Women of Grace - March 8 , 2021 - Johnnette Williams - Catholics and the Covid Vaccine

this is women of grace live discussing issues important to your life and faith spiritual insight practical wisdom join us as we transform the world one woman at a time women of grace for such a time as this now here's your host johnette williams well good morning everyone and welcome to women of grace live i am janet williams absolutely delighted and pleased to be with you as we begin this week together i thank and praise god for the opportunity to use these airwaves for his honor and glory and for our eternal salvation amen and hallelujah that is good news isn't it and so we come together in these moments with our hearts open wide to receive what it is that god wants to share with us and to explore you know some of the issues and things that we're facing in our day and time and how we approach them as catholics and that's what we're going to be doing today and i'm going to tell you all about that in just a moment but i certainly do want for you to remember that we are available to you 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and to help for you to have the answers at the ready when somebody asks you about this great hope that is yours right we want you to have everything at your disposal so i certainly invite you to get out there see some of the things that we've got available for you there if you become a subscriber to women of grace exclusive all of our archives open up for you television programs are there podcasts are there all of our webinars that we do are there our book studies are there so that even if you don't do them in real time with us you are able to do them there on the website and you can call friends into your home and do them together the whole purpose here right is is to uh be drenched saturated with the word of god and with our catholic teaching that we might be a sign and a witness in our world today so looking forward to having you take advantage of that opportunity there on the website for you also you see what's coming up we've got lots of things coming up march 27th we have a beautiful lenten retreat coming your way we do it's an online retreat it is man of sorrows lord of joy that is the theme we will be dipping into those significant moments of our lord's passion and death uh in light of lent uh and we will be applying those to our own life circumstances maybe digging a little bit more deeply into those mysteries than we've done in the past and and seeing what it is that uh is being presented to us by way of redemptive grace that we might cooperate with it and be what we're called to be called to be another christ in our day and time so it's going to be beautiful we have father peter john cameron who is going to be with us we've got sue brinkman who is going to be with us thomas k sullivan is going to be with us paul thigpen is going to be with us and i'm going to be with you too so inviting you to get out there register it is virtual so we can accept many many many many of you and we certainly do hope to fill that up as we uh do every time we have an event so take a look hopefully you'll join us for that we have uh always something going on at women of grace so i invite you to get out there and to take a look at it well i'll tell you i don't know about you but you know i have all kinds of questions that are being asked of me regarding covid19 i have them here on the air i also have them uh in my personal life people that i know and i'm surprised by the number of misconceptions that are out there that are raging about the covet 19 vaccine and i had the good pleasure really holy pleasure of speaking with father tad uh holcheck form from the catholic uh national catholic bioethics center last week because i wanted some points of clarification and it sparked in my mind i bet you would like to have some points of clarification too how do we navigate the options that are available to us in these covet 19 vaccines is it even illicit for us as catholics to use a cova 19 vaccine given that all of them in some way have something to do with uh descendant cell lines from an aborted baby how do we phrase that to others and what can we begin to expect in terms of of this these these vaccines and what is presented to us in our health care facilities so i thought well you know what here's a beautiful opportunity and so we extended an invitation to father tad pohock and he is with us today we're going to be talking about myths and legends associated with the covet 19 vaccine so i hope all of you out there who have questions will take advantage of this opportunity to give us a call with your questions and listen it's not too early to call us because uh this is one of those topics i know that's going to spark a lot of discussion so i would begin calling now and you can listen to us you know as you're waiting for us to get to the portion of the program where we will be taking those calls but don't delay it's 833 288 e wtn that's 833 288 3986 we're also available to you if you're outside of north america that number to use is country code one two zero five two seven one two nine eight five again that's country code one two zero five two seven one two nine eight five again we're available for you out there at ewtn radio's youtube channel and ew10 radio's facebook page and jeff berson our call our social media manager and producer will go out there and get them ryan penny is on the phones today yes he is ryan penny is there for you and i want for you to keep him busy it makes me happy when you do i want to let you know too that when you call in if you're a first-time caller or if you leave a message for