Deacon Mike and Gina Noll visit with Kate Anderson, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending
Faith On Trial airs every Thursday at 10 a.m. CT on Iowa
Catholic Radio which can be heard locally on 1150 AM & 94.5 FM Des Moines;
90.0 FM Creston, and 88.5 FM Adel, and streams live on IowaCatholicRadio.com.
Kate Anderson
This week’s guest: Kate Anderson senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, where she is the director of the Center for Parental Rights. Since joining ADF in 2015, Anderson has focused on protecting the conscience rights of individuals being unjustly compelled to forfeit their beliefs under threat of government retaliation, heavy fines, or other punishment. We will discuss the case 303 Creative v. Elenis which has just been appealed to the Supreme Court to decide if the government can force a web designer to create messages that violate her core beliefs.
See post below: Friday September 24, 303 Creative v. Elenis
Join Kate, Deacon Mike and Gina this Thursday at 10 a.m. CT
on Iowa Catholic Radio: Des Moines 1150 AM; 94.5 FM; FM 88.5 Adel or 90.9
Creston, or streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com.
By Deacon Mike Manno
(The
Wanderer) – If you are a Catholic student at the University of
Massachusetts and expect a conscience exemption to the COVID vaccine mandate,
think again. A university official has ruled that no Catholic student is
eligible for the exemption.
It seems that the vice chancellor of student affairs, Shawn
DeVeau, who has a long history in school administration, but no known
background in theology, made the ruling after a study of the Church’s
teachings. He explained his methodology thusly:
“When reviewing students’ appeals, I engage in a holistic
process: I review the student’s request, research the faith tradition on which
they are basing their request, and respond to the students based on my
research. . . . My process for reviewing appeals is to engage in an interactive
process to discuss the student’s specific circumstances and determine if the
exemption is based on a sincerely held religious belief” (emphasis mine).
In denying the student appeals, he quoted two statements
from the USCCB stating that the vaccines can be morally justified. Apparently
he forgot to check the statement of Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City,
Kans., and chairman of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities, whom we
quoted recently as stating that while it is prudent for people to get
vaccinated, some “could reasonably choose” to reject the abortion-tainted
vaccination to give “prophetic witness” against abortion; and he condemned
those who would require vaccination as a predicate for holding or keeping their
jobs.
“A society that fails to respect the rights of conscience
lacks a key element of the common good,” the archbishop wrote. “The most
charitable and just posture is to seek to accommodate the consciences of all
persons.”
Of course Mr. DeVeau might have been too busy with his
duties to have seen that. He also missed the legal point: conscience objections
are not limited to a specific religious belief but a sincerely held belief
irrespective of the religious status — or even non-status — of the individual.
But have no fear if you are a mandate proponent. The
administration will be monitoring whether those claiming to be exempt from Mr.
Biden’s mandate are “not abusing” the system.
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said that the
administration would be keeping tabs on those businesses and workers claiming
exemptions. He told CNN’s State of the Union program that “we’ve got to be
vigilant there and make sure that people are using them in the spirit that
they’re intended and not abusing them or asking for exemptions when they don’t
apply. That’s an area that we continue to monitor in the days and weeks ahead.”
But none of this allows for any discussion of the merits of
the mandate that doesn’t seem to fit in with the “one-size-fits-all” policy of
the administration’s White House medical regime which, to date, has not even
recognized the concept of natural immunity to the virus, nor with the spade of
unexpected problems with the vaccine. And that dynamic is playing out in places
where it has worked to the disadvantage of far too many citizens.
For example, in Lowville, N.Y., the Lewis County Health
System says that since some nurses are refusing to take the vaccine, the
hospital will have to close its maternity ward. In New York all healthcare
workers are required to get the vaccine. According to the hospital
administrator, 165 of the 464 hospital employees have refused to get it and 30
have resigned over the mandate.
In Texas, the CEO of the Brownfield Regional Medical Center
said that 20 to 25 percent of his staff will leave due to Mr. Biden’s mandate
that stipulates that healthcare workers in facilities that receive Medicaid or
Medicare funds will have to get the vaccine. Losing those workers, he said,
would likely cause his hospital to shut down.
Researchers and others are reporting on many unexpected
negative implications with the vaccine. One, among many, involves the negative
impact on breastfeeding mothers and their children.
According to LifeSiteNews, the government’s Vaccine Adverse
Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports that a six-week-old baby died from blood
clots and “severe inflammation of [his] arteries” after the child’s
breastfeeding mother received Pfizer’s vaccine.
