Posted on 12/15/2020 8:18:51 PM PST by xomething
Pro-life and Christian leaders are in disagreement about the morality of being vaccinated with new COVID-19 vaccines that were developed using cells from aborted babies.
All three of the currently available vaccines for the coronavirus used cells from aborted babies in some part of the process. The vaccine by AstraZeneca has the most direct connection to abortion. It was developed with cells from an aborted baby’s kidney, though the cells are not in the actual vaccine.
While a number of leading pro-life and religious organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have warned people about the unethical production of that vaccine, they did suggest that two others from Pfizer and Moderna are morally permissible even though there is a “remote connection” to cells from aborted babies in their development as well.
Part of their reasoning is that no ethically produced vaccines are available yet, and the vaccine will help save lives.
But Bishop Athanasius Schneider of the Archdiocese of St. Mary in Kazakhstan in Eastern Europe, said even the vaccines with remote connections to abortion are unethical.
“The crime of abortion is so monstrous that any kind of concatenation with this crime, even a very remote one, is immoral and cannot be accepted under any circumstances by a Catholic once he has become fully aware of it,” Schneider wrote at Crisis Magazine this week.
Four other Catholic leaders: Cardinal Janis Pujats, Metropolitan archbishop emeritus of Riga; Tomash Peta, Metropolitan archbishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana; Jan Pawel Lenga, Archbishop/bishop emeritus of Karaganda; and Joseph E. Strickland, Bishop of Tyler, Texas, joined Schneider in the statement.
Schneider said the Catholic leaders who defend taking the two vaccines argue that Catholics may morally use vaccines with connections to abortion “in exceptional cases and for a limited time, on the basis of what in moral theology is called remote, passive, material cooperation with evil.”
But Schneider said the argument – even if there is no alternative vaccine – “is in itself contradictory and cannot be acceptable for Catholics.” He said such an act would be “benefiting from the ‘fruits’ of one of mankind’s greatest crimes.”
Creating a vaccine with cells from aborted babies is “a double violation of God’s holy Order: on the one hand, through the abortion itself, and on the other hand, through the heinous business of trafficking and marketing the remains of aborted children,” the bishop wrote.
He continued:
Any link to the abortion process, even the most remote and implicit, will cast a shadow over the Church’s duty to bear unwavering witness to the truth that abortion must be utterly rejected. The ends cannot justify the means. We are living through one of the worst genocides known to man. Millions upon millions of babies across the world have been slaughtered in their mother’s womb, and day after day this hidden genocide continues through the abortion industry, biomedical research and fetal technology, and a push by governments and international bodies to promote such vaccines as one of their goals. Now is not the time for Catholics to yield; to do so would be grossly irresponsible. The acceptance of these vaccines by Catholics, on the grounds that they involve only a “remote, passive and material cooperation” with evil, would play into the hands of the Church’s enemies and weaken her as the last stronghold against the evil of abortion.
Schneider criticized society for making physical health a religion – “in this case, through a vaccine based on the death of another human life.”
He urged people to resist and demand an ethically produced vaccine.
“… we must proceed with the hope and conviction that alternatives exist, and that human ingenuity, with the help of God, can discover them. This is the only way to pass from darkness to light, and from death to life,” he concluded.
Vaccines can be and are produced with ethical materials, including pluripotent stem cells and tissue from placentas, umbilical cords and amniotic fluid. In 2018, the Trump administration created a $20 million grant to invest in these ethical research alternatives.
Earlier this year, the Charlotte Lozier Institute identified 17 research groups that were conducting ethical coronavirus vaccine experiments while five that were not. The five using cells from aborted babies in their research include researchers with the University of Oxford (AstraZeneca), Johnson & Johnson and the University of Pittsburgh.
Vaccine producers are listening to pro-lifers’ concerns. In September, the company Sanofi-Pasteur announced plans to produce a new, ethically-developed polio vaccine. The project will replace an older polio vaccine that was developed with cells from an aborted baby, according to the Catholic News Agency. Sanofi-Pasteur is one of the largest vaccine production companies in the world.