us at the chat feature on the youtube channel or facebook page and you're a first time submitter let us know i love to ring my bell for you i have three of them here letting you hear all of the different tones [Laughter] i don't play the bells by the way in case you were wondering i would like to but no i don't but anyway i'll pick up one of those bells to welcome you maybe i'll cycle them around today if we get a lot of first-time submitters and first-time callers here on women of grace i remember that we do love to have that holy conversation with you after our break as i said father todd the whole check is going to be with us we're going to be talking about those myths and legends that are associated uh with the coveted 19 vaccine trying to get down to the nitty-gritty of it uh very important for you and and prior to him coming on here i just want to let you know that uh you have access to a great resource in the national catholic bioethics center a great resource it's ncbcenter.org their website is very very full very prolific there's lots of things on there great articles for you to read podcasts that you can listen to video presentations that are there for you as well all on bioethical issues many of which have to do with end of life issues lots of them having to do with issues regarding uh what is is church teaching uh for people who are having difficulty conceiving uh but now of course with this covet 19 pandemic and the cobia 19 vaccines that are available it's chock full of valuable resources so we want you to get out there and take advantage of that opportunity you hear the music go into a break coming back with father tad 8 3 tadd8332888 ewtn that's 833. 288-3986 john at williams here it's women of grace live stay with us in any language it means the same live truth live catholic ewtn this is a messy family minute with mike and alicia hernan the goal of fasting from anything whether food or other pleasures is to subordinate our flesh to our will basically we need to make ourselves do things we do not want to do and the more that we do this the less selfish and less self-centered we become we all need to continue to work on this muscle in order to develop its strength parents of young children take note nothing so naturally helps develop this muscle like children your children are cute endearing compelling little crosses made especially for you you know sometimes it's easier to handle across we choose ourselves like i will get up at 4 30 every morning it's harder to handle crosses we don't choose like my two-year-old randomly wakes me up at 4 30. it's important for parents to keep in mind that some subordination of the will is naturally baked into family life embrace those moments and don't underestimate them as opportunities for fasting put right in front of you visit us at messyfamilyminute.org hi this is john at williams women of grace is hosting a lenten online retreat on saturday march 27 man of sorrows lord of joy join us as we journey with jesus in his passion accompanied by our blessed mother the day includes presentations lenten reflections on the sorrowful mysteries live music adoration and a healing rosary we pray this retreat through the intercession of our lady will be a time of reflection surrender and healing on your path to salvation and true joy register at womenofgrace.com stay up to date on the latest ewtn tv and radio shows books art cds and dvds when you sign up for wings our weekly e-newsletter get wings today at ewtn.com transforming the world one woman at a time let's return to women of grace with johnette williams well welcome back everybody we're so happy you are joining us today and i certainly do want you to join us via telephone as well as via social media let me give you the way that you can do that toll free for you here in north america is our number it is 833 288 ewtn that's 833.288.3986 we invite you to pick up the phone and give it a try as i say don't be shy about it just pick up the phone and give us a call here we always welcome your calls if you're a first timer well then i get to ring my bell here's one for you and we enjoy knowing that you are a first-time caller also too available for you out there in social media land jeff burson who is our producer we'll dash on out there and he will retrieve your question in the chat feature at ewtn radio's youtube channel and facebook page if you're a first time submitter again let us know we'll ring that bell for you too uh ryan penny on the phones be sure to say howdy hater ryan he just loves loves loves will you give him a cheerful greeting he'll give you a cheerful greeting right back and we'll welcome you with big open hearts today i am so absolutely delighted that uh father tad paholcik accepted our invitation to be with us today to talk about the myths and legends that are associated with coven 19 and here i'm talking about so many of the urban legends that are floating around the internet today and are being passed on oftentimes i think without a real investigation into the science of what is being considered and this is a big issue because we obviously always want to stand on the side of life it is never acceptable to use a human person for experimentation never uh should a person be used for research unless uh that that permission is given and and it's a illicit exploration uh that we would agree with as the church so when there's so much confusion and and so much worry and fear about covid 19 today it's important to separate the fact from the fiction a father tad earned his doctorate in neuroscience from yale and he did pastor he did post doctoral work at harvard he's a priest of the diocese of fall river