The Vatican stated on Monday that it is “morally acceptable” for Roman Catholics to take COVID-19 vaccines based on research that uses cells from aborted children. The guidance was a response to some American clergymen, who argued that these products went against church law.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which promulgates and defends Catholic doctrine, said it had gotten many requests for “guidance” during recent months. According to the doctrinal office, Catholic groups and experts have offered “diverse and sometimes conflicting pronouncements” on the matter.
Pope Francis reviewed the watchdog office’s statement, drawing upon Vatican pronouncements in years past regarding the use of abortion-derived cells. It was the pope who ordered the office’s statement to be made public.
According to the Vatican, “It is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses” in the research and production process when there are no “ethically irreproachable” vaccines available.
Yet the church emphasized that the “licit” use of such vaccines “does not and should not in any way imply that there is a moral endorsement of the use of cell lines proceeding from aborted fetuses.”
The latest pronouncement is similar to a statement by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued last week. Officials of the conference said that “in view of the gravity of the current pandemic and the lack of availability of alternative vaccines,” receiving the vaccines being distributed in the United States is justified “despite their remote connection to morally compromised cell lines.”
In fact, the bishops made getting the COVID-19 vaccine out to be the moral thing to do by saying that receiving the shot “ought to be understood as an act of charity toward the other members of our community.”
Two weeks prior to that, one bishop in Texas and one in California had denounced as immoral vaccines made from the tissue of aborted children.
The Associated Press notes:
The Vatican, in reassuring faithful Catholics that getting a COVID-19 vaccine would not violate the church’s moral teaching, noted that “health authorities do not allow citizens to choose the vaccine with which to be inoculated.” Given such circumstances, it is morally acceptable to receive vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses, the Vatican said.
The Vatican said the COVID-19 vaccines that are getting rolled out or are expected to be soon used cell lines “drawn from tissue obtained from two abortions that occurred in the last century.”
The Vatican hasn’t said if and when Francis would be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The 84-year-old pontiff has a pilgrimage to Iraq planned for early March, and it’s widely expected that he and the aides accompanying him would get vaccinated ahead of travel abroad.
While the church’s office of orthodoxy maintained that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation” and must be voluntary, the “morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health but also on the duty to pursue the common good.”
Those who for reasons of conscience decide not to receive vaccinations produced by cell lines from aborted infants, the watchdog said, must “do their utmost to avoid,” through preventive measures, becoming “vehicles” for transmission.
The doctrinal office added that the pharmaceutical industry has a “moral imperative” to ensure that safe, effective and “ethically acceptable” vaccines are accessible to the poorest countries.
Pope Francis has a reputation of siding with globalist and socialist causes, such as open borders, climate change, and COVID-19 hysteria.
In a Thanksgiving Day op-ed last month, the leader of the Catholic Church condemned groups that protest COVID-19 lockdowns and dismissed the notion of “personal freedom.”
Wrote the pontiff:
Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.
It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything.
And in October, the pope came out in support of same-sex civil unions.
“Is the pope Catholic?” used to be a rhetorical question. Now it’s a legitimate one.