“The mother had received her first dose on June 4, and her
baby started experiencing a high fever shortly thereafter [and]…passed away on
July 17.” According to the VAERS report, the mother wondered if “the spike
protein could have gone through the breast milk and caused an inflammatory
response in [her] child,” as the six-week-old was healthy prior to the
injection.
But, worry not, your concerns over the vaccine can be
ameliorated if you can do just one thing: Cross our southern border. True! Just
look at this exchange between Fox News’ Peter Doocy and the White House’s chief
propaganda minister, Jen Psaki:
Doocy: “Why is it that you’re trying to require anybody
with a job or anybody who goes to school to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but
you’re not requiring that of migrants that continue walking across the southern
border into the country?”
Propaganda Minister Psaki: “Well, look, our objective is to
get as many people vaccinated across the country as humanly possible. And so
the [mandate is] an effort to empower businesses, to give businesses the tools
to protect their workforces. That’s exactly what we did. But certainly we want
everybody to get vaccinated.”
Doocy: “But it’s a requirement for people at a business
with more than 100 people, but it’s not a requirement for migrants at the
southern border.”
Propaganda Minister Psaki: “That’s correct.”
With that huge loophole in the system, why is it so
important to risk side-effects and the loss of jobs and even risk the closing
of hospitals and other businesses to try to vaccinate nearly everybody else?
Yet the administration and its allies apparently will try to do everything to
eliminate conscience and medical objections to the vaccine including attempts
to ostracize the unvaxed.
Recently, former Obama Secretary for Health and Human
Services Kathleen Sebelius was part of the pile-on, suggesting that if you are
unvaccinated you should not be able to work, roam freely, or have access to children.
She, like several other prominent pro-mandate observers, hinted that the
unvaccinated are responsible for COVID deaths.
And some courts are even jumping into the fray. In
Illinois, a judge during a routine child support hearing stripped a mother of
all parenting time when she said she had not been vaccinated. The judge later
withdrew the order but the father’s attorney is asking that it be reimposed.
In an Ohio court, getting the jab was a requirement for
probation. In Georgia some judges are making the jab a condition of reduced
sentencing, in Louisiana it will reduce community service time.
In an adjacent matter, the Federation of State Medical
Boards said that physicians who spread COVID vaccine misinformation risk
disciplinary action by state medical boards, including loss of their medical
licenses. The American Board of Emergency Medicine made a similar announcement.
Neither organization defined “misinformation,” but you can be sure it means
disagreeing with Mr. Biden.
And disagreeing with Mr. Biden’s ideas about his fix-all
elixir is apparently the touchstone for all that may follow. He says it’s not
about freedom but public health and safety. Always the argument, it’s about
safety. But, of course, if it was, they’d close the southern border, study the
effects of natural immunity and those of possible therapeutics. Since they’re
not doing that this must be about something else.
Go figure!
As Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would give up
essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither
liberty nor safety.”
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him
every Thursday at 10 a.m. CT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
By Bill Donohue, Catholic League president
"The Administration strongly supports House passage of
H.R. 3755, the Women's Health Protection Act of 2021." That is the
statement released by the White House on September 20. In actual fact, the
proposed law has nothing to do with women's health—it is a pro-abortion bill.
This is true notwithstanding the bill's contention that
"Abortion is essential health care and one of the safest medical
procedures in the United States." Essential health care would be things
like heart surgery and treatment for Covid, not elective abortion. And it is
fatuous to say that it is safe. Safe for whom?
The bill maintains that abortion restrictions are "a
tool of gender oppression." If this were true, why were America's first
feminists staunch opponents of abortion? In 1858, Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke
about "the murder of children, either before or after birth." She
branded it "evil." Similarly, Susan B. Anthony called abortion
"child murder" and "infanticide."
So if the first feminists were strongly opposed to
abortion—they said it was analogous to treating women as property—when did
abortion restrictions become "a tool of gender oppression"? In the
1960s.
That was when two men, Lawrence Lader and Dr. Bernard Nathanson
(who later became a Catholic and a pro-life activist), convinced feminists such
as Betty Friedan that abortion should be seen as an example of women's
liberation. In other words, it took the boys to teach the girls about their own
"emancipation."
As for this bill, it is anything but "women
friendly." To be explicit, it would abolish the requirement that abortion
can only be performed by a physician, thus allowing mid-wives, nurses and
doctor's assistants to do the job. The bill also eliminates health and safety
regulations that are specific to abortion facilities.
Now ask yourself this: If a bill were passed that would
allow dental hygienists to pull your tooth, and that it could be done in a
facility without customary health and safety regulations, would anyone in his
right mind consider this to be progress?
Iterations of this bill have been introduced every year
since 2013, but it wasn't until this year that dramatically new language was
introduced. The neologisms are emblematic of the wild-eyed activists who work
in the White House.
For example, the bill talks about "reproductive
justice" and the necessity of opposing "restrictions on reproductive
health, including abortion, that perpetuate systems of oppression, lack of
bodily autonomy, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism."
This is the mindset of those who are positively obsessed
with race, the kind of people who find discussions about chocolate and vanilla
to have racial undertones. Just as some who were obsessed about communism in
the 1950s found communism under every pillow, those who work in the Biden
administration find racism under every blanket.
The bill insists that "Access to equitable
reproductive health care, including abortion, has always been deficient"
for blacks and other minorities. In actual fact, thanks to Planned Parenthood,
this is a lie: access to abortion services have been fantastic for blacks.
Planned Parenthood erects 86 percent of its abortion
facilities in or near minority neighborhoods in the 25 counties with the most
abortions. Although these 25 counties make up just 1 percent of all U.S.
counties, they accounted for 30 percent of all the abortions in the U.S. in
2014.
Is it any surprise that although blacks comprise roughly 13
percent of the population, they account for at least a third of all the
abortions? It is therefore dishonest to claim that they lack access to abortion
mills.
Another novelty found in this bill is the linguistic game
of pretending that males and females can change their sex. For example, it says
that abortion services "are used primarily by women (my
italic)." This is factually wrong. Only women can get pregnant and only
women can abort their child. A man can identify as a woman (or as a gorilla for
that matter), but he can never get pregnant.
Similarly, the geniuses who wrote this bill make more than
two dozen references to "pregnant people"; this is roughly twice as
often as they speak of "pregnant women." Now if a man can get
pregnant, in what orifice does his baby exit? His ear?
If this isn't nutty enough, the bill's authors add that it
is their intention "to protect all people with the capacity of becoming
pregnant—cisgender women [meaning real women] transgender men [meaning
delusional women who think they are a man], non-binary individuals [there is no
such breed], those who identify with a different gender [the mentally
challenged], and others." Who the "others" are remains a
mystery.
Catholics need to take note. Though this
"off-the-charts" bill is not likely to pass, it is the expressed
desire of our "devout Catholic" president that it should. Biden can
carry his rosary to the moon and back, but all that matters are his values and
his policies, and in many instances they are anything but Catholic.
By Deacon Mike Manno
(The
Wanderer) – Yeah, you heard it right. Abortion, the wanton killing of
a preborn child, is back big time in the news. But as controversial as the
topic is, I’ve noticed that more and more folks, including leading Catholic
laymen and prelates, trying to brush the issue aside as if it is as normal as
taking your dog for a walk.
After all, it is health care.
Even our devout Catholic president — or whoever is pulling
his strings — has become a champion of its expansion: abortion everywhere,
anytime, and for any reason. And of course if you are trying to limit it, well,
you might as well be considered a neo-Nazi, or a skinhead, or — even worse — a
white Christian Taliban who needs to be investigated by the U.S. Department of
Justice for crimes against women.
And, of course, the DOJ has announced that it will do just
that in Texas, in case any other uppity states might wish to save babies.
Remember, it is healthcare. Healthcare for pregnant “persons.”
After all it’s only abortion, a right that should be
respected for all. It is, they say, reproductive health care and women (except
female fetuses) need it so they can live a life unencumbered by the cares of
child-raising. You see, this is truly health care.
But not so fast. What kind of health care is it that starts
with two patients, kills one and, regrettably, sometimes maims or even kills
the other?
Consider a recent report by the Charlotte Lozier Institute
which found that in 2019 that some 11 percent of the abortions in Wisconsin
resulted in complications, including 621 cases where body parts of the aborted
children remained in the woman’s body after the procedure, up over 750 percent
from the year before.
Other complications included 54 cervical lacerations, five
instances of hemorrhaging, four uterine perforations, and three infections, the
report found.
Wow, that’s some healthcare Badger women, er, pregnant
persons, received! Is that why we need more of it?
“These figures out of Wisconsin are devastating and an
indictment of the lack of care for women, especially by the abortion industry
and its advocates, who refuse to tell the truth about the risks of abortion,”
according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
“Chemical abortion is rapidly becoming more common than
surgical abortion around the world, despite being four times more likely to
result in complications than surgical abortion.”
