Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Author of The Fall of Darwin’s Last Icon, John Wynne, and I are attending a Catholic Medical Association conference at Mundelein Seminary near Chicago where we will give a presentation today on the special creation of man as the only sound foundation for the practice of medicine.
It is obvious from speaking with a number of the participants that the membership of the CMA is deeply divided over the so-called Covid vaccine and the proper response to Covid. Some of the members have acknowledged the harm that has been done to large numbers of otherwise-healthy vaccine recipients; while others dismiss evidence of a link between the vaccine and conditions like myocarditis and infertility as a “conspiracy theory.” The members also seem to be deeply divided over “brain death” as a legitimate criterion for determining true human death.
Authentic Medicine Seeks to Restore
It seems to us that the Catholic medical community would not be divided in this way if all of its members believed and upheld the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation. In the first place, the special creation of Adam and Eve establishes the standard for determining what is according to nature and, within that context, what constitutes human physical, mental and spiritual well-being. For example, the Sacred Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church teach that St. Adam and St. Eve were created in a state of exalted holiness in which they lived in constant communion with God until they fell into temptation and sin. Thus, we know that constant communion with God is the normal state of a healthy human being, not some kind of anomalous condition of a few exceptional individuals.
The Fathers and Doctors of the Church constantly recall the original holiness of mankind which Our Lord Jesus Christ came to earth to restore. Writing about the spiritual life, Evagrius of Pontus teaches that
God commands us to fast, but He does not command us to fast all the time—because we would die. He commands us to keep vigil. But He does not command us to keep vigil at all times—because we would die if we never slept. However, God does command us to pray without ceasing—because THE MIND WAS CREATED TO PRAY.
On this foundation, Catholics who are called to the work of healing diseases of the mind and of the body ought always to recall the original perfection of our first parents and should strive to RESTORE that original perfection as much as possible. For example, when confronted by a vaccine that modifies the genetics of the human body, the Catholic health practitioner ought to determine whether this vaccine is going help to restore the body to its original state of wholeness as much as possible or merely treat a symptom of a disease with negative or unpredictable consequences for the overall health of the organism.
The spike protein, which is the essential immunological component of all the Covid vaccines in circulation, is actually toxic to human life. It can severely damage the cardiovascular system, causing blood clots, damage to the heart, and lowered blood oxygen. Studies show that the vaccine-induced spike proteins increase anti-placental antibodies, which could result in indefinite infertility, and there is mounting anecdotal evidence that it causes damage to the reproductive system in general. The spike protein has also been known to cross the blood-brain barrier in animal experiments, which explains the severe neurological side effects that are observed in some vaccine-injured humans. Although the vaccines are injected in the arm, the lipid nanoparticles and the spike proteins they code for have been found to spread from the injection site throughout the bodies of vaccinated men and women. Moreover, mRNA vaccines in particular have a history of being unsafe and causing serious side effects, and viral vector vaccines can cause immune dysfunction if the recipient has already been exposed to the wild virus.
In light of these facts, no Catholic medical practitioner should recommend or administer the Covid vaccine, knowing that it does not help to restore the divine design of the body but merely forces the body’s immune system to react to a specific threat. This may give the body an advantage in responding to that particular danger, but it does not help to restore the overall health and wellbeing of the patient, and, as explained above, may often damage it. However, to a health practitioner who believes in the (totally debunked) hypothesis that the human body is the product of millions of years of mutation and natural selection, the whole notion of an originally perfect human nature seems ludicrous, while the idea of intelligent scientists manipulating the human body to repulse a viral threat seems eminently reasonable.
No “Brain Death” Without Evolution
In the last papal encyclical devoted to the topic of origins, Humani generis, Pope Pius XII reminded the bishops that the Church's philosophical tradition must be maintained in any discussion of that subject. In the Church's metaphysical tradition, created reality can be understood in terms of the four causes of Aristotle: the formal, final, material and efficient. In this tradition, it was understood that the formal cause is that which meaningfully arranges the material elements of an entity. So thoroughly were the four causes integrated into the theological activity of the Church that in 1312, an ecumenical Council in Vienne defined that "the soul is the form of the human body." With this definition, the Church defined once and for all that it is the soul that meaningfully arranges all of the material elements, including the organs and physiological systems of the human body, and makes them, specifically, a human body. In the light of this dogmatic definition, it is obvious that man's humanity cannot be reduced to one or the other part of his body. His soul gives form to the whole body and to all of its physical components. It is not "a ghost in a machine" made up of material units that act according to their physical characteristics without a unifying principle of coordination.