massachusetts and he serves as the director of education at the national catholic bioethics center that's located in philadelphia he is regularly featured i think on raymond arroyo's the world over he was just on the air last thursday evening and he was talking about the johnson and johnson option we're going to be getting into all of that today so i do want you to jot down your questions but don't delay call in you have a question call in you can still hear us when you're uh waiting for us to pick up your call 833 288 ewtn this is an opportunity for you to get the answer to your question from a bioethicist who certainly is uh in the heart of the church father tad welcome it's so good to have you with us well thank you so much gennad it's just great to be able to join you i i really look forward to spending these these few minutes with you well thank you very much and as i say there is so much confusion about this that is out there and i know that you have been inundated at the national catholic bioethics center by all different kinds of media who are trying to sort fact from fiction here and we want our catholic people to be aware of of what is in the heart of the church regarding these issues so let's just break into the discussion right away here father tell us a little bit about these coveted 19 vaccines and their relationship to aborted babies yes so i mean currently we have three candidates uh available i mean in differing amounts in different places obviously you know a big place like new york city is going to have immediate access to all three of them the three being pfizer moderna and johnson and johnson and when these different companies were ramping up production and figuring out how to make one of these vaccines regrettably in some cases in particular in the johnson and johnson case they made a decision to actually manufacture or synthesize the vaccine in cells that originally came from an abortion and this abortion happened in 1985 and these cells are you know available that were used by the company they're used in different research laboratories at different universities etc and so they made this decision you know this is how we're going to make our vaccine and now we find ourselves in the situation where people are coming to an awareness of this and they're saying oh gee so there's this distant association with abortion derived cells so what does that mean for me as an end user you know can i take a vaccine like the johnson and johnson or not and you know it's worth mentioning also that the other two candidates both of them are called mrna vaccines uh those ones were not produced using a cell line from abortion they were instead produced by an entirely different technique that actually doesn't use any cells at all it's a just a biochemical technique of synthesizing a piece of rna and then wrapping it up in a little oil droplet and then injecting you with that and so that one doesn't have the same direct association with these cells from an abortion however all three of these candidates pfizer moderna and johnson and johnson as they were working up and getting their vaccines ready and doing some kind of side testing they did use another cell line called hek293 to do some testing and that hek293 i mentioned the name just because it is absolutely everywhere i mean you can find this cell line in universities in every you know major research lab you're likely to encounter some connection to this abortion-derived cell line and that particular abortion happened a little earlier in 1972 in the netherlands so you know again still some problems from the vantage point of really having a vaccine that has no connection no association with cell lines from abortions all three of them have at least that you know minimal or tangential association through the testing and jnj has a more significant connection or association because that vaccine is in fact manufactured right inside these cells that were derived from the 1985 abortion so father if if i understand correctly we're talking about descendant cell lines and and i'd like for you to define that but i'd also like to know in the hek 9 what is the meaning or or what does the 293 refer to yes so a cell line is a preparation of cells that has been made immortal now you said yourself immortal how can cells be immortal cells you know always die and that's true you know if i scrape some skin cells off of my forearm put them into a petri dish they'll grow for a little while but then they do peter out and die after you know maybe about 60 or 70 cell divisions however when you go into a aborted fetus and you remove some cells and then you treat those cells with a virus or some other pieces of dna you can actually trigger those cells to become immortalized so they continue to grow indefinitely and that's typically what we mean by a cell line these cells can be handed around you know passed around to different universities and institutions and continuously studied for decades and maybe even for centuries you know we're not sure uh if they'll just literally go on forever so that's what a cell line is now you ask about the hek293 cell line the one from the netherlands from the 1972 abortion so the way that one was generated there was a single abortion that occurred and basically a researcher showed up at the door of the clinic and you know said hey do you have any cadavers here that i can raid in order to take cells for research purposes and he obtained a sample from the kidney it was out of the kidney of this and that's what the k is he k human embryonic kidney so they took the kidney cells out of this single fetus and he then started to grow them and what he did was