Back in February I wrote a post entitled “Theology got vaxxed?”
I’ve been told that someone wrote a counter piece to it. Nice to hear. I have yet to try to find and read it.
Yet, I did encounter and read a document from what is called “The Orthodox Theological Society in America” that addressed the topic of vaccination.
I was very troubled by this document. I considered writing some type of reply but it never quite felt that the time was right. I’m glad I delayed because someone much more qualified wrote a response.
The excellent response is penned by Fr. Alexander Webster, PhD. The reader may or may not have encountered the document from the above Society, yet if you have then I believe Fr. Webster’s response well worth reading. Please click here for the article.
Regardless, Fr. Webster’s article is of profit to read.
Although I found the Society’s document lacking in many ways, what deeply disturbed my heart is what certain aspects seem to imply. I will simply touch upon this in brief.
In my former post, “Theology got vaxxed?” I ask,“If the cells [of aborted babies] only originate from an evil act and have since be “reproduced” that makes it just fine? So medical practices are fine if the ends justify the means? If the “means” of death and evil must be used to develop the “ends” of “life-saving” medicine that is acceptable? … Is it acceptable to the Christian conscience to use medicine that was developed on aborted baby cells as long as the child was aborted years and years ago? Morally, is there a qualitative difference between an abortion 40 years ago as opposed to yesterday?”
I posed these questions even before I ever encountered the Society’s document. To my great regret they answered them, although I’m sure not directly or intentionally.
The document states, “The vaccines were tested in culture against fetal cells to help ensure that they would not harm a fetus as well as to ensure that the technology works in a human cell. These tests were done with cells derived from the 1960’s and 1970’s from therapeutic abortions. No new fetuses have been sacrificed since that time for any vaccine tests. Different from the mRNA vaccines, many of the other Covid-19 vaccines (e.g. AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson) are grown using the same fetal cell line. To “grow” the vaccine in fetal cells is a term that scientists use because all viruses are dependent on cells for “growth”, which for a virus means to replicate, and thus, the production of viral vaccines will require cells for production. Most vaccines do not “grow” well in adult cells, and therefore require the use of fetal cells.”
Note, that the Society correctly states that aborted baby cells were used in the research and development of the current vaccines. Those that have tried to say otherwise may now write me and concede that indeed aborted baby cells were utilized.
Also note that the definition of a “therapeutic abortion” is “the intentional termination of a pregnancy.” Or in stronger words, the intentional murder of a baby.
Thus, the Society tells us that the use of cells from intentional murder is okay in certain scenarios. How can we even use such double speak as “therapeutic abortion”? When is a murder ever therapeutic? I get sick just addressing this.
As to my questions, they seem to answer yes, as long as the abortion was back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, it is okay to utilize the cells. So, the conclusion is that R&D that utilizes aborted baby cells in the actual medicine is permissible as long as no “new” babies “were sacrificed.” So, it is okay to sacrifice babies, as long as enough time has passed from the time of the sacrifice. I find their wording very telling. They understand that abortion is a type of human sacrifice, which it is. And yet still they conditionally justify it in the current situation.
It seems they would answer, yes, morally there is a qualitative difference between an abortion performed 40 years ago as opposed to yesterday. I’d be curious how you, the reader, perceive what is stated. Please let me know in the comments.
It seems clear to me that it is okay to offer children to Molech, as long as one did it a while ago.
I wholeheartedly disagree in the utmost. I believe this section of the statement from this Society is a betrayal of Holy Orthodoxy. It is completely outside the Christian spirit.
The Society also appears to answer yes to my question of, “If the “means” of death and evil must be used to develop the “ends” of “life-saving” medicine that is acceptable?”
Since, as indicated in the document, baby cell are required for production (which includes research) of the current vaccines, the means of death and evil are acceptable as long as the end is a purported “life-saving” injection or some such thing.
Am I reading this wrong? I would really like to be.
How cold we have become, when to justify saving our own skins we will condone the use of the murder of the most innocent of our race. No manner of scholastic twister games are able to even slightly justify such atrocities.
How can we dare to think that the blood of babies sacrificed to the modern Molech will protect use from the chastisement of this virus? Indeed, rather, like Israel of old will we only further call down wrath upon our heads? What happened to the people of Israel of old when they turned to the blood of sacrificed babies for protection rather than the Lord of Hosts?
But the Society seems to tell us that it is acceptable to use medicine developed through the murder (abortion) of babies as long as the stated goal of such “medicine” is for the well-being of humanity.
The document states, “Several significant factors lead to the conclusion that the vaccines present the best ethical option to promote health and life, despite their connection with the use of aborted fetal cells. These factors are: (1) The fetal cells in use today are derived from two or three therapeutic abortions performed several decades ago. The abortions were NOT for the purpose of the development of vaccines, and all parties (including the US government) have agreed that no new fetuses will be aborted or used for this purpose. (2) Many vaccines (other than COVID) that we use in the US and world-wide are made from these cells, and other substitute cell lines have not proven to be effective for growing the vaccines; this has been the Updated 03/08/2021 only alternative. (3) Most Church leaders have agreed that the many lives saved by vaccination are an important factor in permitting the use of these vaccines. While it is a sad reality that the origin of these cell lines is from these very few therapeutic abortions, the cell lines are already in existence, no new fetuses will be used.”
I’m in pain from the ethical contortion game being played above. It should be noted that their statements are not entirely accurate. It is very possible that more recent abortions have been used in the R&D process. I pointed this out in my former article, but here is one source on this topic.
So, as long as the babies were not murdered with the intent to make the vaccine, it is fine. And as long as the world is doing it, it is fine. Murdered baby cells must be used because “other cell lines have not proven effective.” So, do we now condone abortion if the cells will be used for “good” medicine?
Honestly, I’m not interested in what the vague referenced “Most Church leaders” say. What do the Holy Fathers say? What do the Saints of our times say? What do the Scriptures say? What does Holy Tradition say? In none of these is the murder of babies ever condoned in the least. This portion of the Society’s document is a betrayal of all of the above.
“While it is sad that the origin of these cell lines is from these few intentional murders (which is the meaning of “therapeutic abortions) …” How could a conscientious Orthodox person ever pen such lines! My heart breaks, my stomach turns.
And they call themselves “theologians.” Nay, for they are not speaking words of God in the least.
In closing, I will leave you, the reader, to contemplate upon this latest revelation. The FDA itself has been exposed for purchasing the “Fresh” flesh of numerous murdered babied. The same FDA that is purported to be concerned for your safety. The actions of the FDA are in nowise different from that of the Nazis or any other barbaric secular-godless group. Indeed, it may be we have surpassed their brutalities. Such actions are to be condemned with no uncertain words. It is demonic evil. Anyone capable of such wickedness is no more trustworthy than the SS or NKVD. I will not entrust myself to the sons of Molech.
The above article made me literally nauseous (regarding purchase of murdered babies). Are we to believe that those buying baby parts like meat are going to be overly concerned about the continued use of baby cells in the development of injections? Those that are haters of life will are now concerned to save it?
We may also call to mind that Planned Parenthood (sic) was caught red-handed selling baby parts to mainly Big Pharma companies, of which are the companies currently producing our “life-saving” and “ethical” vaccine.
How can groups so encompassed in the breath of death even possibility breathe life?
Please tell me, how many babies do you think truly were sacrificed so that we can supposedly save our skins? How much blood of the innocent is it okay to bathe in to procure a promised remedy?
My primary concern is the seeming implicit justification of the use of abortion in circumstances on a “theological” level.
O, Father Zechariah, you are over reacting! No, I am not. The blood of millions of innocents has been sacrificed on the altar if modernity. In good conscience I am not able to pinch incense on it to keep myself safe. I find it disturbing that we have begun to theologically justify such actions. How is that even remotely Christian?
It seems the questions I posed in “Theology got vaxxed?” were very pertinent after all. So called “theology” just got its second dose.
Let us not forget, “What partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what consonance has Christ with Belial? What portion has a believer with an unbeliever? … Come out from the midst of them, and be separated, says the Lord” (2 Cor. 6:14-15, 17).
The Inkless Pen 
Thank you Father Lynch! I totally agree with you. I’ve been so disappointed in Christian pastors/priests/leaders approving of vaccines developed using aborted baby cell lines “for the greater good.” What kind of reasoning is this? The time element is interesting. Because it was years ago, it’s okay now to keep using the cell lines. Perpetuating the murder and use like a commodity of an aborted child’s cell lines for research and/or vaccine manufacture is not wicked? To accept such a vaccine is being compliant with the evil. I can’t see it any other way.
