The archbishop for the military services argued that Catholic service members should receive the coronavirus vaccine, though he supports exemptions for those who say it would go against their conscience.
“No one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience,” Archbishop for the Military Services Timothy Broglio said in a statement released on Tuesday. He has previously supported people getting the vaccine.
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The archbishop’s note comes roughly seven weeks after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin mandated the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine shortly after it received the Food and Drug Administration’s full authorization. Each military branch has announced its own deadline to comply with the order.
Since that time, “some” service members have sought exemptions via the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, he said, noting that it “raises the question of whether the vaccine’s moral permissibly precludes an individual from forming a sincerely held religious belief that receiving the vaccine would violate his conscience,” though he said, “It does not.”
Broglio said that it’s “morally permissible” to get the vaccine, even though the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were tested “using an abortion-derived cell line” and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine “was developed, tested, and is produced, with abortion-derived cell lines,” because the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found that receiving the vaccine “‘does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion,’ and is therefore not sinful.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby announced during Tuesday’s briefing that 80% of the military have received are at least partially vaccinated, while 65% are totally inoculated from the virus.
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“The denial of religious accommodations or punitive or adverse personnel actions taken against those who raise earnest, conscience-based objections, would be contrary to federal law and morally reprehensible,” Broglio added, later noting that any service member who gets exempted from the vaccine mandate “must continue in the act in charity for their neighbors and for the common good” by continuing COVID-19 prevention measures.
