Last week, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a clearly unconstitutional federal mandate that cedes what little influence conservatives had left in the healthcare industry to the leftist totalitarians. The ruling allows the federal government to force healthcare employees to relinquish their freedoms of conscience and bodily autonomy and submit to receiving the ”Jab-of-mystical-protection” against Fauci-19. This move, while wretched, is not inconsistent with the direction of Big Medicine during the last 50 years and therefore should not be surprising. In some ways, the catastrophic SCOTUS blunder may very well help bring into focus the urgent need to sever ourselves from the gluttonous healthcare industrial complex.
It is a fact that without Christ at the heart of the healthcare industry, every manner of atrocity is not only possible, but probable. Modern medicine can, of course, be a great good when rightly ordered. But a dependency on an industry that no longer serves the Lord can only lead to diminishing health. The Church is rightly lauded for her historical role as leader in ethical medicine and provident healthcare.
However, she has remained largely silent during the last 50 years, even as hospitals named after various saints began to prescribe contraceptives and abortifacients, going so far as to refer for and even perform abortions. Furthermore, the Barque of Peter strains credulity with recent pronouncements by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and dubious ponderings of the Pontiff. The Faithful are exhorted to trust the very same public health authorities that champion the dissection of children for science and that profit from dangerous and experimental products. The Church militant has thereby been conditioned to accept less—much less—than a life-giving vision for healing.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
Sign up to get Crisis articles delivered to your inbox daily
The real healthcare crisis is not a lack of funding or access, it is an epidemic of chronic illness, wherein we habitually ignore the design of our bodies and expect pharmaceuticals—which are often equal parts damaging and healing—to provide the cure. The extended warnings about side effects in ubiquitous pharma commercials don’t even enter our consciousness. It’s fine. They care about us. Nobody would knowingly experiment on us for profit. O ye of inordinate faith!
During the last two years, many of us have been forced to watch as loved ones have been mistreated in the name of public health. The overlords appear bent on subjecting people to experimental and toxic medicines while their shamans castigate any who would question the “Science” they falsely claim to personify. Their “pandemic protocols” have highlighted and accelerated the moral decline of the industry, which seems to care little whether people live or die…or whether they are accorded the dignity they deserve. Without a doubt, there are good people in the system (thank you to those true heroes who win small battles by treating your patients with skill and great love!). And yet the larger war is being lost on every institutional front.
The remedy is that our actions (individually and as a society) must become properly ordered to the will of Christ by rightly observing the principles of subsidiarity and natural law. This demands a humble vigilance over the smallest elements of our lives, down to our very DNA. It is this understanding of stewardship—rooted deeply in gratitude for God’s gifts—that should compel us to jettison our dependence upon the pharmaceutical industry and detach from its bittersweet fruits wherever possible.
If you discovered that your neighbor was dissecting living babies in his basement, you would recoil in horror and then call the police. But our Big Pharma neighbors have been doing just that for decades. Why then do we entrust our bodies and our children to such enemies of God?
Remote! It is remote cooperation, some insist. Perhaps. Let’s grant that we are only remotely morally culpable for the brutal death of baby Johanna (HEK-293) by benefitting (a near eternity of 48 years later) from her brutal murder and the persistent disrespect accorded to her artificially sustained remains (which they ironically refer to as “immortalised”). What then of the other hundreds of documented murders—babies aborted in the name of progress and science? And what of their unnaturally preserved bodies, whose cells are cultured and reproduced in perpetuity for our convenience and the whimsies of so-called “science”?
Our obligation to oppose this abomination should spring not only from an innate desire to shun evil, but from a deep love that bears witness to the truth down to our very cells. In a 2019 letter to legislators regarding fetal cell DNA in vaccines, Dr. Theresa Deisher, scientist and founder of Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute wrote:
Anyone who says that the fetal DNA contaminating our vaccines is harmless either does not know anything about immunity and Toll-like receptors or they are not telling the truth.
This is a signal flare to those who insist that good health depends on the inventions of wicked men. For every story of a life saved by medical intervention, there is another of gratuitous death or disability. The ongoing science experiment on consumers using lab-developed molecules has reached a point of diminishing returns. We are no longer healthy communities supporting the sick; we are the chronically ill living on pharmaceuticals and addictions to “get by.” Always reaching for the next miracle cure, we are disappointed to find that suffering (and death) remains inescapable. Sometimes, to our chagrin, we even discover that our own bad habits and our dodgy medical solutions are the proximate cause of that suffering.
