know mechanical parts and other things like that.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: That that again is is a violation of the integrity of the body, of the dignity of the human person to do those things.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: And cosmetic surgery, again, there's a place for that.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: If a person has an injury, you know, maybe they they have a problem that occurred to them, a car accident, and then they have scars that they need to get rid of, you know, et cetera.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: Cosmetic surgery can certainly be good there.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: And perhaps a person is born with different disabilities, like a cleft palate, right?
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: Where it doesn't close properly, and they can have cosmetic surgery to repair that.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: The point is that one is allowed to repair things that are problematic and that are that are again go against a healthy functioning of the body.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: But if one is simply trying to become more beautiful, you know, more attractive by undergoing some of these surgeries, then it becomes morally and ethically problematic.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because generally speaking, there's always a risk.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what whatever form of surgery a person has, it's a small risk, but it's it's still a real risk.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you're putting yourself at risk.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the question is for what?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for for vanity to become more beautiful.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that that is kind of an imprudent risk to be taking.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: And again, you know, if you're spending your money on things of this nature, you know, there are better things that you could spend your money on.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and so there's kind of a a moral question there of, well, should I rather be doing good with this money rather than less humble, you know, less less good?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think from a Catholic perspective, we think that cosmetic surgery really should be to repair right, repair damage, things of that nature.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps a person was burned, you know, and they have a scar from the burn, and they can have cosmetic surgery to repair that.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: That could be justified in certain circumstances.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: But if one is simply trying to appear beautiful, or if one is trying to get, are the risks worthy of the benefits?
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: The is a good question.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I think it's definitely not the case.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it would be immoral or unethical to do that.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the clarification, Doc.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it it it it is helpful, Chefrey, especially nowadays we see this in some celebrities and in in entertainment.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's just normal.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: What should Catholics doctors and nurses do when their institutions require participation in morally questionable procedures?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I mean that was actually the topic of my dissertation.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: And Pope Francis was very good about talking about that.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: That you know, it's it's a right.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we have a human right, interventions that are done that are intrinsically immoral, so just evil, and that cannot be performed in good conscience by Catholic nurses, Catholic doctors, you know, and and so they they have a duty, a responsibility to object and to refuse to participate.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so in some cases, individuals may be told, you know, well, you know, we're not gonna allow you to continue working in this institution if you refuse to do this.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that can be very unfair.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly in the United States, where conscience rights exist in law, they can have a legal action and say, look, I have the right to perform medicine according to my conscience.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're going to discriminate against me or punish me for following my conscience, I have the right to and to sue, right, and get compensation.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it is important to have these conscience protections in law so that the medical associations that defend medical workers should be very vigilant that conscience rights, religious liberty rights need to be protected.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the final analysis, individuals have to have more courage to say no.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: And in many circumstances, individuals who say no, the others kind of understand, right?
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: They they may not have the same kind of moral clarity, but they understand that forcing a person to go against their conscience is is a very grave injury.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a very grave violation.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it could destroy a person.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: So an individual who's forced to do something which leaves terribly wrong, it's called a moral injury.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: They can really suffer and be caused all kinds of distress, and you know, not only spiritually, but even physically.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: People can burn out and not be able to work anymore, not be able to perform their jobs.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a very serious question.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so it needs to be taken with that kind of seriousness.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: And individuals need to realize that if they violate their consciousness, they allow themselves to do is terribly wrong, then there are terrible consequences.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes there's a terrible consequence of losing your job, but there's also the terrible consequence of losing your moral compass and having a kind of uh spiritual death, right?
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of engaging in a mortal sin, a very serious sin, that can have terrible psychological and other consequences.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it's important to for the church and for medical associations and the law to really support those who are refusing.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that, Doc.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: And many Catholics feel spiritually and morally disoriented after the pandemic.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: So how can they remain grounded and at peace?
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think main thing, having all good spiritual and moral practice uh really builds a person up.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the important thing to realize is the virtues.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, good habits device or so if one engages in the virtues, if one does good things and and you know, do good and avoid evil, it kind of builds over time, right?
