Earlier this summer, apparently after preparing a homily for St. Aloysius Gonzaga, who died from a virus while ministering to the poor, Cardinal Timothy Dolan (the archbishop of New York) penned a column in Our Sunday Visitor entitled: Did we go too far with COVID-19 restrictions?. Cardinal Dolan wondered, “Did we as a Church, here in the United States, go too far in obeying all the restrictions imposed during the COVID pandemic, resulting in a lack of pastoral care for those sick?”
He goes on to congratulate the diocese of New York for their adherence to the “strict protocol[s]” of the civil leaders but also asks, “Were we equally obedient to the biblical commands to be near the sick, to comfort the dying, to reverently bury the dead, and, for us deacons, priests and bishops, to bring the sacraments and the Church’s prayerful accompaniment to those very sick from the virus?”
I think the faithful can answer that inquiry with a resounding no. We all knew someone denied the graces and consolation of the sacraments, be that anointing of the sick, last rites, a funeral mass, a wedding, first communion, or baptism. For the first time in history, Catholics worldwide were locked out of their churches, not by some tyrannical dictator, but by our own hierarchy. It is unbelievable to contemplate the enormity of this decision.
Yet the response of the US bishops regarding the administration of the mRNA vaccine was just as cruel as locking down our churches. Many bishops, like Cardinal Cupich in Chicago, implemented a draconian forced vaccination policy for clergy and lay employees in their respective dioceses. The Covid-19 jab was a risky medical experiment, often resulting in serious injuries or death. To date, there has been no apology from any bishop, including Dolan, regarding this aspect of the Church’s Covid-19 response.
Suppose these bishops would not have fallen in lockstep with the media and government. In that case, they might have questioned the need to push the vaccine, as credible information opposing it was readily available. Even in light of massive numbers of breakthrough cases of vaccinated people in the winter of 2021, many bishops still parroted the flawed, uninformed, and unscientific position on the vaccine and boosters from the CDC.
Cupich published a letter in the Chicago Catholic entitled Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine is a Moral Imperative. By adding a lofty spiritual component to the reception of the injection by calling it a “moral imperative” and “act of love,” many Catholics were misled and guilted into accepting a medical intervention they may have never wanted. As we now know, these vaccination policies were based on propaganda from the CDC that the vaccine was safe and effective. Bishops who compelled their dioceses to get the jab are indeed complicit in not only worsening the spread of the virus during the pandemic’s peak but also in the countless numbers of vaccination injuries and deaths, and here’s why.
Undoubtedly the bishops know what original sin is, but did they ever investigate original antigenic sin? Dr. Robert W. Malone, who discovered in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection and is the inventor of mRNA vaccines, described it this way: Our bodies have been trained to fight old coronaviruses that we have been previously infected with. The original Covid-19 vaccines only contained the dominant protein from the original pathogen (Alpha), and jabbing people multiple times and driving memory cells to a virus that is no longer around might further skew one’s immunological response to any new mutations. You can listen to Robert W. Malone’s interview with Joe Rogan to learn more about this phenomenon.
There is another scientific concept called antibody-dependent enhancement. This occurs when the vaccine efficacy begins to wane. The virus can replicate more effectively as those vaccinated are no longer protected. This is well documented and happened in the case of RSV and dengue, as documented by the NIH. The approved narrative was to get a booster, but multiple vaccinations present another dilemma called escape mutant variants.
Again, according to Dr. Malone in an op-ed he co-authored in August 2021, escape mutant variants can be described this way, “The more people you vaccinate, the greater the number of vaccine-resistant mutations you are likely to get, the less durable the vaccines will become, ever more powerful vaccines will have to be developed, and individuals will be exposed to more and more risk. If the entire population has been trained via a universal vaccination strategy to have the same basic immune response, then once a viral escape mutant is selected, it will rapidly spread through the entire population – whether vaccinated or not.”
In light of this, I would ask Cardinal Dolan and the other bishops in the US if their universal vaccination policies are still a “moral imperative”? Doesn’t it appear that what Dr. Malone predicted actually happened with the spread of Covid-19 by fully vaccinating and boosting people contracting the disease in record numbers? Might it have been a more significant “act of love” to remain unvaccinated to stop the continued mutations of this disease?
Cardinal Dolan’s apology is a good start to help heal the spiritual wounds created by our Catholic leaders during the pandemic. In the spirit of Christian charity and accompaniment, we encourage the rest of the American bishops also to examine their consciences and, if so moved, apologize to the faithful for locking down their churches. But we also need to hear a few mea culpas regarding the physical and psychological wounds created by forced vaccination policies. It is never too late to admit you were wrong.