We’ll be talking about vaccination on the radio today

…here. Join me and my Monday co-host Simcha Fisher today on “Connecting the Dots” as we discuss the morality, responsibility and common sense of vaccination with Catholic pediatrician and immunology specialist Dan Conway.  Join the conversation with your questions and comments by calling in at 1-855-949-1380.

I was inspired to do this when I naively pointed out the Church’s teaching on vaccines derived from fetal tissues.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), along with the Pontifical Academy for Life — a Vatican body established to provide information about issues in law and biomedicine — have studied the moral issues surrounding vaccines and have determined that it is morally licit, and even morally responsible, for Catholics to use even those vaccines developed from aborted fetus cells.

Bottom line, the method of deriving the vaccines is immoral, but it remains licit for parents to use them because it is remote material cooperation with evil and the good of vaccinating those at risk outweighs this. Foolished, I thought this would relieve consciences. I still childishly imagine that Catholics who claim to believe the Church’s guidance on faith and morals will listen to the Church’s guidance on faith and morals.  But alas, many people who claim this merely mean they cannibalize the Church’s teaching in order to accessorize the opinion of their MEgesterium.  So instead of listening to the Church’s common sense, my comboxes swelled up and burst (1173 comments and counting) with an epic argument between people bound and determined to ignore the Church’s guidance and those trying to point out the bleedin’ obvious fact that you should vaccinate your family not only for their safety but because herd immunity protects the immunocompromised and those who, for whatever reason, cannot get vaccinated.

So, having a radio show, I decided “Why not use a bit of mass media to hear from a Catholic pediatrician with expertise in immunology to counter the life-threatening rubbish?”  Please listen in to hear from a Catholic who is both faithful to the Magisterium *and* an actual expert on the medical issues in play?  Click on the link above at 5 PM Eastern today and feel free to join the conversation on why it is *morally responsible* to vaccinate, not only for the health of your family but for thousands of the very young, very old, and immunocompromised.