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This article is PERFECT! All of your articles are so accurate and full of grace and great power that we NEED to hear. Thank you for this incredible ministry! He who has ears to hear let him hear!!!
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I’m glad you retain the ability to feel sick when faced with such things; so many appear to have lost these visceral responses to the reality of physical evil; this to my mind represents the loss of a certain kind of moral knowledge contained in the body. A common response to the sight of blood used to be feeling faint or queasy; how many of our slasher movie educated adolescents retain these responses? When our bodies cease informing us of the moral quality of things we are indeed unprotected, for the mind is endlessly fertile in creating rationale for even the most degenerate acts.
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This reminds me of the legal reasoning of the late Sandra Day O’Connor; “This would be Unconstitutional if it were not necessary, but it is necessary, therefore it is Constitutional”. Even the finest minds seem to be unable to think clearly in this moral environment; no longer believing in Truth, we can no longer hold to a firm right and wrong. Having lost its moral foundations, the Mind loses its intellectual consistency.
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I’m reminded of the tales in folklore in which magicians took baths in the blood of innocents in order to recover their youth. We should now perhaps remember the very close affinity Science and Magic have in the Medieval genealogy.
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Are there ANY vaccines that have not used the blood of murdered babies in its production?
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Here is a helpful website that addresses the c-virus injection and the use of aborted baby tissues –
https://lozierinstitute.org/update-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-and-abortion-derived-cell-lines/
the J&J shot uses baby tissues in every stage of development. Moderna and Pfizer use them in the lab test process. Currently, only those three are available in US, as far as I know. And that under EUA only.
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It seems that there are other vaccines, and even treatments for other conditions (like arthritis, or cystic fibrosis) that have relied on fetal cells, new or old, in their development. It seems hopeless to try to figure out what treatments are ok to use and which aren’t. Do you think it would be better to eschew all modern medicine in the hope of avoiding this atrocity? I can imagine that many people would be unwilling to go that far. Not to mention I’m sure there are many parents out there who have unknowingly had their children vaccinated with the standard vaccine set, several of which were also developed using fetal cells. Have they unintentionally offered the pinch of incense to idols by doing so? I would really love to hear your thoughts, because I have been struggling with these kinds of questions.
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While in principle accepting medical treatment is not wrong, I do believe we are moving into a social terrain in which it becomes problematic, not only because of the possibility of becoming accessories to the murder of infants. Because of our dependance on medical technologies, we are in chains; we can’t do anything without making sure that we will have medical insurance. Because of our extreme reliance on medicine we really rely on God much less than people in the past; it used to be that prosphora and holy water were pretty much the only medicines which were available, and when people used them prayerfully, sometimes they worked, but even pious people in our day rarely think of turning to such things. Even worse than the use of fetal cells in the concoction of medical technologies is the philosophy which lies behind it; see David Bentley Hart’s essay on Transhumanism in “The New Atlantis” titled “The Anti-Theology of the Body”. The Science which now informs medicine sees men and women not as persons made in the image of God, but as an instrumental resource, to be altered and manipulated according to the plans laid down by a global elite for the complete restructuring of Nature, which includes human nature. This thing that we trust to restore our lives when we become enfeebled plans eventually to eliminate us entirely, and replace us with new people structured to fit better into the new world they plan to design.
I can’t tell you what to do, I don’t have answers, I am a fellow struggler. It is beginning to seem to me though that if we don’t detach ourselves soon from this beast we are shackled to, it will swiftly tow us across the far horizon, where we will be destroyed.
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Very good article, Father.
What is NOT addressed by those advocating this Vaccine (which it is not) is that the fetal cell line is not taken from a dead pot-abortion child, but it is taken from the child while it is still alive! Cells from the retina and liver are harvested prior to the death of the baby.
Secondly, the entire worldly argument for this participation in the products harvested from decades old murder victim is one of religious belief. The religion of scientism over Orthodoxy is used as a justification to do evil so that good may come. Not only is such an ideology morally indefensible from a biblical and Christian standpoint, but it is a complete inversion of God’s law and His moral requirements from us. It pretends to “humanize” the very act of dehumanization of man, for the supposed good of mankind. God is not in any of this, which makes me wonder about the leadership in the Church.
