It’s rare that a Florida attorney general who is Catholic would publicly lecture Catholic bishops about the finer points of Catholicism. But James Uthmeier — serving as Florida’s acting attorney general while openly angling to be elected to the job for real —is doing just that.
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In a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, Uthmeier quotes Proverbs and two popes to conclude that he is “confident that the teachings of the Catholic Church” wouldn’t compel families to vaccinate their children before they could enter a Catholic school.
Instead, Uthmeier said, Florida law compels the Catholic church to set aside its support of vaccinations. The law requires schools to exempt students from vaccines if a parent objects on religious grounds, Uthmeier reminded the bishops. The Catholic Church, he concluded, has “no legitimate religious reasons to refuse.”
The Conference thought of several reasons, starting with this: Bishops who have spent their lives studying Catholic theology, not government officials, are best suited to interpret the teachings of the Catholic Church. The government does not get to dictate church doctrine. It does not get to demand that Catholics justify their religious judgments. And it may not compel church authorities to change policies that are rooted in religious tenets.
Puzzling legal logic
Freedom of religion and separation of church and state are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the bishops reminded Uthmeier.
Uthmeier’s entire argument is puzzling. He demands that the Catholic Church waive school vaccinations for Catholic children because their parents, also presumably Catholic, oppose vaccinations on religious grounds.
What religion would that be? Catholicism can’t be used as a reason to refuse vaccinations because the church does not object to them. It encourages them. The church is spiritually obligated to act for the common good, wrote Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Uthmeier’s demands.
That includes vaccinations protecting children and the community from harm, even vaccines made from cloned fetal cells. As for the predictable rallying cry of parental rights, the archbishop wrote that parents of unvaccinated children still have the right to obtain a Catholic education online or through home schooling.
We applaud the bishop’s firm stand on behalf of Florida children and their health. It’s hard to argue that one is “pro-life” while rejecting a safe, effective means that protects hildren and their families from potentially life-threatening illnesses.
Uthemeier, campaigning for election, did not pick this fight in a vacuum. Students are back in class, where kindergarten vaccination rates have fallen to 88.9%, far below the 95% needed to avoid outbreaks of certain diseases, including measles.
Goal: End all vaccine mandates
Expect that number to continue to drop. Even though Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has been stymied from accomplishing his stated purpose of ending all vaccine mandates, the rhetoric of distrust and misinformation spread from the White House on down has had a big impact.
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In Florida’s 2023-2024 school year, the rate of non-medical school vaccine exemptions was 3.4%. Two years later, it rose to 5.9%. The results are predictable. Florida’s cases of whooping cough doubled between 2024 and 2025. And measles cases are rapidly rising.
In 2024, three Florida counties reported 11 total measles cases, according to the Department of Health. In the first eight months of this year, 16 Florida counties reported 158 cases, including three cases in Orange County and one in Osceola.
To put that in perspective, only 68 measles cases were reported in the previous 15 years.
Ladapo gives the measles vaccine a lukewarm endorsement. “This one happens to be effective,” he said in July. Chickenpox vaccines are effective, too, but they are still among four mandatory school vaccines that Ladapo proposes dropping.
Collectively, they prevent meningitis, pneumonia, encephalitis, liver cancer and death. Just as bad, his proposed rule will dramatically increase the number of students who don’t have to be vaccinated because exemptions would not have to be based on religious beliefs, just undefined ethical concerns.
Public comment period ending
This is essentially the bill the Florida Legislature refused to pass. But Ladapo has the back door authority to do it on his own through an administrative rule, which he’s doing. The window for public comment closes Monday, Sept. 14.
Never mind that a poll showed eight of 10 Floridians want to keep the full vaccine schedule. Nor does there seem to be much concern in Tallahassee that an acting, unelected attorney general just threatened to cut off scholarship money and tuition vouchers if a church didn’t ignore its own teachings.
He should know better. Bishops only fall to their knees for one higher power — and it isn’t James Uthmeier.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to [email protected].
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