A dispute between Florida's Catholic bishops and state Attorney General James Uthmeier over vaccine exemptions in Catholic schools is testing the boundaries between state law and Church authority, with both sides arguing religious freedom is at stake.
The dispute began with what Wenski described as Uthmeier's "veiled threat" in a July 31 letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops. In it, the attorney general urged the bishops to bring Catholic schools into compliance with Florida law requiring religious exemptions for school vaccine mandates, on pain of the loss of state funding through its school choice scholarship program.
Florida has one of the most expansive school choice programs in the United States, whereby families can use state-funded scholarship money for a variety of education-related expenses, including private school tuition.
Uthmeier argued in his letter that "at least one diocese" in Florida appears to have adopted a policy based on what he characterized as the bishops' erroneous interpretation of guidance given to Wenski in 2011 by the National Catholic Bioethics Center.
The bioethics center's then-president, John Haas, said Catholic institutions could not grant exemptions to vaccines on religious grounds because the Church has determined that utilizing vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines was "not intrinsically evil" because of the remoteness of the original, evil act of abortion.
At the same time, Haas made a distinction between religious and conscience objections, stating Catholic institutions should grant the latter "as liberally as possible for the sake of the delicate consciences" of Catholic parents. He also noted that the consciences of those making school policies must be respected.
Wenski told "EWTN News in Depth" host Catherine Hadro in an Aug. 14 interview: "If a Catholic has conscience objections to the vaccines you can't say that your objections come from your understanding of the Catholic faith because the vaccinations available and developed are not contrary to Church teachings."
Religious exemptions or conscience exemptions?
The distinction between the two types of exemptions is important, making the Florida case complicated, Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, an attorney and the founder of The Conscience Project, told EWTN News.
While most states offer some combination of medical, religious, and conscience exemptions to vaccine mandates, Florida law does not explicitly protect conscience objections, only medical and religious ones.
Uthmeier argues that conscience objections fall under the protection of religious liberty, particularly for Catholics, for whom the formation of conscience is a central aspect of the faith.
"The teachings of the Catholic Church do not require Catholic schools to compel students to take vaccines derived from the tissue of aborted children against the sincerely held religious objections of their parents," Uthmeier wrote.
The attorney general also noted that some Catholic families object to certain vaccines not only because of their connection to aborted fetal cell lines, but also because of concerns about the safety of vaccine ingredients and methods of production, including the use of mRNA technology, which he said brings a "heightened risk of health defects, including miscarriages."
The National Catholic Bioethics Center declined to comment to EWTN News. However, the organization maintains resources on its website stating the Church's position that although vaccines developed through morally problematic means may be used for grave reasons, vaccination is not a moral obligation for Catholics and, in order to protect human dignity and the free exercise of conscience, should be voluntary.
The organization also states that "public health measures and policies should be built upon sound science and ethical principles."
Uthmeier: Parents' rights are being violated
Uthmeier told EWTN News he is concerned about the "religious freedoms and rights of parents." He pointed out that many Catholic families have come to him noting the irony that their conscience rights are protected in public schools in Florida but not in Catholic ones.
Uthmeier also said families are confused because Catholic schools in several dioceses across the country do grant vaccine conscience and religious exemptions.
Because Catholic schools receive state scholarship funds, he argued, the state has an interest in ensuring that religious freedoms are protected.
"Where First Amendment rights [and] the religious beliefs of parents are being violated, we as a state have a duty to investigate and see what legal tools we may have to protect our parents in Florida," he said.
While acknowledging that the state cannot dictate religious beliefs, he said he remains unconvinced that the bishops have identified an authentically religious reason for denying exemptions.
A Catholic himself, Uthmeier further pointed to what he said were long-standing Catholic teachings regarding parental authority and conscience rights.
"Respecting the right of conscience is deeply embedded in our catechism," he said. "How these rights can be violated, and how Catholic Church officials can disagree on citing religious teaching across the country, perplexes me."
Wenski: Catholic schools must protect the common good
Wenski likewise framed the controversy as a religious freedom issue, from the perspective of the Church's right to determine and apply its own teachings.
He described Uthmeier's position as "an unfair and ill-advised interpretation of separation of Church and state" and argued that lawmakers never intended school-choice scholarships to impose a religious test on participating schools.
"The Church has a right to determine our own teachings," he said.
Wenski told EWTN News that the bishops "certainly respect the rights of conscience of every person." At the same time, he said Catholic social teaching also obligates schools to promote the common good and protect children through immunization.
"We've witnessed in recent months an upsurge of cases of measles, and we know that that presents certain dangers for pregnant women," Wenski said.
The archbishop noted that Catholic schools already grant medical exemptions when a physician certifies that a child should not be vaccinated.
But he maintained that parents who object to vaccination are free to choose another school.
"Nobody is forced to go to a Catholic school," he said.
The bishops sent Uthmeier a formal response, Wenski said, outlining what they view as the religious freedom issues implicated by the attorney general's intervention.
Wenski said the bishops are "prepared to protect our students, to defend our rights, and to preserve religious freedom" while remaining open to continued dialogue with the state.
Critics of Florida bishops' policy disagree
While Wenski suggested the issue is largely settled within Catholic teaching, critics of the Florida bishops' policy disagree.
Yvonne Bontkowski, director of Children of God for Life, said the controversy reflects a deeper disagreement over how Catholics should respond to vaccines connected to abortion-derived cell lines.
"This is the first time I have ever seen where the state isn't asking the Church to violate its teaching, it's asking the Church to honor it," she told EWTN News.
The organization argues that although the Church has determined it can be morally permissible to receive such vaccines under certain circumstances, Church teaching says Catholics still have a moral duty to advocate for ethical alternatives and resist what it sees as the continued exploitation of aborted fetal tissue in biomedical research.
Bontkowski cited a 2005 document from the Pontifical Academy for Life, which established the moral permissibility of the use of vaccines developed from aborted fetal cell lines in order to protect health but also affirmed that Catholics may exercise conscientious objection regarding such vaccines.
"Our conscience is directed to what is morally good," she said. "The Vatican never said these vaccines are morally good. It said we're not sinning if we take them for grave reasons and on a temporary basis while we demand ethical alternatives."
She argued that families exercising that duty should not be excluded from Catholic education, which, unlike immunization, is a moral obligation.
Canon law states that parents have both a right and a "most grave obligation" to provide a Catholic education for their children, while Canon 217 affirms that the faithful have the right to a Christian education "by which they are to be instructed properly to strive for the maturity of the human person and at the same time to know and live the mystery of salvation."
Other critics contend that the debate ultimately turns on differing understandings of public health and the common good.
Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and director of the National Vaccine Information Center, told EWTN News that Catholic school officials generally formulate vaccine and other public health policies based on the judgments of public health authorities.
But, she argued, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed public distrust in scientific and governmental institutions, especially regarding data about who is at greatest biological risk for vaccines "that could hurt or even kill people."
"Unfortunately the entire notion of the common good rests upon the science," Fisher said. "If the scientists and the government haven't done due diligence in doing the best science, or haven't told the full truth, that is a moral dilemma the Church is going to have to eventually grapple with."