I am a certified BioEthicist and Priest. I am horrified by the psuedo Theologians and so called “Experts” in the Church advocating this.
-Dr. Tim
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Thank you, and thank you for providing further information on this topic! Your prayers!
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Firstly I would like to Thank God for you.
I am in mortal pain and amazed that I have upchucked 58 years of my 57 years of life after reading your blog.
I can’t wait to share your blog with our Serbian episkopi (reflux is preventing me from calling them bishops) as they are behaving like ecumenical one world order butheads washing their hands from their responsibility to The Lord’s flock.
I pray that people wake up sooner than later.
Forgive me an unworthy, useless sinner and littlest servant of Christ,
Mila
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A monastery I used to be affiliated with joined the Serbian jurisdiction some years ago, and at first it was very conservative. Apparently there was some kind of revolution in the Church in Belgrade, and the Progressive wing took over. I have heard that all the books by St. Justin Popovich have been removed from the seminaries in Serbia. I guess it was part of the movement which has culminated in our time; the Progressives have moved to take power over every aspect of human life worldwide; one can foresee no end to this unlawful usurpation but the concentration camp.
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Here are some relevant excerpts from D.B. Hart’s “The Anti-Theology of the Body” which is an essay written some time ago, but it is full of contemporary significance. Though he is Orthodox, Hart’s perspectives on theology can’t always be trusted, because he approaches these things in an overly intellectual manner (he calls himself an “Orthodox Scholastic”), but his knowledge is deep and far-reaching, and in my opinion he is the greatest essayist currently writing in the English language.
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To ask what the legacy of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body might be for future debates in bioethics is implicitly to ask what relevance it has for current debates in bioethics. And this creates something of a problem, because there is a real sense in which it has none at all — at least, if by “relevance” one means discrete logical propositions or policy recommendations that might be extracted from the larger context of John Paul’s teachings so as to “advance the conversation” or “suggest a middle course” or “clarify ethical ambiguities.” Simply said, the book does not offer arguments, or propositions, or (thank God) “suggestions.” Rather, it enunciates with extraordinary fullness a complete vision of the spiritual and corporeal life of the human being; that vision is a self-sufficient totality, which one is free to embrace or reject as a whole. To one who holds to John Paul’s Christian understanding of the body, and so believes that each human being, from the very first moment of existence, emerges from and is called towards eternity, there are no negotiable or even very perplexing issues regarding our moral obligations before the mystery of life. Not only is every abortion performed an act of murder, but so is the destruction of every “superfluous” embryo created in fertility clinics or every embryo produced for the purposes of embryonic stem cell research. The fabrication of clones, the invention of “chimeras” through the miscegenation of human and animal DNA, and of course the termination of supernumerary, dispensable, or defective specimens that such experimentation inevitably entails are in every case irredeemably evil. Even if, say, research on embryonic stem cells could produce therapies that would heal the lame, or reverse senility, or repair a damaged brain, or prolong life, this would in no measure alter the moral calculus of the situation: human life is an infinite good, never an instrumental resource; human life is possessed of an absolute sanctity, and no benefit (real or supposed) can justify its destruction.
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A satirist with a genius for the morbid could scarcely have invented a faction more depressingly sickly, and yet — in certain reaches of the scientific community — it is a movement that enjoys some real degree of respectability. Its principal tenet is that it is now incumbent upon humanity to take control of its own evolution, which on account of the modern world’s technological advances and social policies has tragically stalled at the level of the merely anthropine;
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Many of the more deliriously visionary of the transhumanists envisage a day when we will be free to alter and enhance ourselves at will, unconstrained by law or shame or anything resembling good taste:
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Most of the new eugenists, admittedly, see their solicitude for the greater wellbeing of the species as suffering from none of the distasteful authoritarianism of the old racialist eugenics, since all they advocate (they say) is a kind of elective genetic engineering — a bit of planned parenthood here, the odd reluctant act of infanticide there, a soupçon of judicious genetic tinkering everywhere, and a great deal of prudent reflection upon the suitability of certain kinds of embryos — but clearly they are deluding themselves or trying to deceive us. Far more intellectually honest are those — like the late, almost comically vile Joseph Fletcher of Harvard — who openly acknowledge that any earnest attempt to improve the human stock must necessarily involve some measures of legal coercion.
