Medical Ethics and Vaccine Mandates

Vaccine mandates are nothing new. In fact, they have a very recent history tracing all the way back to the Enlightenment period. This was also the period when vaccinations first arrived as a science. In the history of Russia, the first ever to be vaccinated is believed to be Catherine the Great, who was inoculated against small pox in 1768[1]. The science of vaccination was new at the time and the process was highly dangerous, one had a stronger chance of dying from the inoculation process than one does now. But small pox outbreaks were also terrible. And the Empress Catherine had seen Countess Sheremeteva, whose fiancé, Count Nikita Panin, was her son's mentor. Because of this, Catherine had a great fear of small pox and was willing to do anything. She brought Thomas Dimsdale into her courts whose inoculation procedures were new at the time and had him administer the inoculation to her. She developed a small pox illness which was claimed to have been reduced significantly by the new vaccination method. Loving the new science, she declared as blockheads and wicked in a private letter to her friend Voltaire, any one who refused the treatment[2]. It is unclear if she ever mandated vaccinations though.

At a similar time period, small pox was infecting the Holy Roman Empire at its highest levels of authority. The Empress Maria Theresa became infected with small pox and small pox also claimed the lives of both the wives of the Emperor Joseph II, Isabella of Parma and Maria Josefa. Maria Theresa's daughter Josefa also died from small pox. Voltaire had warned that sixty our of one hundred people were infected with small pox in 1734. Fearing small pox, Maria Theresa began to implement the new biotechnology throughout the Empire, however, people lacked trust in the bureaucratic institutions of the Health Fund. How do you convince people to receive a new medicine when they cannot trust the authorities implementing the medicine? Maria Theresa, much like the Empress Catherine, criticized the peasants who preferred, out of the goodness of their heart, to listen to the wise counsel of God. In her efforts to convince the public, she decided to use orphans as her guinea pigs and mandated that approximately 20-30 orphans throughout the poorhouses in Graz be vaccinated.[3] Today, this would be considered close to a war crime and definitely a violation of children's rights.

In the Duchy of Parma, in the early 1830s, Maria Luigia began the most bureaucratically controlled vaccination campaign which established different incentives and would mete out punishments, such as government aid, refusal to be admitted to hospices, boarding schools, private and public schools. Once again, the process was not necessarily the safest but these had to be done according to the will of the bureaucracy because small pox was "too dangerous".

The inoculation fluid had to be preserved all the year round in the foundling hospice for infants, annexed to the maternity hospital. For fluid we have to intend not only the one preserved in tubes (minimal amount) but the one kept constantly in the hospice with regular grafts from one child to another. The children were the true deposit of the fluid, the small amount preserved in glass tubes was only a reserve in case of failure of engraftment of the vaccinations, thus interrupting the human chain. Today, such a method would certainly be considered unethical and a serious violation of human rights and of children in particular, but for those times was a normal and completely lawful thing.[4]

The process, was not necessarily the most ethical either. And this was not the last time a vaccine mandate would be ordered. We would reach all the way into the early 20th century with the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts. A man named Henning Jacobson would refuse to pay a fine to the State of Massachusetts after being ordered to be inoculated with a small pox vaccine he had received when he was younger. He was a Swedish immigrant and had already received a small pox vaccine at a younger age. He did not want it. His case was taken all the way to Supreme Court where the Court ruled in favor of the State of Massachusetts thus establishing a precedent for quite some time that the government has authority over your medical choices. The case was used to justify sterilization. So it was more shocking when the Nuremburg trial of 1947 found the Nazi doctors guilty of medical experimentation on Holocaust victims. The Nuremburg trial essentially reversed the precedents that had been held since the Enlightenment.[6]

And in 1952, Pope Pius XII spoke to a group of medical researchers in a letter titled, "The Moral Limits of Medical Research and Treatment" which further challenged the ethical precedents established by that era of Enlightenment despotism. In it, Pope Pius XII calls into question such a top-down approach. Is a man's duty to the community or does the community exist for man? In the increasingly despotic state produced by the Hobbesian Leviathan, the bureaucratic faceless evil, man's duty is principally for the community. The great postwar trials brought to light a terrifying number of documents testifying to the sacrifice of the individual in the “medical interests of the community.”