The corona virus vaccine in not made with aborted baby tissue.
I had my annual check-up today. My PCP at my TriCare Clinic asked me about whether or not I want the vaccine when it becomes available for me. I said no. He asked me why? I told him that I will not take anything that has in any part of its development aborted baby parts.
I am Greek Orthodox and this issue is nonnegotiable. He smiled and said he agreed with me and told me he is a devout Catholic and believes the same as me.
Are they misinformed about the inclusion of abortion cells and their debate is actually entirely pointless? That seems unlikely, no?
“The corona virus vaccine in not made with aborted baby tissue.”
“All three of the currently available vaccines for the coronavirus used cells from aborted babies in some part of the process. The vaccine by AstraZeneca has the most direct connection to abortion. It was developed with cells from an aborted baby’s kidney, though the cells are not in the actual vaccine.”
But did he tell you that any of the Covid-19 vaccines ARE actually made with ‘aborted baby parts’?
But did he tell you that any of the Covid-19 vaccines ARE actually made with ‘aborted baby parts’?
“All three of the currently available vaccines for the coronavirus used cells from aborted babies in some part of the process. The vaccine by AstraZeneca has the most direct connection to abortion. It was developed with cells from an aborted baby’s kidney, though the cells are not in the actual vaccine.”
The survival rate is about 99.98% now, and that’s not looking at use of HCQ or regeneron.
I think best option is entire country has a huge covid party, and immediately after contracting it, use one of those 2 medications. We would all have heard immunity in a month!
I read that the vaccines were tested with fetal cells but not made with them.
Make what distinction you like with that assuming what I read was true.
Put the LCMS alongside the Orthodox and Catholics who refuse to do evil for a supposed good.
Why would this be your position, Bishop? Your boss is probably strongly in favor of abortion and use of dead baby parts for any and all purposes. After all, he favors just about everything else radical!
OH!... Now he tells us!
ROFL....
Little late there Bishop.
Well, I don’t know if it’s true or not.
But let me ask you something: if you were a pregnant woman whose life was threatened by a pregnancy; a woman who had many people - possibly other children, husband, parents, grandparents - depending upon you; and the only way you would live would be to undergo an abortion:
Would you let yourself die, so that the one baby could (maybe) be born? Or would you have the abortion? And if you had the abortion, would you object to some cells from the dead baby being used to save untold numbers of other lives?
There are some of us in somewhat similar positions today, wrt taking this vaccine or rejecting it.
But I guess God will ‘sort us out’.
I don’t take abortion lightly at all; but I do happen to believe that God is not a ‘one-issue-minded’ judge; and I believe that He is a proponent of Life in EVERY form and stage of progression. But I certainly hope that He isn’t as simplistic and Black/White in His thinking as many people here seem to assume. (If He is, every one of us here is in a Hell of a lot of trouble.)
Just as I said.
But let me ask you something: if you were a pregnant woman whose life was threatened by a pregnancy; a woman who had many people - possibly other children, husband, parents, grandparents - depending upon you; and the only way you would live would be to undergo an abortion:
Strawman argument. It has been thoroughly established by medical records going back decades that pregnancies that jeopardize a woman’s life in the USA are exceedingly rare. In fact it has been established categorically that women’s deaths by abortion itself are many thousands fold more prevalent than vice versa.
Just as I said.
So, in your personal opinion if aborted fetuses’ are used in the development but not present in the vaccines themselves this is perfectly acceptable to you?
You’re gonna trigger someone using factual statements like that!
My point was that many people threatened by Covid have people depending upon them.
I’m one of them. If I can live to stay and help my people, I’m not going to quibble over the POSSIBILITY that a vaccine I accept may have utilized some cells from a dead baby - whose mother’s circumstances and reasons I know nothing about.
If push came to shove, I really doubt that you would, either - unless you care more about your ‘beliefs’ than you care about the people you claim to actually Love. (Thereby certainly hangs a conundrum.)
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