First, read this excellent article by Fr. Matthew Schneider: 12 Things Less Remote Cooperation in Evil Than COVID Vaccines – December 18, 2020 BY Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC

Now the teaching of the Church on cooperation with evil is infallible under the ordinary universal Magisterium. The Church has been teaching on morality for over 2,000 years. It is absurd to claim that the faithful are not obligated to believe that teaching, as it is “non-infallible”, or that the teaching is still uncertain or not definitively taught on cooperation with evil. This teaching is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and in Veritatis Splendor, as well as in many different Church teachings over the centuries. See my booklet on Cooperation with Evil at Amazon.

A common argument by persons who wish to reject Church teaching goes this way: (1) the teaching is non-infallible; this is stated without support. (2) non-infallible teachings can be “wrong”. (3) therefore, I can reject the teaching and believe whatever my conscience says.

The refutation of the argument is simple and clear. (1) Many teachings of the Church are infallible under the ordinary universal Magisterium. (2) Non-infallible teachings of the Apostolic See cannot be gravely wrong on faith or morals, for, as the First Vatican Council taught:
* “For in the apostolic see the catholic religion has always been preserved unblemished, and sacred doctrine been held in honour”
and
* The apostolic teaching of the successors of Peter “was embraced by all the venerable fathers and reverenced and followed by all the holy orthodox doctors, for they knew very well that this See of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour to the prince of his disciples: I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren [Lk 22:32].”

This does not mean that every teaching of the Apostolic See is infallible, nor that no errors are possible. But it does imply that no grave errors are possible, by the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church, which is the Body of Christ, and in Her Teachings, which are the Teachings of Christ. If, then, a teaching is claimed to be BOTH non-infallible and a grave error, the claim is false. Since no grave errors are possible, any apparently non-infallible teaching which would be a grave error if it were false, must be true.

Those who wish to throw off the Yoke of the Lord by believing only what they wish to believe, claim that the Roman Pontiffs have only taught infallibly twice. But in the Relatio of Vatican I, Bishop Vincent Glasser argued that the Popes have taught infallibly thousands of times already. This is far more tenable a position than the claim that the Roman Pontiffs have been given the gift of Papal Infallibility to teach the faithful, but that they have not used this gift but twice in 2,000 years, despite the great need for teaching in such a poor and weak flock.

Now here is the interview in which Athanasius Schneider claims that “Christians must never take abortion-tainted COVID vaccine”.

Note, first of all, that the explanation of schismatic Bishop Athanasius Schneider is often incoherent, and he offers no real theological explanation. He begins by saying that we must follow our conscience. Right. But we Catholics must form our conscience by Church teachings. Schneider uses this expression: “the so-called principle of moral, material, remote cooperation.” The term “so-called” is used to cast doubt on something. But this principle has been the perpetual teaching of the Church. Cooperation with evil is not a new problem. We all live in a society with other sinners. It is absurd to claim that the Church, after 2000 years, has no definitive teaching on what we should do if another person or group is sinning gravely, and our act is cooperative to the sinful act. In fact, the teaching of the Church is quite clear, and we must form our consciences by that teaching.

Schneider: “you cannot apply this principle to these exceptional, horrible crime[s] of abortion.” Notice that Schneider excludes abortion from the teaching of the Church on the eternal moral law. There are no exceptions to that law of God. It is divine law from the very Nature of God, who is unchanging. Abortion, as evil as it is, cannot be excluded from moral teaching, such that we oppose it without regard to the moral law. This would be a type of idolatry of abortion, which is found among some pro-life extremists. They do not care what the Church teaches, or about other moral principles. They put opposition to abortion first, above all else, as if it were a god to be worshipped. Yes, anything can become an idol (except God).