25. In the minutes of these trials one finds testimony and reports showing how, with the consent and, at times, even under the formal order of public authority, certain research centers systematically demanded to be furnished with persons from concentration camps for their medical experiments. One finds how they were delivered to such centers, so many men, so many women, so many for one experiment, so many for another. There are reports on the conduct and the results of such experiments, of the subjective and objective symptoms observed during the different phases of the experiments. One cannot read these reports without feeling a profound compassion for the victims, many of whom went to their deaths, and without being frightened by such an aberration of the human mind and heart. But We can also add that those responsible for these atrocious deeds did no more than to reply in the affirmative to the question We have asked and to accept the practical consequences of their affirmation.[7]

But Pope Pius XII corrects this view that was so commonly held before the famous statement of the Nuremburg Code.

28. In the above mentioned cases, insofar as the moral justification of the experiments rests on the mandate of public authority, and therefore on the subordination of the individual to the community, of the individual’s welfare to the common welfare, it is based on an erroneous explanation of this principle. It must be noted that, in his personal being, man is not finally ordered to usefulness to society. On the contrary, the community exists for man.[8]

And thus, he concludes, that ultimately, in the case of administering medicine to man, the following needs consideration:

38. Without doubt, before giving moral authorization to the use of new methods, one cannot ask that any danger or any risk be excluded. That would exceed human possibilities, paralyze all serious scientific research and very frequently be to the detriment of the patient. In these cases the weighing of the danger must be left to the judgment of the tried and competent doctor. Nevertheless, as Our explanation has shown, there is a degree of danger that morality cannot allow. In doubtful cases, when means already known have failed, it may happen that a new method still insufficiently tried offers, together with very dangerous elements, appreciable chances of success. If the patient gives his consent, the use of the procedure in question is licit. But this way of acting cannot be upheld as a line of conduct in normal cases.[9]

A man must be warned of any potential dangers to himself. We are given numbers, not all of them honest, on the current wave of vaccines. Which ones are ethical, which ones are safe, which ones are effective, etc. Even further, we've truly shown ourselves heirs to the Beast of the Enlightenment Despotisms. And while the science on the Anthony Fauci disease and the science of the Anthony Fauci disease vaccines keeps changing, apparently, the Enlightenment science that vaccines eventually stop the spread of transmission or that herd immunity is only acquired through vaccination, or that all must be vaccinated to stop every illness, has been set in stone. This is the sacred science that cannot change under any circumstance. We have already made the conclusion that the vaccines accomplish this goal so there is no consideration, not even based on current numbers in Israel, that the vaccines might actually be failing to do what our leaders have been insisting they would do. We continue to quarantine "fully vaccinated" people who have been infected or reinfected with the Fauci and yet tell with a straight face to our fellow man that the vaccines will stop the spread of transmission. Do we really believe ourselves any more or are we beginning to set up a masquerade to justify how we have given into such power?

1. mos.ru. (2019, September 21). From Catherine the great to the Red hippo: History of vaccination in Russia / news / Moscow CITY web site. Moscow City Web Site. https://www.mos.ru/en/news/item/62002073/.

2. Foussianes, C. (2021, April 30). Catherine the Great, VACCINE QUEEN. Town & Country. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a35091190/catherine-the-great-vaccine-queen/.

3. Winkler, A. (n.d.). The battle against smallpox. Die Welt der Habsburger. https://www.habsburger.net/en/chapter/battle-against-smallpox.

4. Virdis, R. (2019, May 23). The beginning of smallpox vaccination in the Duchy of Parma. Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6776211/#!po=1.00000.

5. Henning Jacobson loses his fight with the board of public health OVER VACCINATION. New England Historical Society. (2021, April 29). https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/henning-jacobson-loses-his-freedom-to-the-board-of-public-health/.

6. The Nuremberg Code. (n.d.). http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/nuremberg/. .pdf

7. The moral limits of medical research and treatment. Papal Encyclicals. (2017, April 25). https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12psych.htm.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

W.H.O. to rename COVID-19 in honor of esteemed immunologist Anthony Fauci

This morning, the W.H.O. announced that it will be renaming COVID-19 in honor of the esteemed immunologist Anthony Fauci. COVID-19, which is called that as an abbreviation of "corona virus disease 2019" because it emerged from Wuhan, China in the year 2019 after the U.S. government released it onto the wet market from the lab in Wuhan, China funded by Fauci's gain of function research, is the disease caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus.

"It just wasn't a really catchy name for a disease. I mean we have bird flu, swine flu, Lou Gehrig's disease, the Spanish flu, etc. We needed a better name for it."

Dr. Tedros said when he was asked for comment on the name change.

The W.H.O. which has honored the work of the esteemed immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose research funds may have indeed funded the origin of the novel corona virus disease in the first place, has made the decision to name the disease instead after him. From here on out, COVID-19 will now be know as "Anthony Fauci disease". He sometimes spells his name with an "x" in it but the spelling for the disease will be kept without the "x".

"I am honored to finally have accomplished something. I have bungled AIDS/HIV for years, I have murdered dogs in experiments that didn't benefit anyone, and now I finally have an accomplishment to tell my grandkids. Your grandfather is a disease! I mean, I have been sick for over a year too as proof by the fact that I wear a mask too! And now it's cemented in history. I am a disease. There is now an Anthony Fauci disease and I am he!"

Anthony Fauci said as he might have smiled, it was difficult to tell since he was wearing a boot stamping on a human face forever on his face.

"I think now that there is a vaccine out there, we will certainly see that Anthony Fauci disease will continue to get worse and worse so it is important everyone get our vaccine so that money can be funneled into our company and face severe restrictions if you don't."

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said leaving Moderna, Johnson&Johnson, and Astrazeneca furious that there was this Pfizer-privilege being granted by the federal government and frantically working to gouge prices and shovel bribes to the State.

The W.H.O. re-emphasized that vaccinated individuals infected with asymptomatic Anthony Fauci disease cannot possibly spread it and continued to heap blame on the unvaccinated who, even if they don't have Anthony Fauci disease, can still spread it. They further reassured that the vaccinated must continue to perpetually fear the unvaccinated. They also reached out to the Pope to pressure the heathen unvaccinated Catholics that they are betraying their own Catholic faith by refusing to reject the infallibly declared Mass of the Ages in favor of the Novus Ordo that they are violating charity by not receiving the vaccine. The Pope will soon declare vaccination against Anthony Fauci disease a sacramental pre-requisite to baptism. Joe Biden continues to administer Holy Eucharist in the Vatican.

CDC to offer new guidelines on how to bury the bodies of the unvaccinated

This afternoon, the CDC has announced guidelines on how to bury the bodies of unvaccinated individuals. These guidelines include socially distancing, wearing a mask, wearing two masks, and maybe even a boot stamping on a human face forever. They also include handling the dead body with rubber gloves.

"The dead body of an unvaccinated individual contains higher levels of the virus than the dead bodies of vaccinated individuals. All bodies of unvaccinated individuals should be wearing at least two masks when they are buried. It's understandable that you might want to kiss them while they rest in their coffins before burial but we would likely see a super spreader if that were to occur. Don't blame me, blame your loved one."

Fauxci said as he put on a second and third mask to hide his ugly face.

Many white privileged American neo-Nazis continue to refuse vaccination claiming things like, "you'll still get COVID even after you get vaccinated!" These claims have been debunked by the people who created the vaccinations and now have massive monetary bargaining deals with the government so to not trust them is insanity. Vaccinations are received to prevent you from dying. The Pope said it was a charitable act because by preventing yourself from dying, you actually prevent everyone from dying. In addition, social distancing needs to be implemented, not just double-masking of your loved one.

"The unvaccinated should be buried six feet apart, not just six feet under."

Rochelle Walensky said.

Many neo-Nazi fascists continue to complain about the rules currently but vaccination definitely ends the spread. You know this because the same people who told you Afghanistan would not fall to a hoard of angry goat-herders told you that it could and we would never lie to you. Fascists have this obsessive idea that the government routinely lies to them.

One girl we asked for comment said, "My father was vaccinated against COVID-19 and he was infected with it and died from it. But had he not been vaccinated, it would have been much worse. Please get vaccinated!"

Anthony Fauxci further insists that the vaccine will prevent the spread of COVID-19. Even people who are infected with COVID-19 after being vaccinated, no matter how sick they are, cannot possibly spread it which is why they are no longer obligated to wear masks and why the fully vaccinated Texas Governor who was recently infected with COVID-19 is now isolating to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

"We have a pandemic of the unvaccinated." Said the loopy President Joe Biden just last month. It is true. The reckless, non-isolating unvaccinated people are spreading it because even if they don't have COVID-19, the fact that they aren't wearing masks shows they are spreading it. Vaccinated people, even if they have COVID-19, will not spread it. 100% of the population needs to be fully vaccinated and it is inevitable that we will see mandates imposed universally as Pfizer and Moderna begin to price gouge. The CDC ensures that there is absolutely no corruption going on there.