he broke them up into subdivisions and ended up doing hundreds of attempts to prepare a version of this cell that was now immortal and when he got to 293 293 attempts from the single abortion uh he was successful and that became this well-known and now well-established cell line that countless researchers use every day all over the world so 292 of his efforts proved futile and 293 proved beneficial for his research and that's why it's named that one of the urban legends that i've heard is that represents the numbers of abortions uh that have happened uh where the kidney has been used from an aborted baby for experimentation but that is not the case that's not the case and you're right that that's one of those legends that has you know gained traction unfortunately and people repeat it quite a bit so um there was a single abortion that was responsible for this and it's really important to be clear about that you know at the same time even if there had been several some of the moral conclusions here wouldn't be fundamentally altered but i think you know those who are sometimes involved in trying to stop vaccine progress will look for opportunities to frame this in a way that ends up being a little bit more you know disturbing to think about if we can say oh there were 200 or 300 abortions instead of just one abortion you know somehow i mean one abortion itself is horrible enough and we should all you know be in a mind frame that says we don't want science that is built on the backs of cells taken from abortions ever and we need to be moving our science in a new and different direction away from that association yes and that raises a host of other questions but just just to complete what is in my mind with regard to where we are at this point in our conversation i wanted to ask you uh this question as well and that is you know what about astrozenica that is another one that some people are making use of yes the astrazeneca hasn't received the emergency use authorization yet in the us but i think it will very shortly and um it has basically the same problem that the jnj has in other words it was produced in a cell line that came from an abortion so it has a closer association to these problematic cell lines is there any uh baby tissue in the vaccines that people receive whether it's the moderna or the pfizer or the jnj yeah that's another one of the myths out there that we run into quite a bit at the national catholic bioethics center these preparations of vaccines do not contain any cells from that original abortion or any of the descendant cells what happens is you grow the vaccine using the cells but then all the cells are taken away and you're just left over with the particular protein that was synthesized by the cells so there's no presence of any of those abortion-derived cells in what you actually get in the jab in your arm very good you are listening to women of grace live i'm johnette williams our guest today is father tad boho check he's talking with us about the covet 19 vaccines that are available currently and he's helping to clear up some of the myths and misconceptions that people have as well as dispelling some of those urban legends that are floating around the internet uh that that actually are producing not confusion only in the minds of people but but also offering a lot of misinformation father tad you know you talked about the fact that obviously we do not want to use any kind of of medication or vaccine that comes on the backs of these little babies that are aborted by their mothers it's reprehensible it's awful it's terrible uh and it's tragic but additionally we know that it's possible for vaccines such as a covid19 vaccine to be created that contains no cells from aborted babies because it's not associated with them at all and i'm thinking of some of the ones that are out there sorrento immediately comes into my mind but these have not been approved yet in the united states and and they're in various stages of of uh phases i guess they call them where they're looking at all of these things but the fact of the matter is why why are these not forwarded why are these not out there and ready and available at this point in time well so you mentioned the sorrento uh and you know maybe let me just mention briefly for your listeners if they're interested in seeing a chart that lines up all the different candidates that are likely to be available in the u.s they can check either our website ncbcenter.org or i have my own website as wellfathertad.com and there's a rotating tile right on the front that says you know astrazeneca modern pfizer if you just click on that tile the whole chart will open up in front of you and you can actually compare and see which of these vaccines have the closest associations with abortion so it's a useful tool you know as people plan for their own potential vaccinations so the sorrento that you ask about this one appears to have no connection either in the production or in the testing and that's a good thing the only problem here jeanette unfortunately my understanding is that the company has kind of put the brakes on this in other words they realize that once you have a number of other candidates that make it to the market ahead of them and sort of win the race then for them it becomes exceedingly expensive to continue their own research and their ceo implied in an interview that if that were to happen that they would at least uh you know put the project into dormancy so that's what it looks like you know the current state is and we're not likely to see the sorrento t viva it's called we're not likely to see that on the market anytime soon if at all so you know again