U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates
(LifeSiteNews) — If the Archdiocese of Washington (ADW) wants to observe National Catholic Schools Week this year, it might start by realigning its administrative policies with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
This includes not only the responsibility to uphold the dignity of human life from conception until natural death, but also rights of conscience – particularly for parents – when it comes to refusing vaccines produced or tainted by human cells lines derived from direct abortions.
Shamefully, ADW does not afford this freedom of conscience to families within its jurisdiction. For two decades, families requesting exemptions for morally objectionable vaccines – or any others – have been consistently denied admittance to archdiocesan Catholic schools. This McCarrick-era policy has been perpetuated by ADW with disturbing fidelity.
But the archdiocese is in conflict with its own Catholic identity in more ways than one.
Besides the disdain for Catholic teaching that regards life as sacred from conception, the ADW also ignores the primacy of a person’s well-formed conscience and the right of parents to be able to choose Catholic education for their children.
ADW’s updated immunization policy makes clear that exemptions are granted only temporarily and only for medical reasons. Any serious moral objection for certain vaccines, ADW says, will undergo consideration. ‘Consideration’ here by no means equals consent.
Ironically, while the ADW website states that “Archdiocesan schools are not required to adopt any rule, regulation, or policy that conflicts with the religious or moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church,” in practice archdiocesan schools require parents to adopt an immunization policy that is in direct contradiction with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
READ: New study highlights the silent global scandal of excess deaths
Even if, as a matter of general principles, it is not always morally illicit to use abortion-tainted vaccines temporarily, the use of such vaccines must never be advanced as mandatory, or as a universal duty, especially for the admission of children to a Catholic education.
In essence, the archdiocese claims the right to abstain from any coercion that might impinge upon its religious freedom while simultaneously exerting moral coercion on the freedom of conscience of those parents who choose to abstain from vaccinating their children.
This contradiction is made even more unconscionable by the fact that the same parents whose children are refused admittance in ADW schools are readily granted it in public schools within Maryland and the District of Columbia.
Catholics in good conscience have a moral responsibility to question any community or institutions imposing vaccines involving an aborted child. But what if that institution is your local archdiocesan Catholic school?
That’s a question families in the Archdiocese of Washington are asking. It’s a question Cardinal Gregory should answer by adjusting vaccination policies to come into line with Church teaching.
As ADW commemorates National Catholic Schools Week, the Cardinal has a golden opportunity to realign diocesan schools to fully uphold life, parental rights, and freedom of conscience. Unless and until these tenets are upheld, any observation ADW makes of National Catholic Schools Week will ring hollow: its schools will be Catholic in name only.
READ: Ontario doctor suspended for refusing COVID shot begins challenge to hospital mandate
U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates