Pity The Poor Folks of Idaho!

Pity the poor people of Idaho – one of the least vaccinated states in the nation!

It’s bad enough that their state’s major hospitals must now ration health care – meaning ICU beds will be allotted only to the patients most likely to survive.

Now the Central District Board of Health has named the newest member of the state’s largest public health board - a pathologist who has said that COVID-19 vaccines are “a fake vaccine. The clot shot, needle rape, whatever you want to call it.”

That’s almost as outright sinful as those who bray at the moon about a beyond-distant association between the COVID-19 vaccines and abortion.

It’s simple!

There’s no basis for a religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccinations in Judaism, Islam or Christianity.

Part of me wants to pray sincerely for the health and wellbeing of the Volusia County (Florida) County council member and “pastor” who was hospitalized with COVID-19 in August. But, except to pray for his suffering family, it’s beyond difficult. “We did not have a pandemic… We were lied to,” he once claimed in a conspiracy-filled sermon.

He’s the same man who told his congregation that the pandemic that – at this writing – has cost nearly 670,000 American lives and 4,600,000 worldwide - is a “hoax” and claimed “We were lied to” by Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom he called “Dr. Falsey.”

Of course, this is wackaroonyism and crazy as bat-dodo; but he also believes in cabals of Satanists using the blood of kidnapped children to get high and live longer. 

And it’s difficult to pray for the north central Texas senior pastor who believed that, because he was in his forties and generally healthy, getting the coronavirus wouldn’t be a big deal. “It was the attitude that I had: That if I did get it, I thought it would be a nothing issue…” Until an ICU physician told him he was so sick he might die.

I am speechless when it comes to the Virginia church leader who – five days after Governor Ralph Northam urged people to avoid “nonessential gatherings of more than ten people” - told his congregation “I firmly believe that God is larger than this dreaded virus. You can quote me on that.” He died on the eve of Easter. 

There’s definitely a place in long-term Purgatory for the (I am ashamed to say it) Wisconsin Roman Catholic priest who has called the COVID-19 vaccines “an experimental use of a genetic altering substance that modifies your body – your temple of the Holy Spirit.” In his parish bulletin he has declared it is “diabolical for anyone to virtue signal/shame/compel you to take such an experimental drug, making you nothing other than a guinea pig” and those recommending vaccination are “lying to your face… God is still be best doctor and prayer is still the best medicine.”

Prayer is the “best medicine”?!?!?

Tell that to the Benedictine nuns from Kentucky who died of COVID-19 in February or the nine retired Sisters in Michigan who died in January or the more than four-hundred priests and nuns in India who had died before the middle of May or the twenty-one American Felician Sisters or the more than sixty-five Brazilian priests and three bishops who had died before mid-summer 2021!

What? They just didn’t pray well enough?

By the grace of God this man has been asked to resign by his bishop and seems to be digging his ecclesiastical hole deeper and deeper.

In late August, Mississippi Republican Governor Tate Reeves addressed a generally maskless and shoulder-to-shoulder fundraiser: “I’m often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle regarding COVID … and why does it seem like both in Mississippi and maybe in the mid-South people are a little less scared, shall we say?”  He then attempted to justify the fact that, if his state were a separate county, it would lead every other nation on the planet in new infections per capita by citing the belief in an afterlife among his state’s citizens: “When you believe in eternal life, when you believe that living on this earth is but a blip on the screen, then you don ‘t have to be scared of things.” 

Like hydroxychloroquine, horse-deworming ivermectin, vitamin C infusions and the smoke of incense, prayer and a belief in an afterlife do not cure COVID-19.

And, despite the declarations of some self-appointed “religious” persons (like the Wisconsin priest who has now been removed from his pastorate), there is no prohibition against receiving any of the COVID-19 vaccines in Judaism, Islam or Christianity – the world’s three great Abrahamic “religions of the Book.” 

Pediatric Infectious disease specialist Nour Akhras, MD has told her community, 

“It is my believe that as Muslims, we are obligated to get vaccinated just as I believe it is our obligation to wear a mask, wash our hands frequently and practice social distancing during this pandemic… Our religion teaches us to rely on the opinion of experts.  In the Qur’an, God – Exalted Be He – proclaims that we should ‘…ask the people endowed with knowledge…”’ All the experts in this arena, scientists, infectious diseases physicians and epidemiologists, are saying the same thing: please get vaccinated and do it now.  Anyone who is recommending waiting, taking our time in the vaccination process or shopping around for a vaccine clearly does not have a deep understanding of epidemiology, evolution or virology.  

“A woman who didn’t know who I was or what I did for a living told me to ‘chill out because we are all going to die at some point’ to which I replied ‘I am not afraid to die as we know that every soul will experience death. But I am afraid to face Allah – subhanahu wa ta’ala – knowing that ignoring guidelines put out by my public health department made me contagious to a high-risk individual who ultimately contracted and died of Covid because of my actions.’ And the same would be true if that were to happen because of my inaction.”   

Writing at Chabad.org, scholar and researcher Yehuda Shurpin, rabbi of the Chabad Shul in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, notes:

“Guarding your own health doesn’t only make sense, it’s actually a mitzvah. That means that even if you don’t want to do it, for whatever reason, you are still obligated to do so. The Torah is teaching us that our body is a gift from Gd, and we are therefore not the owners of it and we can’t cause it any damage. 

“It is not enough to deal with health issues as they arise; we must take precautions to avoid danger.”

The Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform) has noted that Jewish tradition would define immunization as part of the mitzvah of healing and recognize it as a required measure, since we are not entitled to endanger ourselves or the children for whom we are responsible by refusing medical treatment. The vaccine guidance of the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America concludes that “the Torah obligation to preserve our lives and the lives of others requires us to vaccinate for COVID-19 as soon as a vaccine becomes available.”

Dallas’ Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, Jr. told the Associated Press in September, ““Christians who are troubled by the use of a fetal cell line for the testing of the vaccines would also have to abstain from the use of Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Ibuprofen, and other products that used the same cell line if they are sincere in their objection,”

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America issued a statement declaring, “There is no exemption in the Orthodox Church for Her faithful from any vaccination for religious reasons, including the coronavirus vaccine. For this reason, letters of exemption for the vaccination against the coronavirus for religious purposes issued by priests of the Archdiocese of America have no validity, and furthermore, no clergy are to issue such religious exemption letters for any reason.”

The Eparchial Synod’s statement echoes a directive issued on behalf of New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan: “There is no basis for a priest to issue a religious exemption to the vaccine. By doing so he is acting in contradictions of the directives of the Pope and is participating in an act that could have serious consequences to others.” 

In December 2020, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s office for doctrinal orthodoxy, concluded “it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses” in the research and production process when “ethically irreproachable vaccines are not available to the public.” This, the Congregation explained, “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.” However, the Vatican report also noted that the vaccines presently available used cell lines “drawn from tissue obtained from two abortions that occurred in the last century.” 

In a March 2020 statement, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops noted that “an abortion-derived cell line was used for testing [the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines], but not in their production. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, however, was developed, tested and produced with abortion-derived cell lines raising additional moral concerns…  However, if one can choose among equally safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, the vaccine with the least connection to abortion-derived cell lines should be chosen….”

Fetal cell lines used in today’s research were derived in the 1960’s and 1970’s from two elective abortions and have been used to create vaccines for diseases such as hepatitis A, rubella, and rabies. The abortions from which these fetal cells developed were elective and not done for the purpose of vaccine development. 

Simply stated, vaccines in use in the United States and around the world are historically removed from fetal cells developed as a result of a natural miscarriage or an elective abortion between almost forty and sixty years ago. 

In mid-September, a man with more than a little familiarity with Christian traditions and spirituality chimed in, observing “It’s a bit strange - [the anti-vaccination rhetoric] because humanity has a history of friendship with vaccines… As children (we were vaccinated) for measles, polio. All children were vaccinated and no one said anything.” 

In mid-August, he appeared in a message produced by the Ad Council in which he observed, “Thanks to God’s grace and to the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from COVID-19. They grant us hope of ending the pandemic, but only if they are available to all and if we work together.

“Vaccination is a simple but profound way of promoting the common good and caring for each other, especially the most vulnerable. No matter how small, love is always grand,” he said, calling for “small gestures for a better future.”

“I pray to God that everyone may contribute their own small grain of sand, their own small gesture of love; no matter how small, love is always great. Contribute with these small gestures [of being vaccinated] for a better future,” he said. “God bless you, and thank you.”

Thank you, Pope Francis!