that's the kind of thing though that people could write to the company make their interests known and say you know that you guys have a clean candidate if you keep it that way for the rest of the development there's likely to be a certain market that would be you know worth your while to pursue etc isn't that unfortunate and and i would hope i don't want to extrapolate too much here but if that is the mindset in the thinking of the ceos of these various companies then we might be left only with opportunities that are tainted in some way and that would be absolutely regrettable so you know i hear what you're saying there father and i think it's very important for us to you know write sorrento and let them know hello i'm a potential user of your vaccine you know uh and and i we're going to talk about the moral implications of of all of these things when we come back friends more with our guest today father tad pohock he is available for you to answer all of your questions eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six pick up the phone give us a call ryan penny will answer it we'll get you on the air also available for you out there at ewtn radio's youtube channel and facebook page use the chat feature coming right back with our guest today stay with us podcasting is an easy way to automatically receive your favorite ewtn programs on your mobile device visit ewtn.com podcast and enjoy your favorite ewtn shows on your mobile phone right now the leading catholic voices are on ewtn radio part of the success we've had on the world over i attribute to certainly my relationship with mother angelica and her teaching me early on that when you sit with someone you talk to them you share with them and you create an environment where they will tell you things they wouldn't tell anyone else the world over with raven arroyo thursday night eight eastern on ewtn radio it's time for family man with dr gregory popja it isn't often that popes give parenting advice but at a recent meeting of the pontifical council for the family pope francis did just that and what was the tip waste time with your children as moms and dads we're like latter-day marthas from the bible so busy with many things we often forget to choose the better part of simply hanging out with our children and just being taking a walk playing catch gathering dolls for a tea party wrestling on the floor playing dress-up just being silly are skills that teach parents and children the joy of living as pope francis points out the best way to learn that life is a gift that relationships are important and that it's people not activities that matter is to simply be willing to waste time together when we waste time with our children we're not really wasting time at all we're simply putting in the time that keeps our children's hearts from wasting i'm dr greg popchak but you can call me family man to discover more ways faith can enrich your life visit catholiccounselors.com hi this is psychelette join us later today on catholic answers live as we do our best to explain and defend the catholic faith catholic answer is live 6 pm eastern on ewtn radio now back to women of grace [Music] transforming the world one woman at a time let's return to women of grace with johnette williams well welcome back everybody we are visiting today with father tad pohlcheck he is talking with us about the covet 19 vaccines that are available right now he is director of education at the national catholic bioethics center and i like to underscore the fact that father has a doctorate in neuroscience from yale university uh because he's a scientist right so he comes at this uh both from the perspective of the church bioethics obviously but also he comes at this as a scientist so i think that what he is sharing with us is very very important and very very helpful for us we have our phone lines open for you we've only got two lines available right now but i want to give you that number it's 833-288-3986-833-2888 ewtn we're also available for you out there in social media land get out to ewtn radio's youtube channel and facebook page use the chat feature there i understand that uh you know our social media is pretty well blowing up all kinds of questions coming in from that source too uh but before we dip into the questions i'm going to ask you all to exercise some patience it can be kind of a a lenten penance for you at this moment i want father for you if you would please to talk with us you know from the standpoint of morality where are we as a church on this issue and are we obligated uh you know one way or the other with regard to these these vaccines taking them not taking them and which one to take help us to walk through this uh bioethical quagmire that we're living in right now great question and really on everybody's mind uh so thankfully this issue and this comes as a surprise to most catholics this is not a new issue this has roots that goes all the way back to 2005. so the church has addressed this question first in 2005 uh then in 2008 in a particularly important document then again in 2017 and then just recently in december of 2020 uh the vatican spoke about it yet again and in all those four instances the church's assessment was the same indicating that if you have a proportionately serious reason what does that mean like a threat to your health then it is allowable to be vaccinated with one of these vaccines that may have been produced using cell lines that were originally decades ago derived from an abortion and part of the reason that that's allowable is that when you get the jab you are not actually cooperating with the evil of the original abortion because that abortion