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Of course, there was always a certain oafish audacity in Fletcher’s degenerate driveling about “morons” and “defectives,” given that there is good cause to suspect, from a purely utilitarian vantage, that academic ethicists — especially those like Fletcher, who are notoriously mediocre thinkers, possessed of small culture, no discernible speculative gifts, no records of substantive philosophical achievement, and execrable prose styles — constitute perhaps the single most useless element in society. If reproduction is not a right but a social function, should any woman be allowed to bring such men into the world? And should those men be permitted, in their turn, to sire offspring? I ask this question entirely in earnest, because I think it helps to identify the one indubitable truth about all social movements towards eugenics: namely, that the values that will determine which lives are worth living, and which not, will always be the province of persons of vicious temperament. If I were asked to decide what qualities to suppress or encourage in the human species, I might first attempt to discover if there is such a thing as a genetic predisposition to moral idiocy and then, if there is, to eliminate it; then there would be no more Joseph Fletchers (or Peter Singers, or Linus Paulings, or James Rachels), and I might think all is well. But, of course, the very idea is a contradiction in terms. Decisions regarding who should or should not live can, by definition, be made only by those who believe such decisions should be made; and therein lies the horror that nothing can ever exorcise from the ideology behind human bioengineering.
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If ever the day comes when we are willing to consider a program, however modest, of improving the species through genetic planning and manipulation, it will be exclusively those who hold such principles and embrace such presuppositions who will determine what the future of humanity will be. And men who are impatient of frailty and contemptuous of weakness are, at the end of the day, inevitably evil.
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it seems to me that the metaphysics, dogma, and mysticism of “transhumanism” or Fletcherite eugenics hide behind, and await us as the inevitable terminus of, every movement that subordinates or sacrifices the living soul — the life that is here before us, in the moment, in all its particularity and fragility — to the progress of science, of medicine, or of the species. That is to say, I dwell upon extremes because I believe it is in extremes that truth is most likely to be found.
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The vision of the human that John Paul articulates and the vision of the “transhuman” to which the still nascent technology of genetic manipulation has given rise are divided not by a difference in practical or ethical philosophy, but by an irreconcilable hostility between two religions, two metaphysics, two worlds — at the last, two gods. And nothing less than the moral nature of society is at stake. If, as I have said, the metaphysics of transhumanism is inevitably implied within such things as embryonic stem cell research and human cloning, then to embark upon them is already to invoke and invite the advent of a god who will, I think, be a god of boundless horror, one with a limitless appetite for sacrifice.
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The materialist who wishes to see modern humanity’s Baconian mastery over cosmic nature expanded to encompass human nature as well — granting us absolute power over the flesh and what is born from it, banishing all fortuity and uncertainty from the future of the race — is someone who seeks to reach the divine by ceasing to be human, by surpassing the human, by destroying the human. It is a desire both fantastic and depraved: a diseased titanism, the dream of an infinite passage through monstrosity, a perpetual and ruthless sacrifice of every present good to the featureless, abysmal, and insatiable god who is to come.
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one can truly aspire to the divine only through the charitable cultivation of glory in the flesh, the practice of holiness, the love of God and neighbor; and, in so doing, one seeks not to take leave of one’s humanity, but to fathom it in its ultimate depth, to be joined to the Godman who would remake us in himself, and so to become simul divinus et creatura. This is a pure antithesis. For those who, on the one hand, believe that life is merely an accidental economy of matter that should be weighed by a utilitarian calculus of means and ends and those who, on the other, believe that life is a supernatural gift oriented towards eternal glory, every moment of existence has a different significance and holds a different promise.
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Between these two orders of vision there can be no fruitful commerce, no modification of perspectives, no debate, indeed no “conversation.” All that can ever span the divide between them is the occasional miraculous movement of conversion or the occasional tragic movement of apostasy. Thus the legacy of that theology will be to remain, for Christians, a monument to the grandeur and fullness of their faith’s “total humanism,” so to speak, to remind them how vast the Christian understanding of humanity’s nature and destiny is, and to inspire them — whenever they are confronted by any philosophy, ethics, or science that would reduce any human life to an instrumental moment within some larger design — to a perfect and unremitting enmity.
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