Then Schneider shows his own hypocrisy quite clearly, when he speaks about cooperation with evil and paying taxes. For as we know, many tax dollars go to support, spread, and pay for abortion. He justifies this type of cooperation with the evil of abortion. And it is certainly a much closer types of cooperation. Some of your tax dollars pay for abortions, for example, in the U.S. (despite the Hyde amendment), abortions are paid for with federal tax dollars if they are deemed medically necessary. And this is certainly extended far beyond indirect abortions to any abortions with a mere pretext of medical “need”. So Schneider justifies this close cooperation with the evil of abortion, and he notes that he himself paid taxes in the USSR, which went toward many evils, including abortion. And he justifies this under the principle of cooperation with evil. Then he excludes the same principle from applying to the same subject, abortion, in the case of vaccines. Why? Because he thinks that this vaccine is the Mark of the Beast of the Antichrist. See below. It is not, by the way.

Schneider is a hypocrite. He paid tax dollars to the USSR which went to abortion and other evils. And yet he claims that he would willingly die a martyr, rather than accept a vaccine that is much more distantly related to abortion because “you cannot apply this principle to these exceptional, horrible crime[s] of abortion.” And yet he applies the principle of cooperation to abortion when it is the closer cooperation of tax dollars. He has the gall to proclaim himself a virtual martyr, who would die rather than cooperate with abortion, after he explains that he did cooperate with abortion for many years in the USSR.

LifeSiteNews describing Schneider’s statement: “Moreover, should it even be demanded at the price of his life, he said he believed God would grant him the strength to make the ultimate sacrifice.”

So the schismatic Bishop is rejecting the teaching of the Church, disdaining it by calling it “so-called” and pushing it into the corner by saying that it is only to be applied in exceptional cases. To the contrary, cooperation with evil — as Father Schneider correctly explains at length — is a daily necessity. We make daily decisions in this area of morality.

Yes, Bishop Athanasius Schneider is a schismatic and a heretic. He rejects the authority of Pope Francis over himself. He accepts no teaching whatsoever of the Roman Pontiff which is contrary to his own mind. Instead of submitting to the Roman Pontiff as his Teacher and Shepherd, he expects to have the role to oversee and correct the Roman Pontiff at every turn. And when the Pope refuses to submit to Schneider’s pretended authority over the Apostolic See, Schneider turns to the perverted far-right media to teach the weak in faith directly, opposing the teaching of the successor of Peter and the body of Bishops continually.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider rejects the teaching that the Church is indefectible, that each successor of Peter has the gift of truth and of never-failing faith, that the Apostolic See remains ever unblemished by any (grave) error. And these heresies are seen in his response to the teaching of the CDF on the Covid-19 vaccine.

Moral Teaching

The Holy See has repeatedly taught that the use of vaccines whose research or development or production is related to a cell line from an aborted fetus is remote material cooperation, and is therefore moral given a proportionate reason. See this CNA article. There also have been other past teachings by the CDF on the licitness of vaccines produced with these cell lines.

The idea that is often expressed on this topic is that the Catholic would, ideally, choose a vaccine that was made licitly, when available. But cell lines from aborted fetuses are commonly used in research. There is no vaccine or other medication which is completely removed from such cell lines. None. Zero. Nil. Zilch. Every medication, vaccine, or other treatment relies upon thousands of studies which provide information that gradually brings researchers to the point of being able to offer a vaccine or other medication or other treatment to patients. All these studies are inter-related. Any study will have dozens, if not hundreds, of references in the endnotes. And each of those studies is similarly related to many other studies. And many of these studies use these types of cell lines. Some vaccines are more closely related to these cell lines, but not a since vaccine or prescription or over-the-counter medication or supplement is entirely unrelated to research done with these types of cell lines.

Similarly, you cannot (as Fr. Schneider points out) buy a product or use the services of any large corporation without cooperation with evil. Large corporations are all doing one thing or another or several things that are gravely immoral, such as donating to abortion causes, promoting gravely immoral social agendas, etc. Similarly, nothing in medicine is completely untainted by aborted fetus cell lines.

However, the connection between the vaccine or OTC or prescription medication you take and the abortion that began the cell line is very remote. An abortion occurred in the 1970’s, for reasons unrelated to providing cells for research. Some cells were taken and grown in culture in a lab, then those cells divide and produce another generation of cells, and another, and so on for decade after decade. And the cell lines are generally used to test medications or vaccines against human cells to ascertain effectiveness, toxicity, etc. And most vaccines are not actually produced using these cells.

