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Catholic Bishops’ Response to Biden’s Vaccine Mandate
Catholic Journal ^ | September 19, 2021 | Vincent Ryan Ruggiero

Posted on 09/19/2021 11:44:25 AM PDT by ebb tide

Catholic Bishops’ Response to Biden’s Vaccine Mandate

President Biden has made clear his belief that everyone has a moral obligation to receive the Covid vaccine. The refusal of many citizens to act accordingly has, in his view, put the health of many Americans at risk. He therefore signed an executive order mandating that businesses with more than 100 employees ensure that all employees be either vaccinated or tested weekly for Covid. Any business that fails to comply could be penalized up to $14,000 per violation.

Biden’s mandate has prompted a response from elected officials, the business community, and the media, but also from church leaders. The response of the Catholic hierarchy, including Pope Francis, was especially interesting.

One disagreement concerned whether Catholics should be exempted from the vaccine requirement because vaccines might include tissue from aborted fetuses. Bishops in Colorado and South Dakota supported “individuals who wished to exercise their conscience in refusing the vaccine if they believed it to be morally tainted.” In sharp contrast, the Archdiocese of New York City ruled that such exemptions should not be granted.

But many bishops expressed a broader concern than the use of fetal tissue in the vaccine. Pope Francis and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith strongly supported everyone getting the vaccine as an expression of “Christian charity,” a view very much in keeping with Biden’s moral obligation theme. These views deserve closer examination.

Bishop John Stowe of Lexington KY shared the President’s and the Pope’s moral perspective. He mandated that Catholic school faculty and staff and other diocesan employees be vaccinated and fired some who refused to comply. He also used “moral persuasion” (aka pressure) on diocesan priests to get the vaccine.

Bishop Stowe concluded that “people who continuously appeal to their right to privacy and the right to their individual conscience are losing sight of the common good.” He added that those who refuse to be vaccinated are irrational and “want to believe every conspiracy theory and everything they read on their preferred websites rather than the facts.” Such people, he said, “are ignoring a basic tenet of Catholic social teaching: the impetus to serve the common good.” Instead, “it’s all about their own personal preferences and beliefs.”

I mentioned that Pope Francis sees getting the vaccine as an expression of “Christian charity.” He also considers those who choose not get it as “negationists,” and regards their refusal as “strange” because “humanity has a history of friendship with vaccines,” adding that “no one said anything [negative]” about the vaccines for measles, mumps and polio. He went on to speculate that refusers are afflicted with “the virulence of uncertainty.”

Bishop Stowes’ and Pope Francis’ views are both revealing and disturbing. Here is why:

1) Both are treating the scientific issue of the safety and efficacy of the Covid vaccine as a moral issue. Though they do not bluntly call refusal of the vaccine a sin, they imply as much by considering it a violation of Christian charity and the common good. And that is intellectually and historically careless. (Granted the Galileo affair occurred a very long time ago, but the embarrassment it caused the Church should not be so easily forgotten.)

2) Both Bishop Stowe and Pope Francis malign legions of laypeople. Stowe says they put their “right to privacy,” “individual conscience,” “conspiracy theor[ies],” and “personal preferences and beliefs” above “the common good.” Francis calls them “negationists” infected with “the virulence of uncertainty” and lacking “Christian charity.” Speaking of lacking charity, neither shepherd offered a shred of evidence for these assessments or the slightest indication that they have extended to the maligned the simple courtesy of listening to their views. Indeed, both seem oblivious of the fact that there are—or can conceivably be—actual reasons for refusing the vaccine. I recently explained five of those reasons, as well as reasons for questioning the Biden administration’s veracity on other matters. (See those reasons here.)