But abortion advocates are fighting back. Joe the Devout’s
attorney general, Merrick Garland, is now going to bat for the baby-killers by
suing the state of Texas over its most recent legislation restricting abortion
after six weeks into the pregnancy by giving private citizens the right to sue
on behalf of the unwanted baby.
And, coming to their aid, the Satanic Temple is now arguing
that curbing abortion violates the religious freedom of Satanists. According to
the Satanic abortion promoters, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires
access to abortion-inducing drugs and the Texas law “imposes an undue burden on
the ability of [their] members to undergo the Satanic Abortion Ritual” within
the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.
“I am sure Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — who famously
spends a good deal of his time composing press releases about religious liberty
issues in other states — will be proud to see that Texas’ robust religious
liberty laws, which he so vociferously champions, will prevent future Abortion
Rituals from being interrupted by superfluous government restrictions meant
only to shame and harass those seeking an abortion,” Satanic Temple
spokesperson Lucien Greaves said in a statement.
What a great group of compadres this makes. I am so proud
of the company Mr. Biden keeps.
Oh, and by the way, the city of Portland — you remember
Portland, a fine city before Mayor Ted Wheeler and the city council turned it
into a dumpster fire. Well it has announced that it is supporting the right of
pregnant persons in Texas by stopping the purchase of all goods and services
from Texas and banning all city employee business travel to the state. That
will show ’em!
Plus it will give the city time to clean up the
approximately $22+ million in damages and lost business revenue from the 30
riots and 62 fires from last year’s attempt to provide a home for Antifa.
And if support from the Satanic Temple, Merrick Garland,
Joe Biden’s merry abortionists, and the brilliant and enlightened city fathers
of Portland isn’t enough to encourage more baby killing, the web hosting
service, GoDaddy, has announced it is canceling a Texas pro-life website.
Maybe this is truly health care. All you potential pregnant
persons rejoice, Joe’s got your back.
+++++
And as if things aren’t topsy-turvy enough, Alaska Airlines
has reportedly fired two flight attendants for asking questions on the
company’s internal communication website. It appears that Alaska Airlines
announced its support for the Equality Act on its internal employee forum and
solicited comments and questions.
In case you have forgotten, the Equality Act would force
employers and workers to — among other things — conform to new sexual norms;
force hospitals, insurers, and medical providers to provide therapies against
their moral objections; normalizing hormonal and surgical interventions for
gender dysphoria in children; open sex specific facilities to members of the
opposite sex, and create havoc for faith-based institutions over its support
for the transgender and homosexual relationships.
The employees posted questions about the morality of some
of the Act’s provisions. One of the attendants asked: “Does Alaska support:
endangering the Church, encouraging suppression of religious freedom,
obliterating women rights and parental rights?”
They were both fired, the Airlines telling them, “Defining
gender identity or sexual orientation as a moral issue…is…a discriminatory
statement.”
On behalf of the employees, First Liberty Institute has
filed separate charges of discrimination against the Airlines with the U.S.
Equal Opportunity Commission.
(You can reach Mike
at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday mornings at 10 a.m. CT on
Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
See Deacon Mike’s Wanderer column August 24 on this subject: "Academic Racism" https://faithontrialradio.blogspot.com/2021/08/academic-racism.html
Join Gina and Deacon Mike as they visit with Dr. Klein this
Thursday, Sept. 9, at 10 a.m. CT on Faith On Trial on Iowa Catholic Radio: 1150
AM; 88.5; 94.5, and 90.9; and streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com.
From the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights:
The University of Pittsburgh has agreed to have its fetal
tissue research practices independently reviewed by the Washington, D.C. law
firm of Hyman, Phelps & McNamara.
Last month, the Catholic League called upon the Pennsylvania Auditor General to
launch such an investigation.
We are delighted that Pitt got the message.
Over the summer, we learned that Judicial Watch was
representing the Center for Medical Progress in a quest to obtain documentation
of alleged human organ harvesting at Pitt. According to their probe, organs
have been harvested while the baby's heart is still beating. The University has
steadfastly denied wrongdoing.
On August 17, Bill Donohue wrote to Pennsylvania Auditor
General, Timothy L. DeFoor, asking him to determine whether state and federal
funds are being used by Pitt for arguably criminal activity. He sent a copy of
the letter to Pitt's chancellor, the dean of the medical school and a press
official at the University.
As important as anything, in our news release that same
day, we printed the email address of the Auditor General, asking our
subscribers to contact him. Thousands did, and their effort paid dividends.
Is Pitt involved in a fetal organ "chop shop"? We
do not know. But we need to find out without delay.
