Catholic News Agency reports on the University of Colorado’s Anschutz School of Medicine agreeing to pay $10.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by 18 plaintiffs, including a Catholic doctor and Buddhist student, who were denied religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccination mandates. The December 1 press release from the Thomas More Society celebrates this as a victory for religious liberty, with attorney Peter Breen declaring the plaintiffs “stood up, at great personal cost, to an injustice that never should have been inflicted on them.” Plaintiff Madison Gould lamented how the policy “gutted the years of study and self-sacrifice” of medical professionals while thanking lawyers for “standing by us when no one else would.” The article frames this settlement as part of broader legal trends favoring religious objectors, citing similar cases against NorthShore University HealthSystem and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.
Naturalistic Reduction of Moral Theology to Secular Jurisprudence
The article’s celebration of “religious liberty” through financial settlements exposes the fundamental error of reducing divine law to mere constitutional rights. While correctly noting plaintiffs’ objections to vaccines developed using fetal cell lines, the report treats this as a preference rather than an absolute moral imperative rooted in Catholic teaching. The Holy Office under Pius XII explicitly condemned using medical products derived from abortion as cooperatio in malum (cooperation in evil), requiring Catholics to refuse them even under threat of death (Holy Office, 1949). By framing the issue through the lens of “First Amendment rights” rather than eternal damnation risk, the article perpetuates the conciliar sect’s heresy of Dignitatis Humanae, which falsely claims that “the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person” (Vatican II, 1965). This directly contradicts Pope Pius IX’s condemnation of the “erroneous opinion” that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 15).
Silence on the Gravity of Formal Cooperation With Intrinsic Evil
Nowhere does the Thomas More Society or the article mention the dogmatic teaching that no earthly authority can compel cooperation with abortion-tainted medicines. Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii established that Catholics must reject intrinsically evil acts “even under threat of death,” a principle reaffirmed by the Holy Office under Cardinal Ottaviani in 1959 regarding polio vaccines. The plaintiffs’ attorneys reduced the Church’s uncompromising stance to a matter of bureaucratic “accommodation,” implicitly accepting the modernist premise that Caesar holds jurisdiction over matters of conscience. This mirrors the conciliar sect’s 2021 statement that COVID vaccines are “morally acceptable” despite their connection to abortion – a position condemned by pre-1958 theology as communicatio in sacris cum haereticis (liturgical communication with heretics).
Linguistic Subversion Through Secularized Vocabulary
The article’s language reveals deeper apostasy through deliberate terminological shifts:
“denied religious accommodations to mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations”
The term “accommodations” implies vaccination remains morally neutral, contradicting Pope Pius XII’s teaching that material cooperation requires proportionate reasons – a standard unmet when alternative COVID treatments existed. Similarly, describing objections as “sincere religious beliefs” adopts the relativistic language of Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate, abandoning the pre-conciliar insistence that truth claims be judged objectively. The Thomas More Society’s claim to defend “our shared constitutional right” demonstrates tragic confusion, prioritizing American civil religion over the Regnum Christi (Kingdom of Christ) proclaimed in Pius XI’s Quas Primas: “Nations will be happy when both citizens and rulers follow the laws of Christ.”
Symptomatic of the Conciliar Sect’s Total Capitulation to Medical Totalitarianism
This case epitomizes how the post-1958 structures abandoned their duty as defensores civitatis (defenders of the city). While the Catholic plaintiffs sought relief through secular courts, the conciliar “bishops” under antipope Leo XIV actively promoted COVID vaccines, with Bergoglio declaring vaccination “an act of love” in 2021. The article’s silence on this episcopal betrayal – and its failure to name Cardinal Joseph Tobin, who mandated vaccines for Newark clergy – reveals the neo-church’s complicity in what Pope St. Pius X called “the synthesis of all heresies” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 39). The $10 million settlement merely reinforces the naturalistic lie that spiritual crimes can be remedied through financial transactions, ignoring the divine warning: “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
Source:
Colorado school to pay $10 million for ordering Catholic doctor, others to get COVID shot (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 02.12.2025