3) The dependence of both Stowe and Francis on “progressive” news sources is obvious from their lack of acquaintance with the facts noted in point 2 above. They clearly have wrongly assumed that their news sources are necessarily unbiased and both fair and thorough in their presentation of the news. They make this false assumption despite the fact that for decades, innumerable researchers have documented that most mainstream news sources have largely abandoned the journalistic code established in the early twentieth century. For such highly educated, anointed individuals as Catholic bishops to remain ignorant of the well-publicized decline of modern journalism—even after that very ignorance caused many of them to malign former president Trump—is scandalous and, it could be argued, culpably so.

Is my last assertion about culpable scandal an overstatement? No, and here is why. The fundamental rule of intellectual responsibility is that before speaking publicly on an issue, we make the effort to understand it thoroughly, and that effort includes testing our information sources before trusting them. This responsibility is greatest for those whose views are likely to influence many people. The words of Catholic bishops influence millions of people. There is therefore no conceivable excuse for their continually relying on sources known to be unreliable. Every time they do so, as in the case of the Covid vaccine, they violate their obligation to God and their congregations.


TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Moral Issues; Religion & Science
KEYWORDS: antichrist; constantcathcontent; dictatorbishops; dictatorpope; francischism; homofascism; johnstowe; scamdemic

1 posted on 09/19/2021 11:44:25 AM PDT by ebb tide
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To: Al Hitan; DuncanWaring; Fedora; irishjuggler; Jaded; JoeFromSidney; kalee; markomalley; ...

Ping


2 posted on 09/19/2021 11:45:10 AM PDT by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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Thirteen Cardinals: Virtually, All of Them “Vaccinated” (Get the WuFlu)
3 posted on 09/19/2021 11:49:35 AM PDT by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: ebb tide

Don’t care.


4 posted on 09/19/2021 11:50:42 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you.)
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To: ebb tide

“I defy the Pope and all of his laws....” -William Tyndale


5 posted on 09/19/2021 11:52:12 AM PDT by know.your.why (If you dont watch the MSM you are uninformed. If you do watch the MSM you are misinformed.)
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To: ebb tide

“President Biden has made clear his belief that everyone has a moral obligation to receive the Covid vaccine.”

Any word from Biden saying that women have a moral obligation to not murder their unborn babies?


6 posted on 09/19/2021 12:13:36 PM PDT by Brian Griffin ( )
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To: ebb tide

If the jab causes your death or serious complications, well, it’s just too bad for you.


7 posted on 09/19/2021 12:18:11 PM PDT by JPG (Think carefully because you can't unjab the jab.)
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To: know.your.why

Well done!


8 posted on 09/19/2021 12:29:45 PM PDT by foundedonpurpose (Praise Hashem, for his restoration of all things!)
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To: ebb tide

“Catholic Bishops’ Response to Biden’s Vaccine MandatePresident Biden has made clear his belief that everyone has a moral obligation to receive the Covid vaccine.”

Then since there is a question as to the safety of the vaccines as problems are being found often with all of them, and the vaccines are still considered voluntary, then it is a mortal sin of suicide whether it is consider a moral sin by the church or not. They are violating their own book:

Hebrews 6:4–6

4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and share in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

wy69


9 posted on 09/19/2021 12:40:04 PM PDT by whitney69
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To: ebb tide

These Catholic leaders are less tolerant of “anti-vaxxers” than they are of the abortion industry and its Catholic enablers in government. These dopes should remember the difference between a speck and a beam.


10 posted on 09/19/2021 1:56:32 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("All lies and jest, ‘til a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.")
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To: ebb tide

KARMA. Murdered baby reaching from the grave


11 posted on 09/19/2021 1:58:28 PM PDT by roving
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To: ebb tide

The Catholic Church has been infiltrated by demonic spirits, much like the Presbyterian, Methodist and other churches ( many support gay marriage,
appoint Female Pastors, deacons,…). The corruption is similar to our current demented, Godless administration, it is everywhere from board rooms to schools, like my 89 year old mother states, “ What to expect when Satan occupies the White House? Perilous times.


