As American Catholics continue to wrangle over the morality of COVID-19 vaccines using stem cell lines remotely derived from aborted fetuses, one Filipino Dominican priest, who’s both a moral theologian and an MIT-trained molecular biologist, is pleading with them to consider the potentially dangerous global consequences of their rhetoric.
“Every time I tried to schedule a COVID-19 vaccination appointment, it was like I met with a brick wall,” said the 79-year-old Holy Names sister. She reached out to her doctor, attempted to navigate the Oregon Health Authority website and called the local public health information line.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the nation’s movement for racial reckoning, the Catholic Health Association of the United States announced an initiative to confront racism in the provision of health care.
As the state and city struggle to get on the same page to administer COVID-19 vaccines to millions of residents, SOMOS Community Care stands ready to do its part in the vaccination effort.
Local school superintendents have asked that Catholic school educators be included when city public school educators eventually become eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. This comes as vaccine distribution continues to be criticized for its slow rollout at the city and state levels.
Experts make it clear: Everyone in the United States that is able to get vaccinated needs to get the vaccine to help the nation achieve herd immunity from the coronavirus, and that includes the millions of undocumented immigrants countrywide.
The U.S. bishops’ conference is encouraging Catholics to get a coronavirus vaccination because it’s a “moral responsibility for the common good,” even if some vaccines are connected to abortion-derived cell lines.
While confusion has arisen in recent days in the media over “the moral permissibility” of using the COVID-19 vaccines just announced by Pfizer Inc. and Moderna, it is not “immoral to be vaccinated with them,” the chairmen of the U.S. bishops’ doctrine and pro-life committees said Nov. 23.
When Father John Fields received an email from the University of Pennsylvania Aug. 28 asking him if he wanted to participate in the third and final phase of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine trial, he answered “yes” immediately.
As the world awaits a COVID-19 vaccine, lessons learned in emergency rooms and intensive care units have spurred adjustments in treatments, such as oxygen therapy and some therapeutic drugs and steroids. None of these are actual cures for coronavirus infections, but they are credited for helping people survive the disease.
