Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, last week told the state’s Catholic schools that they must allow religious vaccine exemptions. The Florida bishops’ conference, which CBS reports has historically “urged lawmakers to keep vaccine requirements,” intends to respond to Uthmeier’s demand tomorrow.
Read more Mamdani’s commissars botch their central planning for government-run groceries
In a letter sent Friday to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, Uthmeier, citing the Catholic Catechism, Pope Leo, and scripture, argued Catholic doctrine does not allow its schools to reject vaccine exemptions for religious reasons.
It looks as though the Catholic bishops in Florida are ready to go to the mattresses to force schoolchildren to get jabbed, but the truth is a little more complicated.
For one, the state government isn’t threatening to liquidate the Church, as the government of Mexico did (with Calvin Coolidge’s help!) a hundred years ago. The state’s mechanisms of “persuasion” are more subtle here: Provide religious exemptions, or else lose access to the education voucher system.
ABC again:
Many Catholic schools in Florida accept students who pay tuition with help from the state’s private school vouchers. Currently, more than 500,000 students across the state participate in the program. As of March 2026, about a quarter of the state’s education budget goes to voucher programs, up from 12 percent in 2021. [snip]
“Be assured, Florida’s Catholic schools are operating in accord with the law and Church teaching,” wrote Michele Taylor, a spokesperson for the conference.
For another, the “showdown,” as lefty Catholic mag America calls it, appears to center on religious liberty. In short, it’s unconscionable from a First Amendment perspective for the government to tell the Church what to do. So it’s conceivable that Florida’s Catholic schools don’t have a problem in theory with granting religious exemptions, but they just don’t want to be bullied or extorted into doing it.
There are a lot of angles here, like Uthmeier’s cheeky insistence that the bishops justify forcing Catholic students to take vaccines derived from murdered babies versus a Notre Dame University law professor’s rejoinder that layman Uthmeier is out of his depth. Also the “Catholic inside baseball” contentions regarding the Church’s spotty relationship with religious liberty.
Rather, two things about this story stand out to me:
- In the wake of COVID church closures, the optics of Catholic bishops preparing to fight Florida to protect forcing vaccines on children is not great. I will never forget my own bishop in 2020, faced with Catholics clamoring for him to open up the churches, entreating his flock to stand up and…“follow the guidance of public health and scientific leaders.” Catholics in Florida may well have another medical interdict in the offing the next time politician-doctors have an election to win.
- This story reinforces my opposition to school vouchers. The government takes our money, renames it “public education dollars,” and then gives back some to educate our children as we see fit. But wouldn’t it be simpler, and more pro-freedom, just to lower property taxes? Let public education stand on its own feet. I’m sure a few Elon Musks will be delighted to fund it, along with the millions and millions of Americans who will enthusiastically write checks to their local Government Elementary.
In any event, Catholic parents in Florida may have a back-to-school dilemma on their hands this autumn: secular (or maybe kinda-sorta Protestant) indoctrination with some relief from our country’s intense shoot-’em-up vaccine regime, or Catholic values (one hopes, anyway!) with a hearty side of “thou shalt vax.”
The Notre Dame lawyer intoned, “If a parent objects to these vaccines, which the church teaches are morally permissible and which clearly serve the common good of the community, they may move their children to state-run schools.” This kind of condescension and dismissiveness swells the ranks of homeschoolers, so thanks for that. And it reveals the real answer to the rigged choice in Florida: Educate your own kids.
Read more Marxists, Muslims, and surrender
Image: SELF Magazine via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.