Dominican priest: COVID vaccination is NOT a moral duty

02/03/2022 / By Ramon Tomey

A priest from the Order of Preachers (OP) – commonly known as the Dominicans – declared that getting injected with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine is not a moral responsibility.

Fr. Ezra Sullivan, OP, called on people to resist vaccine mandates imposed upon them by their respective governments. The professor of moral theology at Rome’s Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas argued that no person has a moral duty to get the vaccine. He quoted the Nuremberg Code of 1947 that elaborated on the concept of informed consent and the right to turn down the COVID-19 vaccines.

“No one should be coerced to receive experimental medical procedures or treatments. All people have a right to refuse to be a test subject for the medical and social experiments surrounding the vaccines [per the] Nuremberg Code,” Sullivan wrote on Jan. 28.

According to the Dominican theologian, vaccine mandates have “no moral justification” and “do not advance the common good.” Instead, they place “heavy burdens upon people to receive the mRNA vaccines – which are undoubtedly experimental because of their newness and very short-term track record, with unknown long-term effects.”

Sullivan also pointed out that humans are treated like objects when governments impose vaccine mandates. “Citizens are treated like objects, and their personal subjectivity and responsibility for their health is eliminated by bureaucratic tyranny. [The] basic civil rights of people cannot be removed by the state for a mandate that delivers so little benefit.”

The friar cited Israel, the United Kingdom and France as examples of nations with high COVID-19 caseloads despite high vaccination rates. “Pushing universal vaccination at this point will only force the virus to continue mutating into potentially vaccine-resistant variations that will be more harmful for the populace,” he warned. (Related: COVID-19 vaccines ENABLE the development of deadlier coronavirus variants, warns Nobel Prize winner.)

“Vaccine mandates are wrong, and officials should not promote them. Instead, people should resist the mandates, stop wallowing in fear and live in the freedom of the children of God.”

Pope Francis compares vaccination to an “act of love”

Sullivan’s words contrasted with that of Pope Francis, a member of the more liberal Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits. The incumbent leader of the Catholic Church has pushed for people to get injected with the COVID-19 vaccine, even comparing it to an “act of love.”

Back in August 2021, the pontiff and six other cardinals from North, Central and South America released a bilingual public service announcement calling on people to get vaccinated. The Argentinian Jesuit said in his native Spanish: “Getting the vaccines that are authorized by the respective authorities is an act of love. [Vaccination] is a simple yet profound way to care for one another.”

“Thanks to God’s grace and to the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from COVID-19. They bring hope to end the pandemic, but only if they are available to all and if we collaborate with one another.”

Two other cardinals who joined Pope Francis echoed the same sentiment in their respective languages. Cardinal Claudio Hummes of Brazil said in Portuguese that “getting vaccinated is an act of love for all, especially for the most vulnerable. Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez of El Salvador, meanwhile, claimed in Spanish that vaccination is both a “moral responsibility” and “an act of love for the whole community.”

However, not everyone in the Catholic Church agreed with the pontiff’s sentiment on COVID-19 vaccines. Former Apostolic Nuncio Carlo Maria Vigano called on people to turn down the vaccines. He cited two main reasons for this: The shots themselves cause more deaths than the disease they seek to address, and that they contain ingredients taken from aborted fetuses.

“I realize that it may be extremely unpopular to take a position against the so-called vaccines. But as shepherds of the flock of the Lord, we have the duty to denounce the horrible crime that is being carried out – whose goal is to create billions of chronically ill people and to exterminate millions and millions of people,” Vigano wrote in an October 2021 letter.