The Dictatorship of Choice

This week's Spirit & Life Column by Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer (Human Life International) really gets to the heart of how the culture of death operates to oppose the Culture of Life. So here it is in its entirety:

The Dictatorship of Choice

Merck’s lucrative HPV vaccine is now being proposed as mandatory by twelve states for girls 11 years old and above. Yes, the word is mandatory. Remember that the culture of death is not a benign dictator: it becomes a tyrant as soon as it is able to enforce its will. Cynically, the whole premise of the culture of death is “freedom of choice,” but if Merck and the CDC have their way soon we will be bulldozing chemicals into little girls’ bodies for no other reason than that their parents’ generation has deprived them of a choice. Those who say that they don’t want to force their morality on others are now having others’ immorality forced upon them.

I have written before that this is not an innocuous little program to protect girls from disease. It is the newest program of fear-mongering that manipulates baby-boomer and Gen X mothers to “protect” their pre-adolescent kids from what they themselves know to be the ravages of the culture of sexual promiscuity. It leaves virtually no room for the moral approach of chastity before and during marriage and in fact denigrates that approach as unrealistic. While there are many reasons why this vaccine should be opposed and rejected, I object most strongly to its capacity to degrade human and sexual relations under the guise of real-world protection.

How is a mother to explain this intrusion to her child? She may tell her girl that the chicken pox vaccine is necessary because even casual contact with other kids may infect her. But if the daughter asks the mother why she needs to get three shots for the HPV vaccine, mom would have to explain it in some disingenuous or crude way: “Well, honey, you may someday have sex with someone who has this disease, and you have to be safe.” The reactions from the child may range from embarrassment to shock to horror. If mother says, “Your future husband may have this disease…,” she will also have to explain why the girl would even want to marry someone with a disease and whether or not Daddy had that disease when she married him. Any way you slice it this shot is degrading to kids’ relationships with their parents, their purity, and the sense of wonder that they should have toward the beauty of human sexuality.

And that’s the point. The culture of death, like every despotic regime, enters into God’s realm with haughty pretense and sullies it. It eventually establishes itself inside the temple as its own authority and mandates a new law contrary to both spirit and nature. Last time I checked, the Scriptures still say that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:9), but the CDC is rapidly squatting on another’s property and soon will claim total ownership of the temple if these HPV vaccine “mandates” are any way indicative of the future.

If parents want to assure that God’s plan of sexual purity will set the agenda for their kids’ future marriages and families, now is the time to change their culture. The only real response to these intrusions of the culture of death is to reject them and all their works and all their empty promises. We have to get and keep the tainted culture out of us and stop pretending that it is the “real world.” Pre-adolescent girls getting expensive shots to protect them from sexually transmitted diseases is not “real,” it’s perverse. Creating a culture of life and purity will in no way be without its sacrifices—even heroic ones—but if our children’s and family’s integrity is not worth the sacrifice, what is?

One final question that has been asked by many and needs a clear answer: Would it be immoral for someone to take or administer this vaccine? No. The HPV vaccine is not made from aborted fetal cell lines and is not in itself an immoral substance. The Church is not in the business of manipulating consciences to make a point about the culture of death. The Church’s point is that the real manipulators are sitting in the CDC and state legislatures and school boards, and we should insist upon our freedom from their unwarranted intrusions into God’s temple.

Sincerely Yours in Christ,

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer

President, Human Life International