happened you know 40 or 50 years ago it's an over and done with occurrence uh so you're not cooperating in evil now there's still though unfortunately this is this uh association with the original source because the cells are being used in this continuing way so it's not a completely you know desirable situation that's why the church says you know you need to make an assessment about your own particular risk and about whether it's reasonable to get vaccinated so you know to put this in broad terms if you have a situation like an elderly resident who is in a nursing home and maybe you know they've already had a little flare-up of covet 19 there and a couple of the residents died and now it seems to be under control that everybody's saying well shouldn't we get vaccinated well that's a situation where it's very clear that you have a strong reason to look at getting a vaccination you know offering it freely to all of the residents to any who might want to take it uh but if you look at another situation if you have a i don't know a healthy 18 year old kid and he's basically you know off doing his own thing he has a a job where he's mostly working at home uh you know he's not seeing many people and not at much risk himself he's healthy doesn't have any comorbidities is not overweight does not have diabetes etc well he you know the question of does he need to get a vaccine well for the most part there's probably not a compelling reason to get vaccinated generally because if he gets infected with covet you know he's going to have some cold like symptoms and and he'll move on with things so it's important to make one's assessment here based on your particular circumstances and the older we get the greater the risk from the coronavirus and the more we should be looking at this as a possible means of you know choosing a less impactful outcome because if you're older and the vaccine hits you there's a greater chance that you're going to have some some harm or maybe even die from it while when you're young the chances of that are statistically very very small well thank you father for that answer and cecilia out there on facebook i hope that that answers your question for you cecilia says she has an appointment today and she's confused as a catholic if she should take it or risk not getting it and so cecilia i hope the father's the answer there to my question answers your question for you father one last question before we go to these phones uh another myth out there i believe it's a myth i want you to tell me if it is a myth uh is that uh you know babies that that are are recently aborted uh are being used in these production of these vaccines you are correct that is a myth that that is not true at all uh these are from older abortions that did happen decades ago and uh currently that you know what happens here frankly to that is that as scientists get used to working with a particular cell line like hek293 they just sort of stay in the same rut if you will because it gets better and better characterized more and more papers are published about everybody says oh that's the gold standard let's just continue using so this idea that you know there's tons of people now going out and raising the cadavers have aborted fetuses trying to make new cell lines um that's not generally true i mean there's some of that is going on for very very particular types of experimental situations and i actually you know was appointed to sit on the trump fetal ethics review committee and we had a meeting where we were evaluating grant proposals from researchers who wanted to go to abortion clinics and they wanted federal funding for them to be able to do this and we were you know reviewing and pointing out the ethical problems with these different uh research proposals so um you know at the end of the day here we're in a situation where we need to realize that the current set or the current batch of vaccines has an association with these cell lines but those were prepared a good long time ago and there aren't current abortions that are going on to feed into that process of new vaccine development excellent thank you father well let's get to maria she is in durwood maryland today guadalupe radio is the way she's with us good morning maria how are you good morning good morning thank you for letting me in well you're quite welcome and so what is your ques what is your question for father tat yes my question is um so um so just it's clarifying so he's saying the fiber vaccine is the one catholics should be looking forward to or i wanted to clarify exactly which ones were the ones okay father todd so maria's confused on which is the best vaccine to take if we need to take one uh given our catholic faith yes so um great question maria and the the issue here is that if everything else is equal among the three vaccines in other words they're all equally safe for you they're all equally available in your town and they all have the same efficacy they work equally well for you if that's true for all three of them then it makes sense and the church would recognize the validity of us choosing the vaccine that has the most distant association with abortion so that would mean you know in that case not using the j and j vaccine however i want to point out that this is very very critical that all of the listeners understand this when i say you know if everything else is equal most of the time it is not equal it's not equal at all in your town you may only have j and j available to you and that may be true for the next three four months and if you're in a situation where your health is at risk the church is making it clear yes you can receive johnson and