Statement by the Metropolitan on the Covid Medicines / Vaccines

It has become a subject of concern for Orthodox Christians to look into the options for deciding what to do concerning the response to the question of avoiding the Covid19 virus and/or obstructing its contagion by the use of medicines or vaccines. Complicating this process are the many reports from the media of the use of aborted human fetal tissue that is used by these many vaccine companies. The vaccine companies themselves try to counter peoples’ fear of lowering themselves and their personal integrity in the process of intaking fetal cells from aborted human babies by promoting explanations that imply that fetal cell tissue is not used in the vaccine production, but rather that “fetal cell lines” are used. This is an attempt by the Pharmaceutical industry to imply that fetal cell lines are not the same entity as fetal tissue.

This, however, is only an obfuscation of the verbiage used to describe how fetal cells are extracted from a living human fetus and then grown in a laboratory by causing constant replication of these cells. The fact is that these fetal cell lines are every bit the same biological entity as the original fetal tissue cell that came to the laboratory from the body of the living refrigerated about-to-die dissected human child.

In reviewing the options presented to mankind today by the various Pharmaceutical companies, all present offerings of vaccines but one use these human fetal cell lines in the ingredients and/or testing. The only exception we have found so far is the still in testing vaccine coming out from a the German company known as Curevac which is presently partnered with the Swiss company Novartis. This Curevac vaccine is presently in an emergency use testing phase in the European Union, but that process of obtaining approval is still presently ongoing. If the European Union does give final approval for the Curevac vaccine, it will still have to be submitted to the FDA in the United States for this American agency to do their own testing here in America. This process could be a long way off, since the pro abortion lobby is very happy to preserve the present status quo so that all Americans will feel there is a good medical use that can be obtained so that abortionists can induce women to continue to have abortions while letting them falsely conclude that they’re somehow helping humanity when they decide to abort their child.

Additionally, the new methods being used to manufacture some of these new vaccines is known to use for the first time a vaccine manufacturing component that is known to alter the recipients’ DNA. This new method remains largely untested as to its long ranged results, and may indeed cause problems for the vaccine recipients in the future. This leaves little choice for Orthodox Christians at the present time except to wait until the Curevac vaccine approval process is completed here in the United States.

Because all this testing process will take some time, it is only possible for our Synod of Bishops to explain to our faithful that it is not possible for us to recommend the use of any Covid vaccine at the present time, but rather to exhort the faithful to wait in prayer until Our Lord gives us a time where information is available to us to recommend a course of action, and, in the meantime, to take regular precautions regarding our health in order to avoid exposure to the virus.

The Holy Scriptures contain multitudes of dire warnings against those who would slay the innocent, and this certainly applies in relation to any vaccine or other products produced in connection with the murder of the unborn. In the Second Book of Maccabees it is stated that God would “remember the wicked slaughter of harmless infants, and the blasphemies committed against His Name; and that He would shew His hatred against the wicked.” (2 Maccabees 8:4) And the Book of Proverbs exhorts us by saying that “the prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.” Therefore, let those who have ears to hear, hear.