U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says to avoid Johnson & Johnson vaccine if possible by Jaclyn Peiser and Michelle Boorstein, March 3, 2021, The Washington Post
On Tuesday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged Catholics to avoid taking the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine and to choose alternatives from Pfizer or Moderna instead because Johnson & Johnson used cells derived decades ago from an abortion to create the vaccine.
The bishops’ recommendation follows a similar one from the Archdiocese of New Orleans last week and a recommendation from a Food and Drug Administration expert panel over the weekend approving the Johnson & Johnson shot. “The archdiocese must instruct Catholics that the latest vaccine from Janssen/Johnson & Johnson is morally compromised as it uses the abortion-derived cell line in development and production of the vaccine as well as the testing,” the Archdiocese of New Orleans said in a statement Friday.
The latest guidance from the U.S. Conference of Bishops and the Archdiocese of New Orleans follows some in December from the Vatican’s doctrine-making arm, before the Johnson & Johnson shot was approved. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said it is “morally acceptable” to use Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in research and production “when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available.”
As some houses of worship host vaccination centers, the U.S. bishops’ advice could affect distribution efforts in New Orleans and drive people away from the single-dose vaccine as health officials urge Americans to take whichever doses are available.
“If you go to a place and you have J&J, and that’s the one that’s available now, I would take it,” Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think people need to get vaccinated as quickly and as expeditiously as possible.”Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine was distributed from a Louisville shipping center on Mar. 1, two days after the FDA authorized it for emergency use. (The Washington Post)
There is a long-standing debate in the Catholic Church over accepting vaccines and treatments that use fetal tissue, centering on HEK293 cells, which are cloned from an aborted fetus from the early 1970s, according to Religion News Service. The cells used now, such as those used in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, are not from the original fetal tissue.
In the case of the coronavirus vaccines, the Vatican said they “can be used in good conscience” given the severity of the pandemic and since the vaccine’s connection to the original abortion is remote. Pope Francis took the Pfizer vaccine, and last month the governor of Vatican City said employees who don’t take a vaccine could be sanctioned or fired.
While the Archdiocese of New Orleans said it agreed with the Vatican’s approval of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines because they only used the cloned stem cells for testing, it singled out Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for using the cells in manufacturing as well.
Some Catholic clergy have gone further. Bishop Joseph E. Strickland in Tyler, Tex., has tweeted repeatedly that Catholics should not take any of the three vaccines.
“The fact remains that ANY vaccine available today involves using murdered children before they could even be born,” he tweeted in January. “I renew my pledge … I will not extend my life by USING murdered children. This is evil WAKE UP!”
Fetal tissue from abortions has been essential to scientific research for decades. Researchers have used it to help find treatments for a wide range of illnesses, including Ebola and cancer. It has also been crucial for studying the immune system.
The treatment Donald Trump used when he contracted covid-19 was tested using human cells. Trump endorsed its use, despite suspending federal funding for similar scientific research in 2019.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine offers a strategic advantage to a vaccine rollout as demand continues to outweigh supply. Not only does the one-shot dose allow for quicker and more widespread inoculations, it can be stored in a regular refrigerator for months.
So far, Louisiana has administered nearly 690,000 first doses of coronavirus vaccines, covering almost 15 percent of the state’s population. More than 385,000 people have been fully vaccinated in the state, according to The Posts’s vaccine tracker.
Amir Attaran@profamirattaran Replying to @profamirattaran:
Now why might Catholic leaders want to attack vaccination? Could they be diverting from other issues? I wonder. See article below
“If men [and boys] could become pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
~ Florynce Kennedy
Catholic clergy in France abused more than 10,000 child victims, independent commission estimates by Rick Noack, March 2, 2021, The Washington Post
The head of a commission examining sexual abuse in France’s Catholic Church put the possible number of child victims at more than 10,000 on Tuesday, portending a public reckoning in a country where church officials long stalled efforts to investigate complicity. Thanks to amoral lawyers getting paid big blessings & bucks to enable the Silent Shuffle?
The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church, set up two years ago with the approval of French church officials, has so far received more than 6,500 testimonies from victims and witnesses on incidents alleged to have happened in the past seven decades.
“The big question for us is: How many victims came forward? Is it 25 percent? 10 percent, 5 percent or less?” commission leader Jean-Marc Sauvé told journalists.