Pope Pius XII wisely linked the acceptance of evolutionism to a denial of the Church's traditional philosophy. Indeed, historians of philosophy have noted that from the time of Descartes and Bacon, natural scientists in Europe began to dispense with formal and final causes, and to focus exclusively on material and efficient causes. This philosophical revolution led eventually to the acceptance of the Darwinian notion that the different kinds of living things evolved part by part, through natural selection, over millions of years. In the traditional philosophy of St. Thomas, it was understood that plants, animals and men each had a formal cause that meaningfully arranged and coordinated the physical elements of their bodies as an integrated whole. In the new Darwinian evolutionary framework, it was assumed that the only things worthy of a scientist's attention were the quantifiable ones, things that could be measured by some kind of physical measurement. In this view, man, in particular, was assumed to have evolved from a lower life-form through a long series of small changes, part by part, organ by organ. Within this framework it was understood that the "part" that set man apart from the apes was his brain and it was assumed that the brain had evolved last in man to differentiate him from his subhuman primate cousins.
The folly of this line of reasoning flows from the assumption that the whole body of man could have been cobbled together piecemeal. In reality, the more natural scientists have learned about the marvelous design of the human body, the more obvious it has become that the traditional philosophy of the Church was correct and that the human body could not have come into existence part by part. The definition of the council of Vienne was a tremendous gift from God to the Church on the eve of a philosophical revolution that attempted to reduce man to a collection of material parts subject to chemical and physical laws, but not organized into a harmonious whole by a divinely created organizing principle, the human soul. The acceptance of this evolutionist, reductionist, materialist philosophy by men of science and medicine has led directly to the idea that a man whose brain no longer functions above a certain level of activity ceases to be human and should be pronounced "dead." This, in turn, has led to the large-scale extraction of organs from living human subjects with pulse, heartbeat, normal temperature, and exchange of gas through the lungs, often requiring the sedation of the "dead" patients so that their valuable organs can be harvested without undue protest!
Urgent Request for Prayers
It has been very difficult for us to find a forum within the Catholic medical community in which to defend the traditional doctrine of creation as the only firm foundation for sound Catholic medicine. Please pray that God will give John and me the grace to communicate the truth to the attendees at today’s conference in a way that will help them to rediscover or re-commit themselves to defending the traditional doctrine of creation and to building (or re-building) their medical practice upon that foundation.
In an article for LifeSiteNews, I recalled the example of Blessed Franz Jaggerstatter who was executed by the Nazi regime for refusing to serve in the military. At first blush, it might seem absurd to compare Blessed Franz’s conscientious objection to active military service in the Nazi army to conscientious objection to administering or receiving the experimental Covid-19 vaccines. On closer examination, however, the circumstances and the reasons for both are remarkably similar.
Although Pope Pius XII protested the evils of the Nazi regime, all the Church leaders with whom Blessed Franz had personal contact, including his own Bishop, told him that it was his duty to obey the civil authorities and to serve as a combatant in the Nazi army. He was told that “the lesser evil” of cooperation with the Nazi regime was justified to avoid the “greater evil” of abandoning his wife and children and allowing “Bolshevism” to spread. In most of the dioceses of the western world, Catholics were told—and many are still being told—that it is their duty to adminster and to receive the experimental Covid-vaccines to help halt the spread of the coronavirus for the common good. With few exceptions, the Bishops have told the faithful that the “lesser evil” of administering or taking a vaccine derived from or tested on cell lines derived from the body of a murdered baby is justified to avoid the “greater evil” of allowing the Coronavirus to spread and inflict suffering and death on many of their fellow citizens.
I refer you to the full article for a more complete defense of the right of Catholic medical personnel and lay faithful to conscientiously object to any form of medical treatment that is offensive to God. By beatifying Blessed Franz Jaggerstatter, the Holy Catholic Church recognized that this right exists even when legitimate Church authorities instruct and seek to compel individual Catholics to act against their consciences.
Through the prayers of the Mother of God, of Blessed Franz Jaggerstatter, and of all the saints, may the Holy Ghost restore the faith of all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ in the true doctrine of creation as the foundation of our Faith and the only firm foundation for a culture of life.
In Domino,
Hugh Owen
P.S. It is not too late to register for our annual leadership retreat, August 25-31 at the Apostolate for Family Consecreation retreat center in Bloomingdale, Ohio. We are especially in need of young men who would like to help with this year’s dramatic production on the life of a priest who dedicated his life to the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Church of Rome, on the foundation of the Church’s doctrine of creation. For information, please email me as soon as possible at howen@shentel.net.
