Remote Material Cooperation (RMC)
Principle of the Integral Good (PIG)
Discussion thread with Dr. Casey and Steve Skojec
In reference to EPPC's statement
Dr. Casey in bold:
When it says, "They are not 'body parts' in any meaningful or morally relevant sense," none of the moralists I’ve referred to over the last two months have ever claimed that they are “body parts”. It’s DNA. The baby girl’s DNA. Nobody else’s DNA. Uniquely hers. Stolen from her.
When it says, “they do not retain the natural function of the tissue from which they were derived", it's like saying that if you steal a car, & use the engine parts to build a plane, it’s no longer theft. Stolen DNA is stolen DNA, even if you’re not using it for kidney cells.
The author’s using "function" & "body parts" the way people justify abortion saying, "it's not a person, it's a fetus." It’s still a murder, still stolen DNA, still an ongoing theft of genetic material, still being used for the original purpose for which it was stolen—cell line.
So are we reinventing bioethics? What's the game plan here? Is remote material cooperation no longer a sufficient criteria, even when it is demonstrated that it is incredibly remote?
How far does this extend?
Remote Material Cooperation is incomplete, and has never been the starting point; First Principles are.
The CDF focused on RMC and ignored the Principle of the Integral Good, which the vaccines violate (ongoing theft, etc.).
Therefore, RMC as a justification is insufficient.
Why should anyone take your word for it over the case made here by the EPPC and the scholars who signed off on this brief?
Why should they disbelieve the CDF and Pope Benedict?
You're asking a lot, but I don't see the work being done to make the case.
It’s not about “who”, just “what”. The Principle dates back to Dionysius, Aquinas taught it, Ripperger wrote his doctoral thesis on it, wrote a separate book on it, Schneider invoked it, our FSSP priests quoted it, the SSPX priests we’ve heard of through friends quoted it, etc.
RMC can be invoked only after the morality of the exterior act fulfills the Principle of the Integral Good. If it fails, RMC becomes irrelevant.
And if the first step, the Principle of the Integral Good application, is skipped, it’s not only inconsistent with Traditional Catholic morality, but it’s no reflection on those who have correctly applied it.
This doesn't seem to answer my question.
And the SSPX has taken the other side.
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I don't know enough about the Principle of the Integral Good to argue that point, but I find the logic presented by the EPPC compelling, which makes me wonder what could change that.
Because logic has a funny way of being impervious to conditional arguments.
None of the logic you quote permits disregarding a capital-F, capital-P First Principle that the Church has always taught is the starting point for determining the morality of an exterior act. That’s the Church’s starting point. Disregarding it doesn’t constitute being logical.
So where has the opposition to the Vatican position on bioethics been for the last 20 years?
I've never seen it.
Also, is Fr. Ripperger the main source on this? I'm googling it and finding only his book or references to it.
Dionysius the Aeropagite: “Good cometh from the One universal cause; evil from many partial deficiencies.” “This principle became widely excepted during the Middle Ages & in the entire Latin tradition normally formulated as: Bonum est ex integra causa, Malum ex quolibet defectu.
“The good is from an integral cause, evil from any defect whatsoever.”
Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 19, a. 7, ad 3: “Bonum vero ex tota et integra causa.”
Aquinas, expounding on it, ST II-II, q. 110, a. 3: “For something to be good, it is required that everything rightly concurs.”
So then we can't do anything imperfectly without committing evil?
We certainly can’t use the Covid vaccines. That’s the present application. They’re immoral. If you work through everything else, & you find other things that violate the Principle, then, yes, you have to stop doing them.
But before you get to “anything”, understand Quid first.
The Catholic Church has never taught that the morality of an exterior act is determined by who abides by the determination of the morality of said act after application of the First Principle.
If an act violates the Principle, it’s immoral. Doesn’t matter who proceeds with it.
********SECOND THREAD ************
Read the tweet. I said the individual SSPX priests of people I’ve spoken to have all disagreed with the statement, the origin of which is still in question.
You asked why you should take my word for it. The answer is: you shouldn’t. Because it’s not coming from me.
I read it. And I suspected that's what you meant. But the SSPX has held this position for many years. I find it odd that it's suddenly contentious.
I'm curious, too, if your position means you avoid using or giving the many common medications that have been tested on HEK 293.
So if *initial* testing wasn't done on HEK, but later testing was, it's irrelevant? Just not vice versa?
I've never wanted to be a philosopher, but things like this make me wish I'd studied it more. Because I'm sensing something hinky here and can't adequately articulate it.
The FDA requires testing to get it on the market—to get it to us. Does it work? Is it safe? That’s it. Further “testing“ to further delineate mechanism of action is not testing. Because it has no bearing on the moral question or on the clinical use. It doesn’t change its use.
Sorry, I don't understand the distinction. The mechanism of action of a vaccine is pre-determined, is it not? And testing only verifies efficacy.
Testing has no bearing on the morality of the vaccine itself, as far as I can determine.
