An unconvincing defense of the Florida bishops

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 11, 2026

Ordinarily I am loath to disagree with as reliable a scholar as Francis Beckwith. But his Public Discourse essay, arguing in favor of the Catholic bishops of Florida in their dispute with the state’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, directly contradicts my own analysis. So I feel compelled to defend my own arguments, as well at those of the attorney general.

Beckwiith rejects Uthmeier’s argument that the bishops are violating the religious rights of their people by requiring vaccination of students at parochial schools. He goes so far, in fact, as to suggest that the attorney general, who is Catholic, should repent of this stand and seek confessional absolution. As I understand it, Beckwith’s argument rests on two key claims—both highly questionable.

First Beckwith writes that Uthmeier is wrong to say that the Catholic-school policy of mandatory vaccination violates the teachings of the Church. In his own words:

He is, of course, technically correct, since no Church teaching is that specific. Yet by precisely the same logic, one can just as accurately say that the teachings of the Catholic Church do not prohibit Catholic bishops from requiring, as a condition of enrollment, that students at diocesan schools take those very vaccines against the sincerely-held religious objections of their parents.

Here Beckwith is technically correct, in that the formal teachings of the Church are not that specific. But the most relevant Vatican document, a 2020 statement from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith does state with admirable clarity that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”

Beckwith accurately writes that the same Vatican statement concluded that the use of the Covid vaccine could be morally acceptable—despite the use of fetal tissues in its development—because of the urgency of preventing spread of the disease. The Vatican document was released at a time when both the threat posed by Covid and the efficacy of the vaccine had been grossly exaggerated by medical and political authorities. Whether that same moral calculus would be upheld today—despite revelations that the vaccine did not provide immunity and that the disease did not threaten the lives of healthy people—might be worthy of further discussion.

To his credit Beckwith calls attention to the Vatican’s consistent teaching that the faithful should avoid vaccines that are produced by immoral means, and demand the development of ethically derived alternatives. Have the Florida bishops—or for that matter any other group of Catholic leaders, in the US or in Rome—issued more than a pro forma call for such alternatives? Have they organized the Catholic laity to protest the available vaccines, or called on Catholic philanthropists to fund research on alternatives?

It is true that, as Beckwith reminds us, the Vatican statement concluded that Catholics may use vaccines “with a clear conscience.” Following the lead of the Orlando diocese, he cites a 2011 analysis the National Catholic Bioethics Center(NCBC), making the same point. But he does not note that the NCBC said that parents could seek an exemption if they had a conscientious objection to vaccination, and that the author of the NCBC letter personally recommended “as liberal a policy as possible on the question of exemptions.”

Beckwith’s second crucial claim is that the Florida bishops have the right to determine polices for the Catholic schools according to their perception of the common good. Again let me quote him directly:

If the Florida bishops determine that immunizing their students is required for the common good, then their policy of mandatory vaccinations is, contra the Florida AG, supported by Catholic teaching.

Here Beckwith’s argument rests on the assumption that the bishops, by virtue of their teaching authority, can settle the question of what constitutes the common good, at least within their own Catholic community. That would be a compelling argument, if the question involved the spiritual good of that community. But here the issue is a question of public health: a question of whether the urgency of fighting disease outweighs the ordinary deference to the conscience of an individual who objects to vaccination. Since the bishops are not public-policy experts, it is not clear that this judgment is within their proper sphere.

The question of what constitutes the “common good” is a complex one. It has been the subject of many fine insights by outstanding Catholic scholars (including Francis Beckwith), and I will not pretend to settle the question here. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church does provide some basic guidance, including the teaching that it “calls for prudence from each, and even more from those who exercise the office of authority.” [#1906]

Here we come to a pivotal question: Who holds the “office of authority” appropriate to determine the common good? That question is answered succinctly in the Catechism [#1910]:

Each human community possesses a common good which permits it to be recognized as such; it is in the political community that its most complete realization is found. It is the role of the state to defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies.

Attorney General Uthmeier, representing the State of Florida, argues that for the common good, the Catholic bishops should defer to the government’s judgment that the legitimate conscience rights of parents take precedence over the public-health concerns of Catholic school administrators. His argument is firmly based in Catholic Church teaching.