An elderly woman receives an injection with a dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Vallecas nursing home in Madrid Dec. 27, 2020. (CNS/Comunidad de Madrid handout via Reuters)
The Vatican s coronavirus commission and the Pontifical Academy for Life issued a joint statement calling for a coordinated international effort to ensure the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines worldwide.
The document highlights the critical role of vaccines to defeat the pandemic, not just for individual personal health but to protect the health of all, the Vatican said in a statement accompanying the document Dec. 29. The Vatican commission and the Pontifical Academy of Life remind world leaders that vaccines must be provided to all fairly and equitably, prioritizing those most in need, the Vatican said.
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MARQUETTE Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday released a statement after the Michigan Legislature passed her stimulus plan, which includes $55 million to help small businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Grants of up to $20,000 will be made available to small businesses across the state that need support this winter. The relief bill also includes $3.5 million for grants of up to $40,000 each for live music and entertainment venues, and includes $45 million in direct payments to workers who have been laid off or furloughed as a result of the coronavirus, with a direct focus on restaurant and hospitality workers.
“I proposed this stimulus plan to the legislature in November because I know how much our families, frontline workers and small businesses need relief as we head into the winter,” Whitmer said in a statement. “This bipartisan relief bill will provide families and businesses the support they need to stay afloat as we continue working to
Saint Peter s Basilica is pictured at the Vatican March 7, 2013. | (Photo: Reuters/Stefano Rellandini)
The Vatican has declared that coronavirus vaccines are “morally acceptable” for Catholics to take, even if their development involved using aborted fetal cells.
In a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that Pope Francis approved, the Catholic Church said that “all vaccinations recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience with the certain knowledge that the use of such vaccines does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion from which the cells used in production of the vaccines derive.”
A researcher works on a vaccine against the new coronavirus COVID-19 at the Copenhagen s University research lab in Copenhagen, Denmark, on March 23, 2020. | AFP via Getty Images/Thibault Savary
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention has cautiously answered the question of whether it s ethical for Christians to get the COVID-19 vaccine after some pro-life groups expressed disapproval of the vaccines because their development during the testing phase involved the use of cell lines taken from the tissue of an aborted baby.
“As Christians committed to the cause of human dignity, we affirm that a human life begins at the moment of conception,” the ERLC says in an explainer-article, recognizing “that every human life, even in the earliest or most advanced stages, bears all the rights and dignity of a person.”
Michael O’Loughlin: Should Catholics feel comfortable being vaccinated against Covid-19?
Dr. Moira McQueen: I think they should feel very comfortable. Especially since these first vaccines that have been developed comply with what many of us are calling ethical vaccines. Some people have raised legitimate questions. As it happens, with Pfizer and Moderna being among the very first [vaccines approved], that relieves that particular problem for most people.
Could you briefly explain what some of those ethical concerns could have been and why they aren’t part of these two vaccines that are expected to be available pretty soon?
The main problem for many people is that so many pharmaceuticals and vaccines are made using either cells from aborted fetuses or from destroyed human embryos or from tissue from aborted fetuses. Since we feel so strongly about the importance of life from conception until natural death, to use products that are based on parts of human bodies that’s just t