The current vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer are mRNA vaccines. They do not contain any cells, RNA, DNA, or other material from an aborted fetus. They are as moral as most other vaccines used to vaccinate children. The use of tainted cell lines more or less distantly to the development and production of a vaccine is a question of being very remote or very very remote from the original abortion decades earlier.

Medicine should promptly develop cell lines that can replace these tainted cell lines completely, and so do away with this problem entirely. But even if that happens, researchers and medical companies will, for many centuries, be relying on the information and medical insights obtained over the last several decades using those tainted cell lines.

Is there a proportionate reason to use a Covid-19 produced or developed using tainted cell lines? Millions of persons have died, have suffered greatly, are suffering greatly, and are in danger of dying from the Covid-19 pandemic. If you do not take the vaccine and you become ill, you risk infecting others and indirectly causing their deaths. Yes, the reason to take a vaccine, tainted though it may be, is sufficiently weighty to morally outweigh this very remove connection to one abortion in the distant past, that would still have taken place.

The real moral question, regarding taking a vaccine or not, is whether it will do more good than harm, or vice versa, due to its effectiveness and its side effects and its other risks. That is the question that should occupy the minds of Catholics who are considering the morality of the vaccines for Covid-19.

Athanasius Schneider’s Errors

So A. Schneider not only refuses to form his conscience in the light of Church teaching, he also makes false claims about morality. He rejects the principle of cooperation with evil, and claims that abortion is an exception to the moral law. He claims that the acceptance of the morality of taking such a vaccine is “undermining the First Commandment of God and the absolute maximum determination of the Church to oppose the evil of abortion.”

The first commandment is to worship God alone. Schneider is implying that the vaccine is some type of idolatry. Also, the Church’s teaching against abortion is not a blind “maximum determination” to oppose abortion, but rather a clear and ordinary application of the moral law to one of many grave evils in this world: abortion, slavery, rape, sexual abuse of children, murder, mass murder and terrorism, totalitarianism, and the idolatry of self and of culture that is seen clearly in many persons on the far right in Catholicism, including A. Schneider.

Essentially, Schneider is rewriting the ten commandments so that the first commandment is now to oppose abortion, on the pretext that abortion is a type of idolatry. Many women, unfortunately, choose abortion, but it is often done with heart-wrenching emotion and an erroneous conscience that nevertheless seeks truth and goodness.

If we are to treat abortion as the greatest evil, as a type of idolatry, then why are not the sins against religion given still greater weight? Blasphemy, idolatry of self and of the conservative culture, apostasy, heresy, and schism, are all found in the expressions of the papal accusers, including of Burke, Schneider, and Vigano. The sin more gravely than a woman who chooses abortion. They rail against abortion, in a manner so as to use abortion to oppose the teaching authority of the Church, so as to give themselves more power over the lost among the faithful. They use abortion to promote their schismatic and heretical errors. That is far worse than a vaccine tainted by distant association with an abortion.

Athanasius Schneider then makes a series of statements, which undermines and rejects the dogma of the indefectibility of the Church. First, he says: “and this is not a matter of quantity, of numbers, but of truth.” In other words, it does not matter if the Pope and the vast majority of Bishops, priests, and theologians justify accepting a vaccine under cooperation with evil, because he is right.

Throughout every public expression of Athanasius Schneider, he assumes that he and the few Bishops who agree with him cannot possibly be in error. They each shout from the rooftops that the non-infallible teaching of the Church can err, therefore, we should listen to them. But the non-infallible teaching of the Holy See has a type and degree of help from the Holy Spirit that a small group of schismatic Bishops lacks. Schneider and his ilk assume that they are inerrant. They never consider that they might be in error. While disdaining the non-infallible teaching of the Apostolic See, they speak as if they were each Popes teaching the whole faithful, while refusing themselves to be taught by the Pope or the body of Bishops or the Ecumenical Councils. They each and all reject Vatican II and ignore Vatican I.