I recently found a yellowed, 20-year-old newspaper article positing the “miracle” of embryonic stem cell therapy. One scientist responded to pro-life objections saying “we have a moral obligation to use this therapy.” We now know that the effort has been an utter failure. But Big Pharma asks neither permission nor forgiveness. How tragic that the voices of our shepherds now echo almost verbatim the ungodly scientists of the age.
The greatest potential for healing occurs when we align our behaviors to God’s design (which is a central theme of my book, The Sunshine Principle. From a purely biological perspective, drugs created in a laboratory (virtually all of which have potential to harm) should be a last resort. That we are rarely—or never—offered a non-pharmacological option by doctors is a grievous wrong, especially since the majority of chronic disease is lifestyle-related. While listening to a podcast a couple of years ago, I heard a physician commenting on why he didn’t spend time recommending lifestyle changes to more people. He observed that, “In most cases, it is useless. Patients come to me for a pill. Even if I guaranteed them that changing their behaviors would cure them, they would simply look for another doctor to provide a drug that will solve their problems.”
Ideal Catholic healthcare is integrated, with the majority of care occurring at home, and with that portion of professional care that is truly indispensable managed at the lowest practicable level. This is opposite our current direction of travel, which reflexively turns to advanced medical interventions at the first sign of illness or discomfort. Separation from a pharma-centric culture is like transforming the Cuyahoga from a river that routinely caught fire into an inviting place for kayaking and fishing. It takes real work to discipline behaviors rather than accept high levels of toxicity. Eventually, balance can be restored so that technology can be a servant of God’s design instead of the machinations of His enemies. Emphasis should be placed, once again, on the principle of subsidiarity, rather than turning to the creation of some new mandatory federal program to solve local, regional, or state challenges.
Jesus asked the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda: “Do you want to be well?” The question seems simple enough, and we are inclined to believe that our own answer would be a resounding “Yes!” However, we so often fancy the miracle without the surrender, the pill without holy obedience. We want to be well without giving up anything: to be strong while remaining sedentary; to live well while devouring toxic food, beauty aids, and household products; to grow in wisdom while we allow our intellect to be turned into a cesspool by the toxic media that engulfs our every waking moment. And then, when we notice the telltale signs of sickness that inevitably follow, we look for the cure in an experimental, toxic elixir concocted by an exploitative industry.
As a general rule, we can maintain good health and prevent most disease—not through the widespread distribution of pharmaceuticals—but by drinking pure water, developing good hygiene, improving nutrition, maintaining clean living and working conditions, reducing toxic exposure, and increasing exposure to sunshine and fresh air. It is a tragedy that, even amidst our first-world wealth and advancements, our baser appetites have led us to ignore the advice of Hippocrates: “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” On the other hand, it is also incredibly exciting that restoration to God’s beautiful design remains within our grasp.
On the urgent question of vaccines (or, more appropriately, the current gene therapy masquerading as a vaccine), it is important to note that they have no therapeutic value. They have no power to heal damaged cells. They cannot kill a pathogen. They cannot nourish. The science is “emerging and experimental,” which are euphemisms for inconsistent, inherently risky, and undeniably capable of inducing disease and even death. Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology, had this to say about his own experience with vaccines as scientist and recipient:
Even the highly informed make mistakes. Fairly frequently. Biology is a complex, harsh, and unforgiving professor, and a wise student is always careful to recognize one’s profound ignorance in confronting that underlying complexity.
These facts raise many questions. Should God’s design for the immune system be tampered with? What are the short- and long-term physical and spiritual consequences of such experimentation? The recent extraordinary (and controversial) decision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to encourage an unethical vaccine for a high-survival virus does not exempt Catholics from the obligation to ask these questions, or to pursue alternative options from God’s primary provision. Nor does the CDF statement absolve Catholics from the responsibility to truly contemplate the morality of the atrocities that are the underpinning of this new science.
We have made an idol of medicine. We have given the care of our bodies to thieves and murderers who slaughter children for profit. We have turned our backs on God and His design, giving ourselves and our children diseases of the body by worshiping the gods of pleasure and comfort. Repent!
Our essential Christian witness is to illuminate the goodness and hope of God’s design, His provision, and His promise. Our desire for safety and good health certainly becomes an idol when we use it to permit evil or to justify the abuse of our own bodies through unexamined living.
To those of you who say, “I will suffer and die if I do not have my medications,” I reply: You will certainly suffer and die with them as well! I am not suggesting that you instantly abandon your medications. Rather, I am encouraging a more eternal perspective on living—and, in so doing, reconsidering the necessity and rightful place of pharmaceuticals in our lives. May we have the courage of prophets, who unseal truth for the world with zeal and charity. And may our renewed health of mind, body, and soul through restoration to God’s perfect design give glory to God now and forever.
[Image Credit: Unsplash]