johnson's vaccine even though there are these associations regrettable associations with abortion from the past so there's another you know angle to this that we need to mention briefly as well which is that these vaccines are not all equal in terms of the way they may affect you i've met somebody come across a case where she has an allergy to something called peg polyethylene glycol and it turns out that for both the pfizer and the moderna those vaccines contain peg so even if she had both of those available to her in her city she could not receive them because she would have an allergic anaphylactic reaction and would be very dangerous for her meanwhile the johnson johnson vaccine does not contain peg at all so she could receive that one safely and again the church would allow that there isn't uh a fundamental moral objection to receiving it under those circumstances again assuming that you know she's in a risk category so that's why there's a little bit of nuance here but maria i think that the take-home message is that if everything else actually is equal among the candidates then we should feel free to choose the one that has the least association with the cell lines from abortion does that help you maria yes it does thank you good good and thank you for your question maria and father we just want to mention too that we take these under protest right so we we we want to be certain that we register our moral objective objection to these uh vaccines with the pharmaceutical company perhaps with you know the the primary care physician or whoever it is it's administering uh the vaccine to us etc exactly very good point janet at a point that bears reiteration here you know when we do have this kind of anomalous market situation where we're getting vaccines that are connected or associated with abortion we should be pushing back and the vatican again has said look this is an opportunity for us we should be writing letters perhaps to the uh ceos of these companies or to the members of the board and i want to mention again you know the resource on fathercad.com i've actually set up a special page below the chart that i mentioned earlier where i list sample template letters and people can just cut and paste these template letters and fill in the address i also do have a brief list of addresses of the different pharmaceutical companies that are involved in manufacturing these so people can send you know a polite but strong letter that indicates look this is the kind of thing we need to change direction on we can't be continuing to have these cell lines come to market in the form of vaccines so for the dad.com and if they use our consultation service at the national catholic bioethics center and contact any of us again we can provide uh the list that contains all of that information oh that's excellent father todd really do appreciate it thank you for doing the work force so we have no excuse friends there you go right you know all of these impediments are being removed so there's no excuse uh for not following through and registering your complaint and of course that's part of of our duty and obligation as good catholics to do what we can to restore this temporal order let's get on to a jessica father she's in pulse in montana kmbm 90.7 is the way she's with us and she's a first timer so welcome jessica we're happy to have you with us today thank you thanks jeanette thanks father pad uh my question is a little off topic so it may be that it's not appropriate for you to answer it right now on the show um myself and my four children my husband were all healthy and have no comorbidities or anything so this question isn't facing us right at the moment um but the the rumor or or whatever i've heard is that this vaccine the vaccine may adversely affect the reproductive chances of my children or hurt their future babies and obviously these can be hard questions to answer since the vaccine's been around for such a short time but i'm wondering if you have any information about that father yes so um yeah great question uh and i think that one also has been you know quite prevalent on mass media uh and social media especially so there was originally a story it originated out of europe where there was a claim that the spike protein of the virus had some gene homology or similarity to another protein that you find in the placenta now the placenta of course is very important for for fertility and for reproduction and so people say well it looks like there's some kind of similarity here so if you get a vaccine against the spike protein wouldn't the wouldn't this mean that your ant your antibodies might also attack a placenta so uh when the story first broke you know a month or two ago we checked into it i checked with some specialists at the lozier institute they did they actually called up the dna sequence and lined them up and checked whether there was any similarity and it turns out that there is virtually none and there's also an added problem that the shape of these molecules is very different so it doesn't look like there is a risk on that level so you know the myth that was out there i think we can safely put that to the side the broader question that you're asking is about you know well what about in general could there be something further down the line some effects that we don't know about and the answer there always i remind people no medical treatment is ever zero risk and so you know this is why even the pharmaceutical companies are being careful here they're not encouraging pregnant women right away to run out and and get vaccinated you know they recognize that there is potentially some very very remote chance that