Back up. Aspirin: invented in 1897. For 100 years medical students were taught that we didn’t understand the *actual* mechanism of action. Nobody cared. It worked & it was safe. If somebody does an HEK science project to demonstrate the mechanism of action, it’s not RMC for us.
It doesn’t change who gets it, why they get it, how much is prescribed or what complications to look for. It’s a science project at the electron microscope level with no bearing on the moral question.
Covid vaccines are different. The immoral testing was done to *get it to us*.
I really wish I could put my finger on what's bothering me about this line of argument, but I can't. Not yet anyway. Something is off, though. I suspect it's the fact that testing has no bearing on design or function, just public approval.
Still not sold that this isn't RMC, too
The problem is in the word “testing”. Testing is what’s done to get it on the market. Does it work? Is it safe? No company tests after that. If some science project comes up with information that has no bearing on who gets it, how they get it, etc., it doesn’t make it RMC.
I missed a comment you made above: “Testing has no bearing on the morality of the vaccine itself, as far as I can determine.”
It does if it uses the stolen DNA to accomplish it. That’s why the Principle is violated with either production or testing.
How does that have any bearing? There's no casual link between the cell line and the final product.
Because you’re still using the stolen material to accomplish the task.
That has zero bearing on the morality of using the vaccine. The vaccine is not derived from those cells. The testing is accidental, not essential.
Doesn’t matter. The product was tested using the stolen DNA. You’re still benefiting from the murdered girl, her stolen DNA, which is being used to get you something. Without that testing that vaccine’s not available to you. And that testing was done recently, so it’s not remote.
I remain unconvinced. I see no reason not to consider this RMC, and no reason to see the testing as at best incidental.
I'm tired and going to call it a night on this, but if you've got recommended reading, I'd be willing to take a look to try to understand this better.
HFlambeau: The issue that I have with the position that @MrCasey62and others are proposing is that it requires the RMC analysis to now pass the integral good (IG) test when RMC presupposes that the IG test has failed already.
The vaccine issue requires an A+B analysis. The CDF & others insists it’s only about A (remote material cooperation). Schneider, Ripperger, Fr. Wolfe, and many moralists know it’s really A+B (B = Principle of the Integral Good—violated here).
B addresses A; A alone ignores B.
Then when would RMC **ever** apply in any analysis, if PIG demands no defect?
The only way RMC could become a consideration is if you're dealing with a known evil.
When the evil act isn’t the first step in the chain. The Covid vaccines’ cell line started with a murder, followed by a theft, which is ongoing, & recently used.
That’s a far cry from me buying a Chapstick, the money from which may or may not go Planned Parenthood in the future.
By the way, this is why double effect doesn’t apply here, which many have tried to use. In double effect, the evil act can’t be the first one.
That's unworkable. Double effect permits an evil when intending a good. The good intended here is inoculation against a potentially deadly virus. THAT is the first act. The fact that no more ethically sound vaccine exists is why DE would be invoked here.
No, the HEK-293 cell line was specifically developed for these purposes.
That's irrelevant to the argument about the vaccine, because it's a separate moral issue.
That'd be like me being unable to buy your car because you made sure it was still running by robbing a bank with it. Even if I knew that, if I needed a car and yours was the only one for sale, I could buy it with a clear conscience. The car isn't evil because you tested it by doing something evil.
The analogy doesn’t hold. He tested the car by driving it. Where he went is irrelevant. The two are separate. They’re not separate with the Covid Vaccines.
They are absolutely separate. The testing is not causal, it's tangential.
Not to get it to you. The bank robber doesn’t need to rob the bank to test the car. These Covid vaccine manufacturers did, apparently, decide to use this DNA to test it, used it, and therefore you’re taking advantage of that.
So what? They certainly could have tested it other ways. The fact that they did not has zero bearing on the fact that the vaccine itself uses no fetal cells.
You're trying to create a chain of moral causality where one doesn't exist.
No, they tested it using her DNA, and then got it on the market. That’s the only reality that exists. The fact that they “could’ve” done it differently is irrelevant if we willingly accept the vaccine. “This is immoral, but wouldn’t be if they’d done it differently“ doesn’t work.
The point is that the method of testing was not essential to the manufacture of the vaccine.
Further, there is no causal link between how they tested it and the liceity of the vaccine itself. None. Nothing you've said has even attempted to convince me of this.
They used the baby girl’s DNA to get it to you. It’s irrelevant whether it was used in production or testing.
The minute they take advantage of her murder & the ongoing theft it violates the PIG. The only way the vaccine is not morally tainted is if her DNA is not used at all.
The moral link is created when it’s used at all.
This makes zero sense. You can't just keep asserting it. The testing is ancillary to the nature of the thing itself.
That’s why the Principle of the Integral Good comes into play. Because it’s an ongoing theft of the DNA which has its *own* nature, its own quality (Quid). The girl’s DNA is not “information“ being applied in the process of testing. It has to be evaluated in its own right.