Should a monarch mandate vaccines?

*Note: I've read "the science" on both sides of the issue, I am only arguing on an ethical perspective. I have no interest in "science" on this one and any refutation of this argument should be based on the ethics. The fact of the matter is that "the science" is ridiculously based on junk propaganda hailing from both sides of the aisle on "vaccines are bad" to "vaccines end the spread of illnesses". When governmental "scientists" are literally talking about how vaccinated people and unvaccinated people with the same illness have "different levels of virus", we have literally creeped into cuckoo-ville. Either I just slept through all the "asymptomatic" spread alerts from 2020 or somehow the virus decided to "settle" down when an infected person who has been vaccinated ends up with COVID and has symptoms.

The question as to whether a monarch should mandate vaccines is a multi-faceted ethical argument that is based on the question of freedom and the role of the monarch in preserving freedom and order in society, the question of tyranny, and the question of holding medicine as a bargaining chip for earning freedom. Obviously, there are many things that we do in life that can justifiably end up with us being stripped of our freedoms and having to earn it back. Deliberately infecting someone with an illness is also provably monstrous. However, in the case of an epidemic or a pandemic in which a person can be exposed unknowingly to a disease at a given moment and then unknowingly spread it to another person is of an entirely different merit. No one has any control over nature. Vaccines are generally used to trigger the immune system to responding to a particular disease in order to prepare the immune system for defense against the particular disease they've received vaccination for. But also, likewise, is exposure to the actual illness for which the vaccine is for to have the same effect, obviously. This exposure to the illness builds up the immune response which in turn allows the body to be better equipped to fighting the disease. The theory is that the immune people will then prevent disease transmission. This is called herd immunity which the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as follows:

Herd immunity, also called community immunity, state in which a large proportion of a population is able to repel an infectious disease, thereby limiting the extent to which the disease can spread from person to person. Herd immunity can be conferred through natural immunity, previous exposure to the disease, or vaccination. An entire population does not need to be immune to attain herd immunity. Rather, herd immunity can occur when the population density of persons who are susceptible to infection is sufficiently low so as to minimize the likelihood of an infected individual coming in contact with a susceptible individual.

Note the part I bold. If one is going for herd immunity, natural immunity and previous exposure are both sufficient alternatives to vaccination. Ergo, the question as to whether someone who has been around a certain group of infected people should be mandated to take a vaccine is, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica a "no". This will be elaborated even further when one considers corporate investment in medicines. I believe there is a strong need to be concerned given the socialization of medicine in recent years that we could see corporatist based medical tyranny.

What is freedom? According to H.J.A. Sire,

Freedom consists in the fulfilment of one's nature by the complete exercise of the human powers. Since its purpose is fulfilment, its proper objects are the things that truly fulfil man. In that, freedom may be compared to the commonplace function of eating, as a good and as a right. The good of eating embraces eating the things that we need to live on; it does not extend to an indiscriminate voracity for things that we should not be eating at all. ... [P]atriots rightly rebel against foreign domination; subjects do not rightly rebel against their legitimate king. To be free is to reject what is alien and to live under one's proper law, whether it is a political constitution or the moral law that defines human nature. (Phoenix From the Ashes, 349-350)

Freedom is not a right to excess but a basic need. Human interaction is not a right to excess but also a need. In fact, Solzhenitsyn also indicates that after the isolation that was imposed upon the enemies of the state in the Soviet Gulags that one would more than likely be begging to be put to death instead of putting up with the isolation (The Gulag Archipelago, Part 1, ch. 11). When God created man, he expressed that it was not good for the man to be alone. When someone disallows you a basic necessity and holds up another thing as a bargaining chip for you to get it back, that is called abuse. They are demanding that you place immediate trust that they will fulfill their word despite the fact that what has been taken away is a basic necessity. When someone refuses to feed you unless they first gain something in return from you, they are withholding your need to eat in order to gain something from you. That is not the behavior of a loving father but the behavior of an abusive father.

Plato describes his ideal ruler in The Republic. It is one who has the spirit of philosophy, a true lover of wisdom, control over his passions, and is reluctant to govern.