“It is very possible that the victims will reach at least the number of 10,000. The work in progress, and in particular the survey of the general population, will make it possible to specify the number,” he said. The final tally will also be based on public health data and documents from church archives.
Even two decades into the clergy abuse scandal, Sauvé said, the scale of what appears to have happened in France is startling.
“We were very surprised by the number of calls,” he said in an interview last month, relaying that the commission had been contacted by about 400 people a month.
“Their stories are a true memorial of pain. Entire lives have been devastated.”
About 60 percent of French adults identify as Catholic, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted from 2015 to 2017. But the exact number of practicing Catholics remains difficult to ascertain because of France’s strict limits on collecting ethnic or religious data.
The same limitations make it hard to track the impact of abuse scandals on church members in France. Some other European countries have experienced dramatic drops in membership. I am shocked there are members left anywhere. How can religious people (other than rapists) support churches that enable raping children, and protect and hide perpetrators in perpetual cycles of decades of abuse?
Tuesday’s preliminary report comes ahead of an assembly of French church leaders later this month at which they are expected to announce mechanisms to prevent more crimes and ways to support victims.
Some victims’ organizations have accused the church of attempting to cut the process short and avoid having to discuss the official recommendations that will be published by the commission in the fall.
As in other countries, the Catholic Church in France has come under pressure to compensate victims. In 2019, French bishops agreed to provide payments to victims — a decision that was welcomed by some victims’ groups at the time, even as it remained a vague pledge.
Several key questions remain unanswered, including who would be eligible for payments.
A proposal deemed inappropriate could intensify questions about the role of the Catholic Church and its ability to reform.
The church has made it clear, for generations, that it does not want to reform and refuses to reform. It’s like frac companies – likes to commit, promise and lie, a lot, and take our money for private profit.
In Germany, where a 2018 report found that more than 3,600 people were sexually abused by clergy between 1946 and 2014, many victims have criticized as insufficient a plan to compensate victims with up to $60,000 each. There is no amount of money that would make me whole from the harms done to me by pedophiles and their enabling authorities, including schools, churches, police. Healing would however begin, if religions and the authorities (including judges and lawyers) that protect rapists while piling on added stresses and harms onto the harmed are thrown in prison and their powerful evil tentacles cut.
Even more generous financial compensation is unlikely to end the debate about the church’s complicity in abuse.
In November, an unprecedented Vatican report concluded that John Paul II, who was pope from 1978 to 2005, consciously overlooked sexual misconduct claims against an American cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked only in 2019. The document detailed how reports relayed to the Vatican framed accusations as dismissible and unsubstantiated, contributing to a decades-long coverup.
“I renew my closeness to victims of any abuse and commitment of the church to eradicate this evil,” Pope Francis said after the report was released. Pffft. I don’t believe him for a minute. It’s just more talk to enable the rapists, like AER promising landowners harmed by the oil and gas industry that it regulates while secretly deregulating.
Victims in France have complained about a lack of action to prosecute abuse by priests — a problem they say has only begun to improve in recent years.
“Thanks to [the victims], the republican judiciary has made progress in its awareness of this plague,” François Devaux, the head of a French victims’ group, told the daily Le Parisien last year.
Devaux was one of the accusers in a high-profile case against ex-priest Bernard Preynat, who was convicted last year of having abused dozens of minors over two decades.
The scandal rocked the French Catholic Church and led to the resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, one of its most senior officials, who was accused of not having denounced the abuse during his time as archbishop in Lyon.
Barbarin was convicted in 2019 of not reporting abuse to civil authorities and given a six-month suspended prison sentence, but an appeals court later overturned that verdict. Pedophile judges & pedophile lawyers protecting pedophile priests?
In response to the scandals, the Catholic Church pledged more transparency. The Vatican also last year published new guidelines for bishops, directing them not to dismiss accusations even if they appear vague or initially dubious. Voluntary?
Image by FrackingCanada.
Whereas the guidelines do not obligate church officials to contact the police when made aware of accusations, victims’ groups in France hope for a stronger signal of cooperation, as the country’s Catholic Church prepares for a likely damning report this year. Oh pffft, the Church of Rape has nothing to fear, it’s the richest tax-dodging “corporation” in the world, likely because there are so many pedophiles wanting in on the action. A heap of money will weaken the report and delay and delay it. Gotta get in tens of thousands more rapes.
“There has been a real system of abuse in a number of Catholic institutions or religious communities,” said Sauvé, the head of the French commission, according to French media.
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