In The New York Times, I made the case for pro-life Catholics to get covid vaccines, despite their dependence on cell lines derived from aborted children. Even people who are comfortable with the vaccines need to grapple with the question of how we make amends for our material cooperation with evil.
I’ve gotten both my shots and I strongly believe other Catholics should get vaccinated, too. But I don’t think those qualms are entirely misguided, and they’re not limited to vaccinations. When we reap the benefit of what we see as a past injustice, we are implicated in the original wrongdoing. We have to decide if our actions compound the original abuse and what kinds of reparations we must make.
The Jesuits of Georgetown University have been wrestling with a similar question of moral contamination. The order funded the school partly through the exploitation and sale of slaves. To make amends, the university has begun a fund-raising campaign to pay reparations to the descendants of those slaves. But a Georgetown professor still has to ask the same question as a someone rolling up his sleeve for the vaccine: Can I accept a benefit premised on someone else’s suffering?
We need to stop looking for excuses to divide people because of past abuses. Shall we hold people responsible for the sins of their great or great-great grandparents? And to what end? Who truly benefits? We hold dead people accountable for past egregious acts, but people don’t seem to be held accountable for their present sins. How about reparations for all the babies who have been aborted? Who cares about their voice? Everything seems to be “excusable” in today’s world, regardless of who is the victim of one’s self-proclaimed righteousness. Right is wrong, wrong is right and no one questions or challenges. Will I get the COVID vaccine? No. I don’t believe anyone should be mandated to take something that they find morally offensive, especially when there is no proof that the vaccine actually prevents the contraction of the virus. It seems to me that the real benefits of the COVID vaccine and the reparations for slaves belong to those who are using fear, resentment and every other negative emotion to stir up dissention among one another, tearing our country and our world apart. We would all do better to try and create peace and compassion in the here and now. No one can undo the past, but the here and now presents many opportunities for healing.