Until philosophers are kings, and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils. (Republic, Bk. 5)

The ideal ruler does not rule in order to rule. "The ruler who is good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him" (Bk. 6) The true ruler is not concerned with maintaining power because he has no self-interests. He is a servant by example and a ruler because he leads. This is the best State. "Whereas the State in  which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst." (Bk. 7)

On contrast, the tyrant is rules in order to rule. He emerges from a democratic State which has indulged in the excesses of freedom. Freedom is a need but here, we see freedom being taken as a license to indulge in immorality. The tyrant emerges in order to solve a problem. Thus, the tyrant comes into play during a crisis scenario, claiming he is the one who can fix the problems. After he has fixed the problems though, he still has an appetite for power. He gins up wars against his enemies and instills fears into his citizens. He must convince the public that they always need a leader. But when he runs out of enemies, he must stir up other wars.

And if any of them are suspected by him of having notions of freedom, and of resistance to his authority, he will have a good pretext for destroying them by placing them at the mercy of the enemy; and for all these reasons the tyrant must be always getting up a war. (Bk. 8)

In Book 9, Plato describes the tyrant as someone always indulged in passions. He wants to entertain these passions to an excess but cannot find the funds. So he goes after his own subjects.

One thing clear about this pandemic from the beginning is that our leaders have always seen this as a war. They have routinely seen this issue in terms of martial concepts. Like the tyrant, they look to gin up fear in the populace and create an enemy. There is a convenience especially in a pandemic to gin up fear among the populace. Fear of death, fear of being infected with a disease one could die from, fear of neighbor who could likely infect them. The leaders have said they are the only ones who can resolve the problem, we must look to them without question as a quasi-Messianic figure leading us through darkness. They don't indicate when it will end or even if it is clear that it will end. This progresses toward an infinite loop where they are always creating a crisis. One moment, we could have basic liberties that we take for granted, attending church regularly, seeing our friends' faces, hanging out at the mall, etc. The next minute, all social interaction is cut off, we are locked in our houses, wearing masks, convinced to join our leaders in this war that has no mark on when it will end. Our leaders will give us a goal at one point and then a new one the next. This is the kind of behavior that Plato would more than likely see if he were alive today as tyrannical. The tyrant, in order to increase his power, must always be getting up a war so that he is continuously looked on as a leader.

St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite has the following to say about medical ethics:

[I]n such a time of famine, hunger, and sickness, or some other such calamity, you rich, you merchants, you buyers of wheat and other fruits, and likewise you physicians, for the love of God beware of selling your produce to the poor and needy at an exorbitant price; and you physicians, do not provide medical care for an excessive fee, and do not become bad doctors, as Job says—'But ye are all unjust physicians and healers of diseases'—finding time to be a helper in making a profit. (Christian Morality, Discourse VIII)

And what high price are the physicians of today's world placing us under? "No jab no job"? The day-to-day things you used to be able to do, you cannot do. Buy our medicine and inject it into yourself or you may not even be able to shop for food. But one might say that the government is paying for it. Well the government pays for it with our money which it taxes us for. The vaccine passport system that people are talking about is a license for governmental and major pharmaceutical company abuse. If it keeps going at this trend, we'll end up with a system of permanent corporatism, subject to the whims and research papers of medical companies that are more interested in making a profit for the medical care they offer. A vaccine passport currently expires after six months. Currently, only one booster shot is needful. But flu vaccines are distributed on a seasonal basis. Could we not assume that the COVID vaccine would also be the same? And then the big pharmaceutical companies price gouge and force us to buy their medicine whether directly or through taxation. They become the partners with the government. Is what we see here a wasteland or a monarchy?

But the true philosopher-king does not need to constantly stir up fear in order to keep his authority. He needs not beg his subjects to allow him to rule and continue to rule. He is not insensitive about his person. He governs himself. Unlike the tyrant. So the answer to the question as to whether a monarch should mandate vaccines, I would say, is no. The reason being that such mandates give leeway to tyrannical oppression and corrupt control over medicine, especially by the pharmaceutical companies that have manufactured the vaccine. Further, that control can easily be extended permanently, just by ginning up another crisis. As Plato states of the tyrant hoping to keep his power and prove that the people still need a leader to guide them, he is always looking to create a war. We are seeing an ongoing war against a virus which no one has control over. I emphasize this to stress that no one deliberately causes infection of another. The tyrant has insisted we are all too sick or might be too sick to even be with each other. At this point, one should ask with a clear and sober mind, do we fear a virus or do we fear each other?

