News: U.S. Bishops Weigh in on COVID-19 Vaccines

December 15, 2020

Graphic that says shots

The U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Committee on Doctrine on Dec. 14 addressed concerns about whether getting the new vaccines for COVID-19 is a moral act. 

Here is the full statement from Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop Kevin Rhoads, chair of the Committee on Doctrine, and Kansas City, Kan. Bishop Joseph Naumann, chair of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

Here is their conclusion:

"The world is currently facing a health crisis. The number of deaths from COVID-19 is now almost one and a half million worldwide. In the United States, the toll is approaching 300,000. Given the urgency of this crisis, the lack of available alternative vaccines, and the fact that the connection between an abortion that occurred decades ago and receiving a vaccine produced today is remote, inoculation with the new COVID-19 vaccines in these circumstances can be morally justified.

"For our part, we bishops and all Catholics and men and women of good will must continue to do what we can to ensure the development, production, and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine without any connection to abortion and to help change what has become the standard practice in much medical research, a practice in which certain morally compromised cell lines are routinely used as a matter of course, with no consideration of the moral question concerning the origins of those cell lines."

Here is the statement from the Iowa Catholic Conference about the COVID-19 vaccines.