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Posted on 08/20/2026 2:42:04 PM PDT by ebb tide
Florida’s attorney general has met the archbishop of Miami’s refusal to provide vaccine religious exemptions at diocesan Catholic schools with sharp criticism.
Early this month, Florida AG James Uthmeier warned the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops that Catholic schools may be disqualified from state-funded scholarships and vouchers due to their denial of vaccine religious exemptions. On Monday, Archbishop Thomas Wenski ironically insisted that Uthmeier’s challenge to the bishops’ policy “intrudes upon our religious freedom.”
“The state cannot disqualify Catholic schools from the scholarship program merely because a state official’s understanding of Church teachings differ from that of the bishops,” Wenski wrote in an op-ed. He maintained, however, that a Catholic school may disqualify a student from admission because their understanding of Church teachings differs from that of the bishops.
Wenski claimed that Catholic schools do not grant religious exemptions for student vaccinations “because the vaccines as presently developed and administered do not violate Church teachings,” seemingly ignorant of the fact that, as Uthmeier pointed out, “the Catholic Church has historically encouraged the faithful to abstain from the use of vaccines produced from aborted fetal tissue.”
Several vaccines required for school entry are developed using aborted babies’ tissue, including Rubella vaccines and chickenpox vaccines.
“I did not realize the Catholic Church had a ‘religious mission’ to force vaccinate students over the religious, conscience, and medical objections of their families — including vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines,” wrote Uthmeier in a social media post on Wednesday.
“If the Church’s new position is that vaccines that have previously been ‘permitted’ are now ‘mandated,’ then that is a completely new teaching,” the attorney general observed.
He stated that if it is truly the religious mission of the bishops to mandate, for school admission, vaccines that were developed using aborted fetal tissue, “it is not for the state to dispute it.”
Uthmeier pointed out, however, that Wenski’s insistence on mandating such vaccines is “confusing” given that not all U.S. dioceses are doing the same, and that the Catholic Catechism “strongly emphasizes the right of parents to manage the healthcare of their children and the fundamental right of conscience.”
He further stressed that it is a “separate question” whether “a private school that doesn’t follow state laws protecting parental rights and deeply held beliefs should still be permitted to participate in state programs and receive state funding.”
“Should Muslim schools teaching sharia law in violation of Florida law nevertheless get state funding? I don’t think so,” he concluded.
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Ping
If memory serves this Archbishop is rather liberal. Oh and Catholic teaching does not mandate vaccines.
The world is full of nutcases. As a parent you have a God-given right to protect your children from nutcases.
The left strenuously disagrees, "all your child belong to us".
Never forget, for as long as you live, CATHOLIC CHARITES wee the organization that bought, paid for, and distributed free cell phones to all the illegal aliens in America. Independent religion my azz...
“But in vain they do worship me,
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
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