Are unvaccinated Catholics obligated to follow the mask mandates?

The short answer is "no". The long answer goes into the question of determining whether the current mandates are even properly laws at this point. St. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine makes the following point:

"Unjust laws are not properly called laws, as Augustine teaches. Moreover, four conditions are required for a law to be just. 1) On the side of the end, that it is ordained for the common good; for as a king differs from a tyrant, in that the former seeks the common advantage, while the latter seeks his own, so also a just law differs from a tyrannical one. 2) One the side of the agent, that it should be from having authority, for no one can impose a law except upon a subject. 3) On the side of the matter, that it should not forbid virtue, nor command a vice. 4) On the side of form, that a law should be clearly promulgated and constituted in a measure and order due to it, so that a law would preserve that proportion in the distribution of honors and imposition of burdens which subjects have in rank toward the common good." (On the Roman Pontiff, Bk. IV, Ch. XV)

So we should investigate whether a particular law or mandate from an earthly prince follows this criteria before we subjugate ourselves to it. The recent church closures are obviously an infraction of a just law for they forbid the virtue of receiving the benefit of the sacraments. Catholics are not obligated to follow such laws. Therefore, Catholics everywhere ought to be seeking and pressuring their governments to open the churches or face worldwide counter-revolution. But the recent mask mandates that apply only to unvaccinated individuals have left some people wondering whether these are just laws or fraudulent laws. Are unvaccinated people walking around without masks "cheaters" who are using situational advantage to remove their masks. As stated, the short answer is a definitive "no". Under scrutiny, the current laws have actually created severe ethical and moral dilemmas to begin with which has benefited one side over the other. This of course would be sufficient to render the law inherently unjust. Either the law applies to all or it applies to none. But effectively, what these mandates have done is recreated the leper colonies of old where the unvaccinated are pushed aside and treated as lepers. This is doing nothing more but isolating the unvaccinated and the voiding them of their humanity. Unlike the leper colonies of old though, no one cares enough to visit the unvaccinated.

Underneath argument 1, the first question should be addressed whether this is for the common good. It's very difficult to argue in favor of this because no one can actually see a virus. In fact, Fauci's leaked e-mails show that he holds a very low confidence in masks. He even stated how masks would only serve a symbolic gesture. The "common good" that it's supposed to be used for is to "prevent the spread of COVID-19". That sounds good and all but we see the full revolutionary ideology at play here. It is the idea that "I am God and I control the situation!" The fact of the matter, is that it cannot be for the common good because we are not in control of viruses. Further, masks have been shown to have very unhealthy risks for children. What this entails is that masks are not at all beneficial for the common good. If they prevent the spread of COVID-19 at all, they do more harm than good. Since health is holistic, being concerned for only the spread of one disease is not a justifiable excuse for establishing the common good. The common good is something that all objectively understand to be good and it cannot be established that preventing the spread of a viral infection is a greater good than the other health risks that must be taken in concordance with the ascetical lack of not being able to see another person's face in order to establish a healthy relationship with the other. Thus, masks are not inherently critical to the common good. They fail to meet criteria 1. Even further, masks can only ever serve the benefit of those who are fearful of the spread of COVID-19. The tyrant seeks his own good and the tyrant makes tyrannical laws. If the law only seeks the good of those who are fearful of COVID-19 and ignores the good of others, then the law is inherently tyrannical and thus, unjust.

Argument 2 makes the point that the law must be in a relational context of authority to subject. The problem is that in a democracy, there are always ideological dissidents of the authority who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the one claiming authority. The one claiming authority must rely on the legitimacy he derives from the people. The Biden administration, particularly, insists that its authority is derived from the people. But which people? I didn't vote for the Biden administration. If you voted for Jo Jorgensen, did you vote for Biden? So how could Biden derive his authority from you? If democracy is about the consent of the governed, how does a mere majority make consent? Thus, the context of the authority and subject relationship is broken. There is no objective way to establish legitimacy and if the authority of the government ultimately derives from the people, then by pointing out that you are among the people and did not give consent, you cannot be placed as a subject. Of course, what other things mark legitimate authority? Authority requires legitimacy. For instance, does a governor who insists that infants be left to die have the capability to be entrusted with his state's health policies? Or does such a person lose authority due to a damaged capacity to reason? This may be seen as "begging the question" but the reality is that authority-subject relationship in a democracy itself begs the question!