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and the church is so helpful because if we fall and we all fall in terms of committing sin, then one can go to the sacrament, receive uh forgiveness and absolution through the sacrament confession and start again.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when one does good, it becomes easier to do good.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: One doesn't one does evil, it becomes easier to do evil.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember reading the story of a doctor in, I think it was Belgium, it was very difficult.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: He had a hard time.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: But then the second time he did it, it was a little bit easier.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: And over time he kept doing it, and it became easier and easier until finally he had absolutely no problems whatsoever in killing his patients.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so it just kind of showed that the evil uh became easier over time if he just kept doing it.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so one has to basically break the cycle and and you know get rid of the evil by by confession and and coming back to the faith and and the sacraments, and and one can also build one's virtue by doing good and easier easier at time because it becomes and then continuing in what is good.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think it's it's you know the whole spiritual life in a sense is that I was told a very nice she talked about St.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: Philip Neri, and Saint Philip Neri asked our Lord, leave me because I'm not trustworthy.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that was great.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: But this is great.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: Saint your help, I need your presence.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: We need we need you know our our family members and and uh the communion of saints, right?
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: And support each other.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: Weakness everyone has in trials, and we can help each other.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's that's a very key component of the spiritual life.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Doc, for that.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: And lastly, why you love being Catholic, Dr.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: Grace child to receive the sacrament.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually baptized on the day I was born, which was amazing.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: My mother had wanted that.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't in danger of death, so obviously, in danger of death, one baptizes immediately.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: But she was, I just want my child to be baptized as soon as physically possible.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was baptized very such a blessing.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's so many psychologists and psychiatrists who say how incredibly healthy it is to confess one's sin, to receive forgiveness, and to such a blessing to have that sacrament in the church.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: But all the sacraments, right?
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: The sacrament of marriage, to have this other person with whom you are now spiritual partners, supporting each other in this life and and and you know, making the miracle of children possible, and educating these wonderful new creatures and bringing them up in the faith and and goodness, and all these opportunities that exist that the church gives us in terms of the examples of the saints, examples of our lore of us.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's something so beautiful.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: I remember uh Saint Teresa of Calcutta used to talk about how the fact that um love is the only thing that grows the more you give it away.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you give away your wealth, you have less after you've given it away.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: But if you give away love, it grows, it becomes more the more you give.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's the only thing that's like that.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so the church is is so beautiful, right?
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_01: Giving us the example of self-sacrifice.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing, too, that I think is just unique among all religions.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: The unique thing about Christianity is that God sacrificed himself for us.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: In all the other religions, you build up God, you you thank God for all these things.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: But in in Christianity, God sacrificed himself for us, right?
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and the teachings of Christ are very much that the rich and the powerful should serve the poor.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm a member of the Order of Malta.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: The order of Malta, you know, is such an incredible institution from a Catholic perspective, because what one is doing, right, is the the originally, right?
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was the the aristocrats, the the high place people in society who were serving, sacrificing their lives, giving their lives to care for the poor and and the sick.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, you know, what society does that, right?
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: Where the rich would be at the service of the poor, where one tries to to make all these uh kind of paradoxes, but which are there in the Beatitudes, right?
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who are who weep and mourn.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: Blessed are the birth, blessed are you because again, we see this spiritual good, right?
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: All sufferings, if we offer them up to Christ and unite them to Christ, become blessings.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's really incredible.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think my Catholic faith just is so inspiring to myself and others.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a beautiful thing we have.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that is powerful and very inspiring.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Doc.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that, Dr.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: And where can our viewers follow your work and the resources of the NCBC?
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so ncbcenter.org is our website.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: We actually have a newsletter that goes out every two weeks where we send out uh good Catholic bioethical information and news so people can sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: And just in general, right?
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: We have a uh through the website, people can ask us ethical questions either by email or call, and our ethicists respond.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, many times there are difficult moral discernments that people have to make, and it's it's can be helpful to have a Catholic ethicist to training to kind of explain the moral and ethical dilemmas.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so the NCBC really exists as a resource for the church that way.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to have early access?
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: You could be the first to watch the interviews I've done with guests on our program Historian Catholico.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can do that, my fellow believers, by joining my Patreon group in conducting interviews with various guests here in the Philippines and abroad.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been able to edit and upload them right away.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: I still have a lot of backlog because I'm a one-man team.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: So most of the time I'm really the one editing.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I edit all the interviews and vlogs on this channel.
• 1:04:27
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• 1:04:41
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• 1:04:44
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• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a recorded interview.
• 1:04:52
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• 1:04:59
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• 1:05:02
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• 1:05:09
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• 1:05:14
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• 1:05:18
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• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not only will you get early access, but you will also help me in our online evangelization.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: In a way, you will be my partner in doing this.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have the gifts in what I do, in speaking, interviewing, but you have the capacity to help me in this mission, it will definitely improve.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let's partner.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: I will do the inviting, the interviewing, but at the same time, the Lord knows that you helped me and you've been partnering with me in this mission.
• 1:06:01
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• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: It has a cost, a small fee, you just need to pay, but the spiritual benefit for you will be overwhelmingly abundant.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: Bless.