CCCB: Catholic Bishops of Canada Call on Worshipers to Avoid Two Covid-19 Vaccines for Moral Reasons | Society

The Canadian government and the various provincial authorities paid tribute on Thursday to the more than 22,000 people who died in the country of covid-19, a year after the World Health Organization declared a state of pandemic. On Wednesday, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) recommended to its faithful, in a statement, to avoid the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines on the grounds that they “use cell lines derived from abortions in their development, their production and clinical trials. ”.

The repercussions were immediate. Johnson & Johnson said their vaccine is made “using a harmless cold-like virus that we insert a piece of coronavirus spike protein into.” While not directly referring to the bishops’ statement, the lab said the adenovirus is grown “using what’s called an immortalized cell culture, then extracted and purified.” “There are several types of cell lines which were created decades ago from fetal tissue and which are widely used in medical production, but the cells of these lines are currently clones of the original cells, not the tissue of the cell. ‘origin,’ he explained.

Christian Dubé, Minister of Health of Quebec, was more direct than the laboratory. “I strongly denounce this declaration of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. I invite all Quebecers to trust our experts and those from other parts of the world ”. For Howard Njoo, deputy director of the Public Health Agency of Canada, the recommendation of the bishops was “disappointing”.

Canada has so far approved vaccines from Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech. The authorities in each province decide which antigen to administer based on available doses and expert advice. The CCCB stresses that getting vaccinated “can be an act of charity that takes into account the need to take care of others”, but that receiving certain vaccines poses an ethical dilemma for some people. “If we had a choice, we would have to order the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine instead of the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccine,” the bishops’ group said. “But if one cannot choose, the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccine can be used with full conscience knowing that the use of these vaccines does not constitute a gesture of formal cooperation with abortion,” he added. .

At the beginning of March, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also recommended that its faithful choose an antigen other than Johnson & Johnson, due to the “moral permissibility of using vaccines developed, tested and / or produced in the United States. using cell lines derived from abortions ”. However, some bishops did not support this suggestion. This is the case of Robert McElroy, head of the diocese of San Diego.

In Canada, opinions also vary. Marc Lépine, Archbishop of Montreal, told the channel VAT which departs from the recommendation of the CCCB and which advocates the use of all vaccines authorized by believers. In December, the Vatican spoke out on dilemmas related to vaccination against Covid-19 and cell lines allegedly derived from aborted fetuses. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stipulated in a note that “the moral duty to avoid passive material cooperation is not obligatory when there is a serious danger”.

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