Sample Letter for Catholics. Copy and paste into your own word processing and fill in appropriate information. For supporting Church documentation, click here. For more help, contact us!
Date:
From: (Parent Name & Address)
To: (School Name, Administrator, address)
To Whom It May Concern,
In that I am a member of the Catholic Church and that my child, (insert name), is a member of the Catholic Church, I am exercising our rights under ____ State law to receive a religious exemption for vaccination.
The vaccines we oppose are the MMR and Chickenpox and any other that may be required in the future which are derived from aborted fetal tissue. In regard to using such vaccines, the Vatican has instructed the faithful that:
“As regards the diseases against which there are no alternative vaccines which are available and ethically acceptable, it is right to abstain from using these vaccines if it can be done without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health.” (Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared From Cells Derived From Aborted Human Foetuses, Pontifical Academy for Life, June 2005)
The State of _____ which is responsible for declaring public health emergencies, has not attested to any sort of risk to the health of the community that would preclude our right to abstain in accord with this teaching. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control has declared rubella to be eliminated in the United States as of March 2005, with less than 10 cases per year over the past 4 years and only one case of Congenital Rubella Syndrome, none of which occurred among native Americans and all of which were self-contained cases. Therefore, as faithful Catholics and firm pro-lifers, as our unvaccinated child does not pose a threat to anyone, we cannot in good conscience use any product that takes its origin in abortion.
The Vatican document also upholds this right in the above document, stating:
“It is up to the faithful and citizens of upright conscience (fathers of families, doctors, etc.) to oppose, even by making an objection of conscience, the ever more widespread attacks against life and the "culture of death" which underlies them... There is a grave responsibility to use alternative vaccines and to make a conscientious objection with regard to those which have moral problems... They should take recourse, if necessary, to the use of conscientious objection with regard to the use of vaccines produced by means of cell lines of aborted human foetal origin.”
Moreover, the Catholic Church teaches that Moral Conscience is sacred to Catholic tenets and must be obeyed as described in the Catechism and numerous encyclicals, especially by the Fourth Lateran Council, "The Divine Law is the supreme rule of actions; our thoughts, desires, words, acts, all that man is, is subject to the domain of the law of God; and this law is the rule of our conduct by means of our conscience. Hence it is never lawful to go against our conscience; as the Fourth Lateran council says, 'Quidquid fit contra conscientiam, aedificat ad gehennam.'" ["Whatever is done in opposition to conscience is conducive to damnation."]
As instructed in Catholic Doctrine, Dignitatis Humanae (Pope Paul VI, 1965),
"It is through his conscience that man sees and recognizes the demands of divine law. He is bound to follow this conscience faithfully in all his activity so that he may come to God, who is his last end."
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, attested by Papal Authority as the sure teaching norm for the Catholic faith further instructs on the duty to adhere to Moral Conscience:
1776 “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment…For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God…His conscience is man’s most secret core and sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”
1777“When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.” (CCC 1777)
1782“Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters.”
In that the use of these vaccines would be both a violation of Catholic doctrine on moral conscience and in contradiction with the instruction of the Vatican, therefore, under the teachings of the Catholic Church to which my child and I are religiously and morally bound, I submit this exemption in accordance with ____ State Law, Section ___________
Sincerely,
(signature)