Schneider points out that the hierarchy of the Church and the Bishops increasingly accept this type of vaccine, reluctantly, as a necessity. And he stands opposed to them. Then he says: “We have to follow the truth, even if I will lose all my good friends, I will follow my conscience. Even if I will be alone, I will follow my conscience.” Unfortunately, Schneider is not following the truths taught by the Catholic Faith. He is rejecting Church teaching and the teaching of the body of Bishops with the Roman Pontiff. He is following a conscience that refuses to be guided by the Church. His admission that he would continue on this path “even if I will be alone” is an implicit admission that he is a heretic and schismatic. For if he were following Church teaching, he would not be alone. He would have the Pope and the body of Bishops. Thus, in saying he seems to be nearly alone, he admits his sin of schism. Then he notes that just a few Bishops have joined him. Again, this is an implicit admission that the body of Bishops reject his position.

He is not like “Saint Thomas More and Saint John Fisher”. For those Saints followed the teaching of the Church unto death. But Bishop Athanasius Schneider follows the teachings of his own disordered mind and of the conservative Catholic subculture, in open contradiction to the Roman Pontiff, the Holy See, and the body of Bishops. Those Saints were faithful to the Ecumenical Councils, and Bishop Athanasius Schneider rejects both Vatican I and II. He has the gall to put himself forward as some type of Saint or martyr, when he has done nothing but lead the weak in faith away from the truths taught by the Church.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider declaring himself to be like a Saint or a martyr is the height of Pride, the pride that inevitably accompanies heretics and schismatics, who have decided that their own conscience should be followed in contradiction to the teaching of Popes, Saints, Ecumenical Councils, and the body of Bishops.

Schneider: “Make an inquiry of simple people, they will reject this. This is the Sensus Fidelium.”

Heretics and schismatics often reference the sensus fidelium, as a way to oppose the Magisterium. This reference to “simple people” and to the SF is a substitution for the Roman Pontiff, the body of Bishops, the Ecumenical Councils, and the teaching of the Holy See. When a Catholic rejects all these things, in what way can he pretend to justify his position, contradicting the teaching of his own Church? Those who reject the Magisterium grasp at straws seeking its replacement. When did the Lord Jesus or His Church tell us to reject the teaching of the Church, in favor of the teaching of “the simple people” and the sensus fidelium? Never.

As Vatican I infallibly taught, the “apostolic teaching [of the Popes] was embraced by all the venerable fathers and reverenced and followed by all the holy orthodox doctors, for they knew very well that this See of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Savior to the prince of his disciples” in Luke 22:32.

There is no recourse to the sensus fidelium and the “simple people” to correct or oppose Church teaching.

Schneider: “So when my conscience says I cannot accept an abortion tainted vaccine, even not in a most remote way, because I repeat, I am entering even a most remote concatenation, which is different from paying taxes, of course, cannot compare this.”

He admits that the vaccine has “a most remote concatenation” to abortion in the distant past. He admits that paying taxes to a government that supports and pays for abortion is much less remote. But you can’t compare the two? Why not? because Schneider paid taxes to the USSR for many years, and he has not accepted a Covid-19 vaccine, that’s why not. The arbitrariness of his “conscience” is based on what he himself has done, which must be moral because he has proclaimed himself to be a Saint and martyr, and what he has not done, which is receive a vaccine that will protect everyone around him from suffering and death.

The hypocrisy of someone who uses a remove connection to an abortion of the distant past in order to refuse to take a vaccine which protects the lives of everyone around himself or herself, very immediately, is a great evil. It is the evil of pride, in which whatever one wishes to believe to be true is pretended to be of conscience, when it is openly contrary to Church teaching.

Even though Bishop Athanasius Schneider paid taxes for many years in the USSR, and justifies this by cooperation with evil. And all these other opponents of tainted vaccines pay taxes as well. Then Schneider goes on to exalt himself again: “With the spirit of the prophets of the Old Testament, of St. John the Baptist, with the prophets, with the saints, martyrs, with all these.” He compares himself to the Old Testament prophets and to John the Baptist, who was sanctified in the womb at the visitation. What is he doing that justifies this comparison? He is telling the faithful to reject the teaching of the Church on morality, cooperation with evil, and on vaccines. He is refusing a vaccine.