"If it is true," Donohue said in his letter to
the Auditor General, "as some doctors have said, that in order to perform
some of these procedures, 'The baby's going to have to be either born alive or
be killed immediately prior to delivery,' then justice demands that a thorough
investigation take place. I urge you to do so."
In February, the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities issued an excellent statement on the
propriety of human fetal tissue research. It implored the government, which
allows abortion, not to "add injury to insult by treating the innocent
abortion victim as a convenient laboratory animal for research protocols deemed
unethical when applied to other members of the human family."
If Pitt has nothing to hide, then so be it. But if some of
the horrible accusations are true, then it must cease and desist and be held
accountable.
We are pleased to have played an important role in getting
to the bottom of this issue. Many thanks to those who let their voice be heard.
[See also our earlier post of Deacon Mike’s Wanderer column
on the subject: “Behind the Grisly Pitt Panther,” August 16, 2021.]
By Deacon Mike Manno
(The
Wanderer) – Several years ago one of my students, opining
on the rising LGBT movement, suggested a live and let live philosophy and
argued that it was our responsibility to accept their lifestyles. My response
was that acceptance implied approval, while what she was suggesting implied
only toleration.
Tolerate differences, I
suggested to her, but don’t let your tolerance be interpreted as approval of a
lifestyle with which you disagree.
I don’t know how wise those
words were, but they came to mind while trying to make sense out of the sharp
polarization we find in America today. If you follow this column you know that
I’ve been a student of history and politics since well before I could vote and,
except for the Civil War, I know of no other similar polarization, especially
during my lifetime, notwithstanding the upheavals during the fight for civil
rights and over our involvement in Vietnam.
Oh there were political
differences all right, there were serious conflicts over civil rights and
Vietnam that sometimes appeared to pull the nation apart, but they did not last
and our leaders, Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson, and even Richard Nixon
were able to look into the future and move us forward without the severe
polarization that we see now.
So what happened? I think I
know. It happened when one side turned its attention to social issues and
demanded conformity from those on the other side, denying to their political
foes the right to dissent, and, most important, the right to follow their own
conscience. In short, they demanded approval not just toleration.
Social activists and their lawyers
have found success using the courts to impose policies on society that
majorities reject. They have used social media to condemn those with whom they
disagree, and ultimately are rewarded by seeing their opponents silenced by the
cancel culture to which they hold allegiance. One only needs to look at
Facebook and Twitter where Donald Trump is absent, but not the Taliban, ISIS,
nor the mullahs from Iran.
You must conform, is the
message, or be eliminated. And the reason is that they are right, they hold the
moral high ground, and as a result can impose their will on others who must be,
after all, deplorable.
And it goes well past that.
Armed with their self-righteous moral superiority, the social justice warriors
of the left have now not only taken over two of the three branches of
government, much of the media and academia have found common ground with their
fellow travelers in big business, especially the international variety.
So what are these leftists
doing with their newfound authority as the moral arbiters of the nation?
First, they have decreed that
no one has a right to a conscientious objection to their dictates; like it or
not you must comply even if they run counter to your religious beliefs or the
dictates of your conscience. Holy Mother Church is not in Rome, but in the
halls of Congress, the offices of petty bureaucrats, municipal health
officials, and others whose moral superiority surpasses yours.
Take, for example, conscience
rights in medicine. We’ve noted just a few weeks ago the case of a pro-life
nurse who was forced to assist with an abortion. After an investigation by the
Trump administration, which found similar problems at the facility in question,
a federal lawsuit was filed against the hospital.
Roger Severino, who was the
director of the Office of Civil Rights for the Trump Administration’s Department
of Health and Human Services and who conducted the investigation, told my radio
audience that it was an open-and-shut case which would have set a polestar for
conscience rights. Instead, the new Biden administration simply dismissed the
lawsuit out of hand. Of course the poor nurse, being a deplorable, has no
standing to assert her conscience or religious rights.
Of course, that’s just small
potatoes compared to the larger picture they envision. They have already passed
the “Equality Act” in the House which elevates sexual orientation and gender
identity to the same protected category as race, which will ultimately force
employers, including religious employers and churches, to comply with forced
same-sex wedding ceremonies, the hiring of teachers and others who do not
support the church’s teachings or mission.
It will also force the opening
of restrooms and locker rooms to be open to all, and allow men to force their
way into shared housing intended for single gender accommodations. And if
parents refuse to provide sex-change surgeries and hormone treatments for their
minor children they can be charged with child abuse, and those children can be
removed from their homes and public funding can be used to provide those services.