12 posted on 09/19/2021 3:48:03 PM PDT by delta7
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To: ebb tide

One has a moral obligation per traditional Catholic Medical Moral teachings to take ordinary care of their own health. If one thinks the vax is too dangerous to make it ordinary, the person can do the extraordinary and take the vax,which requires much thought and weighing of personal determinants. But the Church teaches these decisions belong to the individual his or her self only. If not of age or of competence, the decision falls to the person’s surrogate. No other person or entity has a right to make that decision.


13 posted on 09/19/2021 4:13:27 PM PDT by amihow (It is Western Civilization that confers privilege, not whiteness. Ask Carson, MLK, Sowell.)
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To: ebb tide; All
With all due respect to Catholic bishops, they may not know that the states have never expressly constitutionally given the unconstitutionally big feds the specific power to dictate INTRAstate healthcare policy. (Obamacare is unconstitutional imo.)
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.

The bishops should also be aware that OSHA seemingly let the cat out of the bag awhile back by mentioning that employers could be held liable for problems that people may have with experimental "vaccines."

OSHA drops BOMBSHELL: Employers who mandate covid vaccines may be held liable for “any adverse reaction" (5.20.21)

Emphasizing that I'm not medically trained, as an example concern about possible dangerous side effects from experimental CV19 "vaccines," please consider the following from a related thread.

Referenced below is a thread addressing a concern of possibly deadly micro blood clots that some doctors are questioning in connection with experimental CV19 "vaccines," these doctors concerned that the FDA may be overlooking such clotting...

From shots to clots: considerable medical evidence of COVID vaccine-induced blood clots (8.16.21)

Dr. Hoffe's concern, basically a complaint imo, is that his colleagues in the medical profession have probably studied only the larger forms of blood-clotting, not microscopic blood clots that form in capillary blood vessels.

The concern is that protein spikes that the experimental CV19 "vaccines" are stimulating the production of may be getting stuck in the walls of capillary blood vessels, causing microscopic blood clots that researchers may not have tested for while developing CV19 "vaccines."

Dr. Hoffe ran D-dimer blood clot tests on patients that he had given the “vaccine” to, the D-dimer test revealing recent blood clot activity that he questions if side effect of "vaccine."

The possible major problem with capillary blood clots is this. They can ultimately lead to death from pulmonary arterial hypertension in a matter of years, roughly 3 years mentioned in previous threads.

Again, the question is this. Did scientists who developed experimental CV19 use the D-dimer test to try to detect potentially deadly microscopic blood clotting in addition to the bigger blood clots that they got all excited about?

Also consider this.

mRNA vaccine inventor: COVID-19 vaccines may make virus more dangerous (7.30.21)

Corrections, insights welcome.

14 posted on 09/19/2021 4:19:33 PM PDT by Amendment10
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To: ebb tide
I'm not going to take moral advice from the most evil person ever to be sworn in as President of the United States, or from the man who may be the worst bishop in the United States, the infamous bishop of Lexington (a big supporter of gay activism and the most vitriolic in his attacks on Nicholas Sandmann for wearing a MAGA hat while being harassed by the American Indian activist at the Right to Life rally).

I don't see anything in the New Testament that says that the Catholic Church is supposed to be a branch of the Democratic Party. If the pope and the American bishops think there is, they need to examine the manuscripts of the Vulgate. St. Jerome must have made a mistranslation of the Greek.

15 posted on 09/19/2021 4:24:16 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: amihow

One also has a moral obligation not to take benefit from the murder of babies. It’s called indirect participation.


16 posted on 09/19/2021 4:49:07 PM PDT by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: ebb tide

The vaxxes are failing. They are also killing people.
The FDA just voted no against the booster shots because of myocarditis and young men... In fact the vaccine does the same thing...unsafe.


17 posted on 09/19/2021 7:12:27 PM PDT by Titus-Maximus (The trouble with socialism is that you soon run out of other people's zoo animals to eat.)
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