a chartered guild of the Catholic Medical Association
We are excited to welcome the National Catholic Bioethics Center’s Fr. Tad Pacholczyk to St. Bernard’s! We are happy to be cosponsoring this event with the Diocese of Rochester, and St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry. There will be limited in-person attendance and the talk will also be available via Zoom. Click here to register.
The Ethics & Public Policy Center has released this statement with their opinion on the moral acceptability of COVID vaccines from a pro-life perspective. We are not endorsing, or rejecting, their opinion, only sharing.
The J&J Vaccine may be coming soon to a site near you. Based on our understanding of both the Vatican and USCCB, this vaccine would be acceptable…though we would recommend utilizing it only if the vaccines from either Pfizer or Moderna are not available. This is due to it being significantly more morally compromised than either of the other two, with abortion-derived cell lines being used in all three phases of production.
This article provides a good summary of the relative moral issues among these three vaccines, while this piece from the U of R gives their opinion regarding their relative effectiveness.
Update: 3/2 @ 4:40pm – The USCCB agrees…
The USCCB now has sample letters to vaccine-producing companies urging them to produce morally acceptable vaccines. Check them out!
Thank you to Jennifer Burke and the Catholic Courier for covering this important topic!
Check out the whole thing!
The good news…more vaccine doses will be available.
The bad news…Sanofi’s now-delayed vaccine is among the least morally compromised.
With the news of the impending approval of COVID vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson we wanted to briefly address the moral issues related to these specific vaccines.
We want to stress that the conclusions reached by the Vatican on the permissibility of using any morally-compromised vaccines do apply to these two new vaccines as well. So, each faithful Catholic who is considering receiving any of these vaccines should consider two points: the effectiveness of the vaccine and the degree of moral compromise.
Effectiveness: It appears that these two new vaccines are not more effective than from Pfizer and Moderna (and may actually be less effective, see also here, and here). At the same time, no vaccine has thus far been found to have more adverse reactions than another. Therefore, from a strictly scientific standpoint, Pfizer and Moderna would be preferred over AstraZeneca or J&J.
Moral Compromise: According to the Charlotte Lozier Institute’s information these two new vaccines from AstraZeneca and J&J are significantly more morally compromised than those made by Pfizer or Moderna. This is due to the fact that both AstraZeneca’s and J&J’s vaccines use abortion-derived cell lines in all three phases of production (Design/Development, Production, and Confirmatory Testing).
These two points argue for Pfizer or Moderna and against AstraZeneca or J&J asfaithful Catholics should, when able, choose the least compromised vaccine available.
–Please note that this is not medical advice and if there is a medical reason that a specific vaccine, regardless of its moral standing, would pose a risk to your health, please follow your doctor’s advice!–