You see, there will be no conscience rights for people who think for themselves. You must accept or the state can discipline you if you hold to traditional Christian values.
And to take a particular example: HHS has promulgated a rule that reinterprets
the Affordable Care Act’s definition of sex discrimination to include gender
identity. Thus it requires doctors to perform gender transition procedures on
any patient, or child, even if it violates the doctor’s medical judgment or
religious beliefs.
Why? They know better. They
are, after all, superior moral agents and they are allowed to force their
beliefs on anyone who might disagree. Oh, and did I mention, you are not
allowed to disagree. Polarization on steroids.
Of course none of this is new.
You might remember a few years ago when Catholic Charities was forced to close
several locations when it refused to place children in same-sex households.
And don’t forget “the jab,” the constant pressure to vaccinate all with an abortion-tainted vaccine. As you’ve read here before, natural immunity that one has after surviving COVID is of no note, neither is any religious exception. Now not only are cities and businesses demanding proof of the jab before entry, schools and workplaces also require vax proof, many with no exceptions, even medical ones. Of course, we must realize that the petty bureaucrats who administer such things are our moral superiors and if we object our social media account can be deleted, just as you were told that if un-vaxed you should not travel anywhere over the recent Labor Day weekend.
Your immediate obedience is requested, otherwise. . . .
And what is as troubling as
anything else is that there is no escape from the jab for those who think the
law provides them with a religious right to refuse. I was called the other day
from a woman who works for a large local firm who was told she had to take the
vaccine. When she applied for a religious exemption she was denied because the
company’s HR department made the theological determination that since the Pope
recommends the vaccine a Catholic is not allowed to object.
Even a CNN host has suggested
that those who refuse the vaccine should be refused care by hospitals! All the
while other employers are assessing non-vaxed insurance premiums against their
workers.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of
Kansas City, Kans., and chairman of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities,
issued a recent statement that, while reaffirming his belief in the
vaccination, states that people “could reasonably choose” to reject the jab to
give “prophetic witness” against abortion and condemned those who would require
vaccination as a predicate for holding or keeping their jobs.
“A society that fails to
respect the rights of conscience lacks a key element of the common good,” the
archbishop wrote. “The most charitable and just posture is to seek to
accommodate the consciences of all persons,” he continued.
Of course that makes no
difference to our morally superior power predators who think otherwise. We know
better than you, so shut up and obey…or else. There is only one side that can
stand on conscience, and it’s not us.
Yup, that’s polarization all
right. And it appears that it is oh so deliberate.
(You can reach Mike at:
DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central Time, on
Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
Join Deacon Mike and Gina this Thursday at 10 a.m. Central for Faith On Trial on Iowa Catholic Radio 1150 AM; 88.5, 94.5, or 90.5 FM, and streaming live on IowaCatholicRadio.com.
In the wake of the FDA giving full approval to a not-yet-on-the-market COVID injection
Let’s review what’s really going on with literally millions of people
worldwide: Person A gets infected with SARS-CoV-2. Person A’s body elicits an
immune response that attacks the foreign antigen and disables it by creating
virus-neutralizing antibodies, enabling the person to recover. Person A now
harbors antibodies that protect the body in case of future attack. These
antibodies, by definition, are “any of numerous Y-shaped protein molecules
produced by B cells as a primary immune defense, each molecule and its clones
having a unique binding site that can combine with the complementary site of a
foreign antigen, as on a virus or bacterium, thereby disabling the antigen and
signaling other immune defenses.” Now-healthy-again Person A goes back out into
the world only to be bombarded with widespread and subliminal messaging,
including that of Anthony Fauci, purporting that his newly generated antibodies
are somehow inferior, insufficient, incompetent or even unable to defend him
against future encounters with the virus and/or one of its future
variants. Put your mask back on. Get the jab anyway. This is gaslighting
at its finest!
No doubt many scientists wish they could ignore a large Israeli study that indicates that “newly-released data show
people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than
never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or
become hospitalized with serious COVID-19.” The study goes so far as to
question the validity of the injections against the Delta variant given
that the vaccinated were 13x more likely to be infected than those who naturally
recovered from the infection, and 27x more likely to be symptomatic.
According to another published scientific study evaluating 254 COVID-19 patients up to
eight months, cumulative results “suggest that broad and effective immunity may
persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients.” And the proof doesn’t stop
there. In fact, there are over 15 studies—including New York University, The University of
California, Emory University and Cornell, among others—all coming to the same
conclusion: Natural immunity from prior infection is more robust than the
immunity generated from the COVID injections.
