This debate between Dominican Fr. Gregory Pine and Dr. Janet Smith was very strongly recommended to me, and I committed the two-plus hours to watching it and wasn’t disappointed. This is an EXCELLENT classical debate, and one can tell the quality of the participants is top-notch because you find yourself agreeing with whomever spoke last.
Folks, this question is coming hard and fast upon all of us: ARE YOU VACCINATED? is the new “Are there Jews in your attic?”
Normally, I wouldn’t recommend something that doesn’t come to a firm conclusion, but this question is something that everyone is going to have to grind their way through individually. This debate is going to give anyone who watches it a framework from which to start.
I started out firmly on the side of YOU CANNOT LIE with Fr. Pine, and for me personally, this policy has proved correct so many times, most dramatically in regards to my status as an “off the grid” person in contexts that COULD have resulted in significant legal consequences, but it was precisely because I was totally honest, not even engaging in mental reservation, that all dogs were almost miraculously instantly called off on several occasions.
I have also had the sad but valuable experience of crossing paths with several pathological liars and seeing the pure malignancy and toxicity of such reprobates. As one repeatedly would say to me immediately after exiting the confessional, and thus very possibly invalidating the sacrament for herself, “Ha-HA! Off scott-free yet again! Gotta love the Sacraments…”
Lying is very, very, very bad, folks.
BUT, Dr. Smith makes some absolutely KILLER points – in fact, not just some, but many. MANY.
I think all adults need to sit down and watch this, even if in blocks, and not go bumbling forward into the Covidic Reich without giving serious, informed thought to the question of what you will do when you will inevitably be asked by a Covidic Gestapo with full powers of arrest and detention, and the mandate to take your children from you, “Are you vaccinated?”