Has he suffered for this refusal? No, instead he has received praise and greater notoriety, from those who, like him, oppose the Roman Pontiff and the body of Bishops. This is not martyrdom. Those who suffer for doing evil are not martyrs

{3:17} For it is better to suffer for doing good, if it is the will of God, than for doing evil.

{4:15} But let none of you suffer for being a murderer, or a thief, or a slanderer, or one who covets what belongs to another.
{4:16} But if one of you suffers for being a Christian, he should not be ashamed. Instead, he should glorify God in that name.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider is not suffering for being a Christian; he is being praised for being a schismatic and a heretic. He is praised for opposing the teaching of the Popes and body of Bishops, a body that he himself has rejected. Though Schneider presents himself as a Bishops teaching the Church, he has no authority whatsoever over even his own flock, as all the doctors of the Church have taught, with Saint Robert Bellarmine, that a manifest heretic such as Schneider loses all authority in the Church.

And now we come to the real reason that Schneider opposes the vaccine. Not because of its more distant connection to abortion than the taxes he paid for many years. But because he thinks it is the mark of the Beast.

The Mark of the Beast (hilarious)

Schneider: “Because in this case, into some kind to receive in our body the fruits – so-called fruits in the way of the greatest evil, one of the greatest evils of mankind, the cruel genocide of unborn. We will be marked. We will receive a sign in our body which will in any way and some way demonstrate that we are connected to this greatest, one of the greatest evils.”

Joint Statement by Schneider, Strickland, et alia: “Vaccines derived from the cells of cruelly murdered unborn children are clearly apocalyptic in character and may possibly foreshadow the mark of the beast (see Rev. 13:16).”

At this point in the interview, even the schismatic and heretic John-Henry-the-Eighth Westen is taken aback. He tries to turn the claim of Schneider into some type of distant connection to a future time.

Westen: “It’s a very interesting reflection because the an act of the will is necessary because the scriptures describe the mark of the beast as something that you take that if you take it, you are guilty. And I presume under the normal circumstances where you know, under all the normal circumstances of mortal sin, you have to recognize that it is grave moral evil and it has to be grave and you have to recognize it as such and you have to consent to it freely. And so under those circumstances, I can see it being that way. But also it might in this case, forbid us buying and selling. The Scriptures talk about how all those who refuse the Mark of the Beast won’t be able to buy and sell.”

That’s J-H Westen’s way of saying “What kind of crazy shit is this?” and “Did he just go there? WTF do I say now?”

Westen is correct that in order to sin mortally, you have to have full knowledge and full deliberation, and receiving a vaccine is in no way known by anyone to be a grave evil associated with the Antichrist. So it does not work as the Mark of the Beast. Then he also points out, correctly again, that the Mark of the Beast is needed to buy and sell, which is not the case for this vaccine. He also points out that, in Scripture, the Mark is given on the hand or the forehead, which is not the case with a vaccine.

Schneider then refutes what Westen says, and asserts instead that maybe these are the end times, and maybe the Lord is returning soon. In this way, Schneider rejects what Westen says and reasserts that he thinks the vaccine is the Mark of the Beast.

This accords with what Vigano said recently, specifically that Pope Francis is the False Prophet associated with the Antichrist. Similarly, in his blasphemous book “Infiltration”, Taylor Marshall hints that the Antichrist may be a Roman Pontiff, and that he will take control of the Church from Rome, thus establishing a false Church superimposed (as Vigano has explicitly claimed) over the institutional Catholic Church. Such a claim is contrary to Church teaching and contrary to sound Catholic eschatology.

The Church is indefectible; She can never go astray or lead astray. The Roman Pontiff has the charism of truth and of never-failing faith, so the Antichrist cannot be a valid Roman Pontiff. Nor can an invalid Roman Pontiff ever be accepted by the body of Bishops, as the Church is indefectible. Finally, the Antichrist wishes to be worshipped as if he were the one true God, and so that wish is incompatible with being Pope. The Antichrist wishes to destroy the Church. And every persecution of the Church from the time of Nero to the present day is a foreshadowing of that future attempt to utterly destroy the Church on earth. So again, neither the Antichrist, nor his false prophet will not be Pope. Instead, in the DISTANT future, the Antichrist and his false prophet will devise their own false Church, in opposition to the one holy Catholic Church led by the Popes and Bishops.

