(LifeSiteNews) — The Society of St. Pius the X’s Canadian district on Wednesday issued a statement outlining how Catholics can explain why they are exempt from the COVID-19 vaccines on religious grounds.
The SSPX’s Canadian district “supports the faithful who seek religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccines,” outlining why Catholics can legitimately oppose the shots on the basis of their faith. “The Catholic Church teaches that a person may be required to refuse a medical intervention, including vaccination, if his or her informed conscience comes to this judgment.”
“There is a general moral duty to refuse the use of medical products, including certain vaccines that are produced using human cell lines derived from direct abortions. It is permitted to use such vaccines only under certain case specific conditions, based on a judgment of conscience,” the society added, referencing official Church documents.
After explaining that a Catholic is “morally required to obey his or her sure conscience,” the SSPX explained why a Catholic may feel as though the COVID-19 vaccines are in violation of their religious convictions.
“Traditional Catholics are well known for strong opposition to abortion. The Covid vaccines have used aborted fetal cell lines in their development and testing,” penned the society. “Traditional Catholic belief as well as many other religious traditions, undergirded by basic science, believe that life starts at the moment of conception, and therefore, to these groups, the development of these particular vaccines represents a grave abuse of human life.”
In exclusive interviews with LifeSiteNews and Project Veritas, Melissa Strickler, a former Pfizer employee turned whistleblower, shed light on the COVID vaccines’ link to abortion while exposing Pfizer executives’ emails showing they were trying to play down the immoral link in an effort to make the product more palatable to religious-minded consumers.
Quoting the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s December 21, 2020, statement regarding the “morality of using some anti-COVID-19 vaccines,” the SSPX referred to the Church’s authentic teaching that “vaccination” is never a “moral obligation” and therefore must remain “voluntary.”
Following this logic, the SSPX said Catholics must assess their need for a COVID-19 injection on the basis of “therapeutic proportionality” which asks each Catholic to determine “whether the benefits of a medical intervention outweigh the undesirable side-effects and burdens in light of the internal good of the person, including spiritual, psychological and bodily goods.”
Further, “The judgment of therapeutic proportionality must be made by the person who is the potential recipient of the medical intervention in the concrete circumstances, not by public health authorities or by other individuals who might judge differently in their own situations.”
The statement informed people that the vaccinations have not been thoroughly tested, and in light of the millions of reports of vaccine injury, including thousands of deaths, as well as Health Canada admitting certain conditions like myocarditis and pericarditis have been known as adverse reactions to the shots, each person “should freely do a benefit risk analysis” on the basis of their health as well as their religious convictions.
In the final section of the statement, the SSPX referenced Canadian law that positively supports the necessity for voluntary vaccination. Such laws, which have also been affirmed as applicable by Canadian constitutional rights lawyer Rocco Galati, include the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian Case Law, and the internationally recognized Nuremberg Code.
“If a person comes to the decision, as many have, that he or she must decline to receive a vaccine for religious reasons, he or she is morally obliged to do so,” wrote the society. “To coerce a person into a direct violation of his or her conscience can never be tolerated by a free and just society.”
Currently, the COVID-19 vaccines are experimental, with clinical trials not being set to complete until 2023. Additionally, according to official statistics from the European Union and the World Health Organization, the abortion-tainted shots have been linked to millions of injuries and thousands of deaths since their widespread rollout in 2020.
According to Catholic Bishop Athanasius Schneider in a February statement, “The voice of the unborn children’s blood is crying to God from the abortion-tainted vaccines, from the abortion-tainted medicines.”
“This voice is crying all over the world, and we have to awaken,” he added. “No one who is really deeply concerned about the defense of life and the moral law can be silent or can be quiet and can resign to this situation.”