The Mail

The fiction piece “Mind Your P’s and Q’s” (September 2021) was a wonderful story! The ending was unexpected and perfect. I was wondering before I got to the last paragraph how the story was going to end and then, “Boom,” the perfect ending! Hats off to the author, David Bachmann!

Dennis L., Arizona

I’m writing in response to the column “From the President and Publisher,” published in September 2021, “A Pro-vaccine Parable.” Why would you recommend a [COVID-19] vaccination based on the tissue of aborted children? It’s deplorable! That wrong does not make it right! I’m equally in dismay that the pontiff has also pushed this narrative on the flock. It’s dead wrong!

Gene M., California

Note from the President and Publisher: Liguorian is an unapologetically Catholic magazine. The Redemptorists publish Liguorian primarily to offer its readers faith formation and spiritual guidance.

To that end, we wish to restate the official Catholic position on vaccinations in no uncertain terms: It is not only morally permissible but also morally responsible to receive the COVID-19 vaccines currently available.

According to Pope Francis and the overwhelming majority of bishops in the United States, safeguarding one’s health and the health of others outweighs the remote association with past abortions which were neither desired nor intended by those now using the vaccines.

For more information on this topic, please read a publication of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops by visiting the following website: usccb.org/moral-considerations-covid-vaccines. Also see “Note on the morality of using some anti-COVID-19 vaccines,” published in 2020 at vatican.va by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

To better understand how the Church arrived at its position, please visit vatican.va and see the instruction by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith titled: On Certain Bioethical Questions (Dignitas Personae), specifically paragraph 35. Pope Benedict XVI approved the instruction and ordered its publication in 2008.

Fr. Byron Miller, CSsR