So, as of Sept. 1, 2021, where does this leave the almost 196
million recovered cases worldwide or the over 31
million antibody-touting Americans in the United States alone?
Why is this science being ignored even as millions of recovered Americans are
being coerced into taking the shot even though antibodies are present? It goes
without saying, given the relatively new nature of fully understanding the
virus and its effects, that more research needs to be completed. It is
imperative that decision-makers gather more verifiable information before
unequivocally mandating a knee-jerk, one-size-fits-all supposed remedy that
even now has been proven to wane over time and has become downright dangerous to
many people. The presence of
long-lasting robust antibodies in millions of recovered COVID patients
worldwide is reason enough to pause and reevaluate the necessity of forced
vaccinations.
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By Deacon Mike Manno
(The
Wanderer) – The question of the hour: Do we vaccinate or not? And if
not, what to expect?
The answer to the second question is: Expect plenty, you
will be treated like an outcast, accused of spreading the virus, and, in some
quarters, called a murderer. And those are just the nice things they will say.
That’s the state of things today. And it starts from a
political calculation which is derived from critical theory: set the public
against one another by accusing one side of suppressing the other. In this case
it is the minority non-vaxers that are the threat to the now oppressed vaxed
class.
We’ve seen it with race (critical race theory), and now it
might be called critical vax theory. And you can be canceled over it.
Many cities run by the child-killing side now have rules
that unless you can prove your vax status you cannot enjoy the benefits of
living there. You are not welcome in restaurants, movie theaters, retail shops,
and a host of other facilities most of us patronize every day. No vax, no
entry.
And more and more private domains are imposing their
vaccine wokeness on customers and employees as well. Same is now happening in
medical offices and hospitals. If you are not vaxed, you are not welcome. In
fact, even though the vaccine may be detrimental to your health, no vax, no
transplant list for you either. The jab is king — no exceptions.
Now, the follow-up question: Is this a political thing, or
a science thing? Well, the answer is kind of complex and probably one of the
reasons why so many folks are having a hard time sorting everything out.
Problem is, whether our public officials are on a power trip or just looking
for easy answers, vaccination has become a one-size-fits-all solution.
So let’s take a look at a couple of issues that have passed
under the radar:
The first is natural immunity.
While medical experts differ on whether or not the vaccine
provides more immunity than natural immunity, there is a growing body of
commentary that natural immunity — “earned” by those who have recovered from
COVID-19 — is at least as effective as the artificial immunity the vaccine
provides.
Unfortunately, the question of natural immunity has been
regularly ignored. This means that we are on course for a major economic
dislocation of those who have successfully survived the virus and have been
counseled by their personal physicians that they don’t need to risk taking a
vaccine that will, at best, only duplicate the immunity they already naturally
have. Sadly, too many business owners, local politicians — including Chicago’s
Cardinal Cupich — will only accept the jab, disregarding those with natural
immunity.
You would think that those interested in public health
would be seeking any immunity; yet most are only looking for the jab, a lazy
man’s answer.
One expert, Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine, says those formally infected by COVID are seven times more
likely than vaccinated people to resist the disease. “It appears that natural
immunity is better against the Delta variant. When you get infected with COVID,
your body’s immune system develops antibodies to the entire surface of the
virus,” he said. “Not just the slight protein that the vaccines give you, but
the entire surface. And so you get a more diverse antibody portfolio in your
system.”
A study by the Cleveland Clinic of over 50,000 employees
over five months reported that those who had recovered from COVID-19 did not
benefit from vaccination. Researchers found that no one who had recovered from
the disease — those with natural immunity — became ill.
The downplaying (or ignoring natural immunity) will
ultimately cause those with it to be denied employment, travel, education, and
normal commercial activity. It will also allow local bureaucrats to continue
use of their emergency powers not really knowing if we have reached “herd
immunity,” which, apparently defies definition.
For example, the top health care guru, Dr. Anthony Fauci,
had opined that herd immunity would be at 60 to 70 percent immunity. But then
changed that to 75 to 80 percent. Now its 80 to 85 percent. Sounds more like
herd immunity is what is convenient to our medical overlords, and not
necessarily science.
If our public health community wants to play fair, that is
to avoid playing a political game, they should insist on the recognition of
natural immunity. As I suggested above, they should be more interested in
immunity, not simply vaccination.
The second issue that must be recognized involves religious
exemptions.
Religious exemptions for the vaccine are raised mainly by
right-to-lifers. The objections center around the use of liver cells from a
baby aborted in the Netherlands nearly half a century ago. From the cells from
that baby’s liver scientists were able to create cells that could divide which
allowed them to reproduce.