On matter 3, we have a very serious issue on our hands. The mRNA vaccines out there for one, alter the genetic code. Of course, this is a very serious violation of moral theology as it alters the created order of God by altering the human body itself. A just law must order virtue but this law orders the alteration of the human genome itself. Because of this, the mRNA vaccine can never be said to be ethical. Ethics is not something the modern Leviathan cares for though. By commanding a vaccine that alters the genetic code be taken before you are allowed to remove the mask is to enforce one to violate his moral conscientiousness before being able to be treated like a valued human being. But a just law would order that one be treated like a valued human being regardless. One does not need a genetically altering vaccine in order to be treated as a valued human being. Regardless of what the Leviathan says, we can all be treated like valued human beings without having to subvert our moral conscientiousness. Thus, because the law places ethical violations before valued treatment, Catholics cannot be compelled to be subject to this law. The law is unjust and immoral. Further, many of these vaccines are made using the tissue of cloned aborted fetus cells. The Holy Emperor Constantine was told by a Pagan priest to bathe himself in the blood of children in order to be cured of his leprosy once. When the Emperor went to a Catholic priest, the priest forbade him to do this, baptized him, and this cleansed him from his leprosy. If the Holy Emperor Constantine is an example, we ought to avoid injecting ourselves with vaccines that use fetal cell tissue. But this does not mean we need to sit around and wait before we are able to be treated like valued human beings again. We can therefore remove our masks.

Under argument 4, we can clearly see the law weighs undue burdens upon the unvaccinated forcing them to subvert their moral conscience and, further, has great negative health risks for younger people. Because it imposes undue burdens and creates class groups, the law cannot be reasonably considered a law. It is inherently immoral. One can flippantly state, "must be nice to be in an age group where you won't be strongly harmed by COVID-19" all they want. The fact of the matter is that such a person is actually using "law" in order to benefit themselves. The issues are in fact difficult to navigate but none of the fear of COVID-19 can or should have been ever used to justify lockdowns or universal mask mandates. Further, to place the burden to make decisions regarding morality and health risks on an entire population before they can obtain basic freedoms that a particular class of people behold and to forever shame them is not only egregiously immoral but also unduly tyrannical. When a portion of the population seeks to control another portion of the population, that is an "us vs. them" mentality that is bred into the individual. That is a collectivist mentality that is bred into the individual. You might say that "the government has ordered it! How could this be wrong?" But think of what else governments have ordered. From the Communist State of Stalinist Russia to Hitler's slaughter of the Jews to Roosevelt's imprisonment of Asians to the segregation of colored people from whites. All of these things have been ordered by governments. And the government has been wrong to order these things. In fact, the State, as of this last century, has created a track record of itself being routinely wrong. You may think of these people as "cheaters". Don't do so. They are protesting an inherently unjust law. If you can argue against this, please do so.

St. Zoticus and the Sick

St. Zoticus's feast day was actually the 31st but as I was reading from The Prologue of Ohrid, it struck me as to how the saint treated the contagious compared to the way the Emperor treated the contagious. And with our own pandemic going on, how we've actually been far astray from the holy response given by the saint of God. There was an infectious and contagious disease that broke out during the time of St. Zoticus. How did the Emperor deal with the pandemic in his time? He demanded that the sick people be drowned in the river. Not just simply quarantined but drowned and put to death. For being sick. It is the utmost example of throwaway culture. Our government hasn't gone down that extreme but it shackles us up like animals and treats us as inhuman subjects due to the contagious disease going around in today's world. St. Zoticus took these sick people into his home and ministered to their ailments. When he needed more money for his work, he offered the Emperor pearls and asked for the money in return. Later, the Emperor asked St. Zoticus for the promised pearls. That is when he presented the Emperor with the sick people he had ministered to as the promised pearls. The Emperor became furious that he had deceived himself into thinking the precious pearls were of a mere material nature and killed the holy man. We have been viewing people lately not as precious pearls to be treasured but as carriers of a contagious illness to be avoided. Let us remember the example of St. Zoticus who saw Christ in them and treated the sick as precious pearls to be treasured, tended to, taken care of, and adored. Let us not fear contagious diseases this year!