The Mark of the Beast is not a vaccine. That is absurd. Sacred Scripture clearly says this:

{13:17} so that no one may buy or sell, unless he has the character, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
{13:18} Here is wisdom. Whoever has intelligence, let him determine the number of the beast. For it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.

The beast is the kingdom of the Antichrist. The idea is that the Antichrist holds power over a worldwide kingdom that includes all nations. There is no such person or situation. The many nations are generally independent of one another, or they make treaties between themselves. There is no Antichrist in the world today. And the mark (or “character”) of the beast is “the number of a man”. So the Mark refers to a man, the Antichrist, and to his kingdom, the beast. This is entirely incompatible with the claim that a vaccine is the Mark of the Beast.

In addition, the Covid-19 vaccines do NOT change your DNA. The vaccines do NOT contain any type of microchip. The vaccines do NOT contain any cells from an aborted fetus. All these claims are false and contrary to reason. And the Mark of the Beast is something in the very distant future, while at no time whatsoever will the Mark of the Beast be a vaccine.

What kind of Catholic rejects the Roman Pontiffs and the Ecumenical Councils and the body of Bishops, in order to follow instead Bishop Vigano and Bishop Schneider, who both think these ridiculous things about the End Times? Vigano has claimed that Francis is the False Prophet associated with the Antichrist. Schneider thinks the Covid-19 vaccine is the Mark of the Beast. Okay, I’ll bite. So who is the Antichrist? If the Mark of the Beast and the False Prophet are in the world today, that means the Antichrist has already taken power. Scripture says that the Mark of the Beast is given out about halfway through the Antichrist’s reign over the whole world, a reign of nearly 7 years. So…where is this Antichrist who has supposedly been controlling the whole world for the last 3.5 years???? How can there be a Mark of the Beast without a Beast? The Beast is the kingdom of the Antichrist, which means that one person, the Antichrist, has control over all nations. And the Beast is also the Antichrist himself.

Dear Bishops Vigano and Schneider, if you are both warning us about the dangers of the End Times, and of the False Prophet and the Mark of the Beast, why don’t you tell us who this Antichrist is? He should be easy for you to identify, since you claim to be as holy as the Saints, the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist, and the other martyrs. He should be easy for you to identify, as Scripture clearly says he will rule over the whole world, over every nation:
[Revelation]
{13:5} And there was given to it a mouth, speaking great things and blasphemies. And authority was given to him to act for forty-two months.
{13:6} And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle and those who dwell in heaven.
{13:7} And it was given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given to him over every tribe and people and language and nation.
{13:8} And all who inhabit the earth worshiped the beast, those whose names have not been written, from the origin of the world, in the Book of Life of the Lamb who was slain.

So, Bishops Vigano and Schneider, why don’t you tell us all who the Antichrist is? And when did these events happen — which occur early in chapter 13 of Revelation, before the Mark of the Beast later in that same chapter? When did everyone who inhabits the earth worship this Antichrist, except the faithful few? When did these 42 months (3.5 years) occur? When was the Antichrist given authority “over every tribe and people and language and nation”??

But if you cannot identify the Antichrist, and if these events have not occurred (as truly they are in the very distant future) then you must both be wrong about Pope Francis and about the vaccine. Idiots. You can’t even propose explanations that are coherent within themselves, let alone in agreement with Scripture or Church teaching. So far from being fit to correct the Popes and the body of Bishops, you are not fit to shepherd even the smallest of dioceses, nor even a single small parish flock.

Little children, beware of false prophets, coming to you in sheep’s clothing, that is, in the clothing of the clergy. You will know them by their open rejection of the authority of Christ in the Church, the Popes, the Councils and the body of Bishops.

Ronald L. Conte Jr.