Those reproduced liver cells were used only for the testing
and development of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines but were never an ingredient
of the medicine. Yet many still have concerns over the vaccinations due to
their involvement with an aborted cell line. Pro-lifers ask, “If abortion is
truly the evil the Church claims that it is, how can you ethically use such
medication knowing that part of its history begins with the abortion of a
child?”
We know those cells must have been taken from either a live
fetus or one that had just been aborted, since cells from a dead infant would
die and could not divide and reproduce as would be needed to provide the
material for further use. Thus we know the fetus involved was not miscarried
since the time involved to “harvest” the live cells would have prohibited the
taking of live cells.
Many Catholic theologians and bioethicists, as well as
many, if not most bishops, however, have concluded that it is morally licit to
take such a vaccine since there is a “remoteness” between the abortion and the
drug. Two documents from the Vatican, one from the Pontifical Academy for Life,
and one from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have also approved
the use of the vaccines since the pandemic is an “exceptional case” and the use
of these cells is only “remote, passive, material cooperation with evil.”
Some insist that it is still an unacceptable cooperation
with evil, no matter how remote.
And it must be recognized that despite the theological arguments in favor of
the vaccine, there is a growing hard-core group of faithful people who, for
religious and conscience reasons, will not take the vaccine.
As to the AstraZeneca vaccine there is a more serious moral
question. In this case the manufacturer not only used an aborted cell line to
test the vaccine, but also to develop it.
Of course there are many other concerns honest people have
about vaxing, such as how it will affect those with serious medical problems
that could be compromised by the vaccine.
This is not a simple vax or no-vax question. Unfortunately
in a rush of political correctness to fight the disease, reasonable objections
and medical opinions are being suppressed by those who should know better.
Including the application of COVID therapeutics, such as hydroxychloroquine,
remdesivir, and regeneron that were condemned because Mr. Trump once mentioned
them as a possible treatment.
Why are we focused on only vaccination and why do we ignore
these other issues?
So who are the real killers?
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central Time on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
The
Virginia Supreme Court made a wise decision when it said it would not accept a
challenge to a lower court ruling that required Loudoun County Public Schools
to reinstate a teacher who was punished for not acknowledging that boys can be
girls, and vice versa.
The victim in this case, Tanner Cross, argued that his Christian convictions did not permit him to lie about sex transitioning. He knows it is child abuse. So does every honest person who knows anything about the subject, which unfortunately excludes many in the healthcare profession and education.
The school district violated this teacher's freedom of speech as well as freedom of religion. It had the gall to maintain that Cross was suspended not for his speech but for the "disruption" he caused at a school board meeting in May.
He was being sanctioned because of what civil libertarian Harvey Kalven once called the "heckler's veto." In short, this means that those who are upset about someone's speech can effectively veto his First Amendment right by holding him responsible for their planned, or actual, disruptive behavior.
This is not a matter of speculation. In 1949, the U.S. Supreme Court overthrew the conviction of a suspended Catholic priest who gave an incendiary speech in Chicago. A riot took place outside the hall where he spoke, and he was held accountable for the mob's behavior. The high court overturned his conviction. Had it not done so, it would have been the death knell to robust speech of any kind.
There was another dustup in June in Loudoun County when parents objected to the adoption of critical race theory (CRT). School officials mandated, without offering any proof that there was a problem with racism in the district, that all teachers accept the racist dogma associated with this ideology.
An economist who lives in this area, Max B. Sawicky, recently defended the school district for ordering teachers to abide by CRT. In an article posted by The New Republic, he lashed out at parents and teachers who objected to it. He denied that CRT was racist. He is wrong.
"White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy." Those are the words of Robin DiAngelo, one of the gurus of this pernicious brand of hate speech.
Ironically, those who live in Loudoun are mostly white privileged people, the very ones seen as racists by CRT activists. Sawicky brags that "Loudoun is one of the richest counties in the United States," where "Joe Biden received 62 percent of the vote."
These are precisely the kind of people who are most likely to deny that there are only two sexes. Not surprisingly, Sawicky berates "Christian fundamentalist teachers" who object to having their religious rights abrogated by sexually confused elites. He also rails against "anti-CRT fanatics" who object to branding all white people as racists.
More important, there is no shortage of left-wing totalitarians who want to use the power of the state to dictate how people think about transgenderism and CRT. Their penchant for thought control makes these people the most dangerous segment in American society today. They need to be resisted and defeated.