would show up later but at this stage of the game uh there isn't any reason to think that there would be something like that and they will be doing specific testing to address that subgroup or that sub-population in order to be sure that it's safe so you know the initial testing that's done in these studies involves 10 20 30 000 people and there may not be very many pregnant women among those initial groups often they tend to exclude them right up front just because of the complexities of pregnancy so that's why i'm saying you know generally pregnant women are in the age group that they remain safe uh from this and so there's not a need for them to rush in and let's wait a little longer and my suspicion is that when they do further work it'll be clear that all these vaccines are equally safe whether you're pregnant or not does that help you jessica that's very helpful thank you so much you're welcome and thank you for your very good question today we really do appreciate it father tad pohock is our guest today we're talking about the covet 19 vaccine uh we're going to go to bernadette she is in philadelphia pennsylvania siriusxm station 130 is the way she's with us hey bernadette how are you hi nice to be with everybody today first time calling in oh dear well i'm gonna ring my bell for you bernadette oh great welcome but i have listened to your station and i and i enjoy it good thank you as you know i was thinking about how i know abortion seems to come up in a lot of issues and i understand why that does but also i also realize uh the importance of this um you know this this virus which i believe a lot of people are in denial not only does this virus could affect me and i could be carrying it and giving it to somebody else which a lot of people seem to forget about that that's why we wear the mask and follow the protocol and do our part only you know not only for myself but for the sake of others but i also know pope francis gave the moral um okay on receiving a vaccine that's all i need to know i mean in a spiritual sense i need to know that it makes me feel good now if he told me we shouldn't get it i don't know i mean it's like do i want to give up my life and maybe you know hurt somebody else or do i just want to bring it back to abortion now mind you i don't approve abortion me personally but i i understand it goes on but i also understand not everybody thinks and feels and has the same faith practices i do and i can't control what other people do but what i can do is go ahead yeah i just want to share that that pope francis gave the moral consent he is our leader of the catholic faith and i believe in trust in our pope well father todd i think that bernadette brings up a couple of good issues here and number one is that there is a concern for the common good and uh share with us a little bit about these responsibilities and how we break them out when we're considering such issues as we're considering today and and also too is there any moral obligation to receive the vaccine yes so the common good is a factor here uh you know when we talk about herd immunity and achieving herd immunity it's important to recognize that this is going to fall under that heading of the common good and to the extent that we discern for ourselves and those around us that we should get vaccinated we make a contribution towards that hurt immunity and support the common good in that way and you know i mentioned example earlier of the 18 year old who's kind of off by himself doing his own studies low risk but you know that could change what if you had an 18 year old who picks up a new job on the side and part of his job involves bringing food deliveries to the local nursing home well now everything has changed and he should think about the question of what if i were to bring the virus to that vulnerable population maybe i should in fact look into getting vaccinated as a means you know if i haven't already been infected myself as far as i know then i should you know consider that as a possibility and again that would be a free choice towards the common good and we do need to think in those terms now your question about is should it be mandated should we have kind of universal requirements of vaccination that clearly raises another problem that vaccines should not be forced on people they should be offered and we should do a good job of explaining why vaccines make a lot of sense they improve public health tremendously and for us to know that will help us make them good judgments of prudence and be able to uh you know make our contribution to that common good that we're discussing excellent father we hear that music and that means that we're at the close of the program and i'm sorry that we couldn't get to all of you my goodness there are so many questions out there father but i have to thank you very very much for the work that you do and for being with us today and for helping us to discern truth uh from falsehood and fact from fiction and we hope father that you will be with us again in the future i'd look forward to that and i know our listeners would too so thank you for being with us father friends it's been great being with you we'll be back with you again tomorrow to continue discussing issues important to your life and your faith always looking forward to having you with us until we are together again may god bless you bye bye now we often hear about kids bullying each other but do adults do the same thing we'll discuss

Channel: EWTN

Views: 1,504

Rating: 4.6969695 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: 8YhfxBMaXYE

Length: 54min 5sec (3245 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 08 2021